Translation for US'ers: The Frasier Institute is about the same as the US's "Heritage Foundation" and such, a right-wing think tank. I'll believe their position papers as much as I'd trust the Cato Institute.
general_re, glad you found someone who agrees with your position but it's not mainstream and neither from an unbiased source or one with a great deal of creditability.
My advice to anyone? Do your own thinking and don't listen without question to anyone who promises you anything. Oh, and those that try and talk down to strangers, usually they're not worth the attention.
Republican bullshit not withstanding, the Canadian single-payer health care system works better than anything I have ever seen in the US.
Is that why the Ontario government and Princess Margaret Hospital sent more than a thousand backlogged cancer patients to Roswell Park in Buffalo - because of how well the Canadian system works?
If it's more cost effective then yeah, it's working.
Seriously,I used to do IT in a leading US hospital, have a buncha buddies at the other local big ones (that's not hard in Boston) and the amount of hardware bought for pure ego and prestige was incredible.
Did we need a dual-phaser radiation whatsit? No. Did we have the patient demand for it? No. But, but our not-quite-as-prestigious neighbors got one... And the rising young star we're trying to lure from Johns Hopkins wants one... And it would just make our whatever unit just so beyond "world class" we've gotta get one! Heck, once we've got it we'll start running the patients through it like cattle, don't worry.
Many US hospitals are larded up with lots of shiny "must-have" hardware that honestly not more then one or two hospitals in a region really need.
In Canada they step back, take a look at that bigger picture and say yeah, it makes more sense to ship some folks down south of the border to use the expensive stuff the 'Merkins bought for themselves and are now desperate for patients to justify. Sure it doesn't make for big bragging points but then universal healthcare kinda trumps the US's horribly broken system, the occasional shiny dual-phaser radiation whatsits notwithstanding.
FWIW I'm a US citizen, live in Quebec. Now I'm in Montreal but I spent a couple of years living out in the farmlands where I was the anglophone in town. Frankly my experience with the healthcare here has been fine, even considering it's pay-as-you-go in my case. Indeed a heck of a lot better then my US top-tier HMO-from-hell where there were even longer waits for everything, appointments were always at least an hour late, and I co-paid for everything.
My biggest problem here? The office finding english paperwork for me to sign. Oh, did I mention the last time I saw a doc here (a few years ago for pnumonia) I got in 10 minutes after walking into the clinic, got quality care, and they called my house three times, first time with the doctor and twice more with real nurses just following up on me? Oh, CA$40 for the visit and CA$60 for the pills.
My advice? Stop listening to the US's big-healthcare underwritten propaganda and ask some folks who've actually used healthcare on both sides of the border, figure out whose getting the better value; both individually and as a society.
Seriously, why buy an expensive duplicator to reburn what, a few dozen discs, mebbe a coupla of hundred at most, every "few years"?...
Make two or three copies of everything you REALLY want to keep (don't get lazy and save everything, show a bit of judgment.)
Figure out some sort of indexing strategy so you can find stuff later. Don't get all fancy, consider portable like a flat text file listing materials and what CDs they're on.
Keep one set someplace convenient, but fairly well secured, temperature controlled, not damp, etc. Send off the other copies to elsewhere under like conditions.
Once a year check all the caches of materials and test-read some samples. Take the opportunity to add what's new, update the indexes, etc.
Every n-years send the whole lot out for duplication to whatever is the format du jure. Don't get stuck with punch cards / paper tape / reel to reel magtapes / laser disks / IBM PC to cassette tape / Bournelli disks / magneto-optical / and soon CDs, keep up with the times.
Face it, CDR production is already winding down as industry prepares to move to DVDR. A few years after that it'll be ???. Don't get locked in to any of those, instead spend your effort on keeping your files in portable formats, searchable, and secure. Mediums will come and go, bits can be forever.
The fella asks a perfectly legitimate question: What about projection displays in 24/7 environments like network centers? He then points out that perfection isn't required for this, it's a "good-enough" non-videophile situation.
You then get all supercilious about his even having the temerity to ask such a question, and downright rude about folks who might watch lots of TV. You cap it off with an obvious comment on bulb quality, again, after the poster pointed out quality wasn't an issue and a bit of accommodation was acceptable (rear-projecting onto a 30 inch screen doesn't require a bright bulb anyway.)
Way to drive down the quality of real signal to noise here, Bub. Can't thank you enough for working out your social insecurities on a legitimate poster asking a useful and/.-audience relevant question. Hope you feel all big and proud of yourself now for cutting him down to (your) size.
Finally, on a personal note, while it may be unheard of in your snide little world there are folks who do watch lots of TV: My Mom is one. She's retired and has fought bouts of depression for 50 years. Yes, there are days she's doing well to get out of bed to watch the big TV thankyouverymuch.
Frankly the one who needs surgery is you:
Attitude and social skill upgrade, stat.
I am a real big fan of Apple, but I am continually wondering just how they stack up to the PCs
Who the hell cares?
"It's got-wide bore cams, dual exhausts, and a microflake red paint finish"
I mean, beyond the most insecure fanboy when does the raw speed of a modern PC matter?
Does it run 'fast enough'?
Are the tools I need available?
Can I be efficient with this?
Will it hold up long enough to pay back it's investment?
Thus, is it a good value for me?
What does it matter exactly how many clock-cycles this thing burns off while waiting for you to type in your next/. posting?
We reached the point a few years ago where, for most folks doing most tasks, any computer was good enough. Yes if you're doing huge math problems, or 3D rendering (same thing really) or other similar comparatively exotic activities then CPU-to-CPU comparisons (and motherboard architecture and bus bandwidth and memory latency etc.) are interesting metrics.
But for 99% of folks, and even for ~90% of/.'ers, clockspeeds only good for bragging rights and extreme future-proofing of machines.
Computers are toasters now and everything on the market is gonna be good enough for the vast majority of folks. The important questions now are not "Can it do it" but "How best to do these, and how can I, with my workflow and my available skillset and my needs, best get them done?"
So look at what you use a computer for, what your time and efforts are worth, what tools you use and need and have investment in, and judge if Product A can do what you need, if Product B can too, and then which is a better value for your particular situation, clock-speeds be damned.
First off it helps to understand that Montreal has a terrible drunken driver problem. The city is rightly renowned for its amazing nightlife but unfortunately too often this spills over into the streets, often with tragic consequences.
Indeed among my social circle it's common to leave clubs a half hour before last call (3am) or plan on hanging out in a late night coffee shop or restaurant for 'til at least 4am before braving the downtown streets. Even then many of us intentionally take indirect routes to avoid the drunks.
Its also useful to know that by US terms Montreal isn't a violent city. Indeed when I moved here I was appalled at all of the car crashes that lead the evening news. At least, I was appalled until I realized it was simply the maxim if it bleeds it leads in action and where US cities would have killings and gunfire in Montreal the news was having to settle (!) for mostly car accidents.
The result is for the press, especially the extensive tabloid press, accidents and incidents like this are big news. Every media outlet in Montreal is talking about this today, and I'm sure tonight many partiers will be reconsidering their travel strategies.
Finally, Ste. Catherine is the east-west "Main Street" through Montreal. Its a heavily built up with large and small stores, theaters, restaurants, and yes being Montreal, stripper clubs mixed in too. Even at 1am it is always heavily trafficked, both with vehicles and people coming and going through downtown.
Frankly at Ste. Catherine & Foy there's no way one could reach the speeds this yoyo was going unless one floored the gas and held it (as his blackbox read.) It's not like cruising down main street in some small plains town where the signs at 1am are a formality and there's not a soul to be seen, this is a light every block with folks on the sidewalks everywhere and steady traffic throughout.
So yeah, it looks like Quebec courts are gonna start using the 'expert testimony' of black boxes. Frankly I'm not concerned as the courts here do pretty much bend over backwards to find reasonable doubt and I've heard of cases dropped and evidence suppressed on some exceedingly conservative grounds.
Compared to eyewitness testimony from traumatized folks, measuring skid marks and vehicle deformation, debris fields patterns, etc. these numbers are probably going to be useful, especially at confirming or contradicting all of the other evidence. in my book that's a good thing and you're vehicle is right is right in being mined for information, be it a crushed windshield, blood on the bumper, or data in it's black box.
As I pointed out elsewhere Brad is well aware of his rights (early online publisher, author of "10 Big Myths about copyright explained", Chairman of the Board of the EFF), rather folks need to be more aware of their own rights.
Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on/. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is...
For all of those who don't know who Brad Templeton is (and judging from all the posts so far none do) Brad was the Founder, CEO, and Publisher of ClariNews, the first public-subscription online newswire (via NNTP). He's also the author of the fantastic "10 Big Myths about copyright explained" so yeah, he knows his rights. Oh, and he's Chairman of the Board of the EFF. In short he knows what he's doing and AmEx's lawyers definately tangled with the wrong perosn.
Curiously since the innermost planet is so close to the Sun, the Mercury mission itself will look for (cometary) water-ice preserved on the less baked north pole.
Curiously? One of the best places to look for anything is at or near the bottom of a well (gravity well in this case.)
Sure there are lotsa other places to look too but this is a tidally-locked object not far from where many inner-system comets end up, ie the Sun. It'd be curiouser if Mercury hadn't intercepted a few comets over the eons and there weren't some traces of those collisions left on the benign parts of the planet.
OK, cutting through the assumptions already posted, and folks who couldn't be bothered to actually read the article before posting...
Yes, Apple's music files are encoded in AAC.
Yes, AAC is an open standard, in that it is publically documented (for a reproduction fee to ISO), just not a free one, patent-wise or royalty-wise.
Apple's AAC files are then protected with DRM using Apple's FairPlay (if this FairPlay is related to VeriDisc's FairPlay is unknown, Apple lists FairPlay under their Apple's copyright).
If folks had bothered to read the article the DRM opportunity is pretty much what it was about, not the AAC format. FWIW FairPlay could be applied to mp3's too.
As DRM goes FairPlay is pretty liberal and there have been few problems (Cory Doctorow's consistantly forgetting to un-license machines aside)
Can FairPlay be broken? Probably, there are ways at getting to the AAC files via Apple's freely distributed QuickTime architecture (this is what iTunes uses).
There's also the trivial exercise of using iTunes to burn a CD then re-ripping the music. Of course the music has then been lossily encoded twice, with different encoders, so it's sorta like listening to a copy of a tape of a FM broadcast.
Ultimately though at US$1 a song & US$10/album most folks appear willing to own the music legitimately. Furthermore Apple has made it absurdly simple to share music locally via their iTunes software so most dorm & office style needs are handled that way.
Of course, the article pretty much ignores if Apple wants to be in the Music or IP licensing business at all. They only gave MS their previous Apple-IP license when their mutual lawsuits seemed deadlocked for eternity. The Mac licensing program cannibalized their own sales before it was killed off, their FireWire licensing plan shot itself in the foot, there doesn't even seem to be much co-branding like used to happen with special speakers and such for Macs. These days Apple seems pretty intent on only doing things that directly support selling, or at least evangelizing, Mac hardware.
Recent version of MS Windows get speech recognition installed in with recent versions of MS Office, or added as a free download from MS. Mac OS X also comes with speech recognition and just announced they're gpoing to screen-reader enable their entire GUI.
Also as the article notes one can buy more extensive add-on products like IBM's Mac/PC ViaVoice & Dragon's family of products as well as numerous other lesser-known and more specialized ones.
That's today, already on millions of desktops, ready and capable of driving web browsers, sitting there ignored.
Why?
Few folks are even aware that speech recognition or speech generation are trivially or already installed on their computers
When general users do use these capabilities they're usually disappointed they're not more like the ones on TV, where a simple ambiguous command is immediately interpreted and plot-appropriate material magically recited out
Most folks don't have microphones plugged into their computers, or they're ones unsuitable for speech recognition
Few folks bother to spend the time and energy into fine-tuning their microphones and training the speech recognition for their particular speech pattern and vocabulary
Reading text is faster then hearing it, even at faster-then-typical-human-speech recitation speeds. The same goes for typing being faster then dictation
Screens and keyboards afford a minimal level of privacy. With them eavesdropping generally requires line of site, not just sitting in the next cubicle over and unavoidably hearing everything
So, where will this be useful? Anywhere keyboards aren't. Web phones. Industrial environments (well, quiet ones). For physically challenged folks with visual or manual problems. But sitting in the typical office workspace? Not gonna (still) revolutionize the world.
Mitch Kapor leaving the Groove board was even covered in the New York Times (reported by John Markoff no less) last year, hardly a low-key thing. Also aside from the not-wanting-to-get-in-bed-with-spooks argument he made it was also probably getting uncomfortable for Kapor being on the Groove board while seeding and running the Chandler project, the opportubity to resign over something he felt strongly about was likely fortitious.
Chandler is "Intended as an open source personal information manager for email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as well as a platform for developing information management applications". That's pretty much the exact same decentralized server-less information distribution and synchronization space Groove is in. Building that while sitting on the Groove board, well, the conflict-of-interest is pretty obvious.
By the way, not to join the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd but it was was widely reported several years ago that Notes' vaunted security was compromised in international (non-US) versions by including an NSA private key. Supposedly 24 of the 64 bits used in the keys were always an NSA key, thus leaving holders of the US's key 40 bits to crack instead of the 64 needed by anyone else. This news apparently caused consternation among non-US customers, especially folks like embassies and other government agencies. I don't recall how the whole thing played out, not even how valid it was, and probably worded it wrong, but I'd be concerned about Groove having a similar set of "privileged keys".
Sure, but is it wireless, encrypted, somehow involve XML, and support social networking? What's the license on this thing anyway? C'mon, we need *complete* *buzzword* *compliance*!
Note that the wind-propelled rover used an existing overbuilt satellite constellation to communicate its data back to the engineers. The implication there is that the rover couldn't use the sort of non-androsynchronous
[sic?] communications satellite that is currently available on Mars. So unreliable communications is one notable problem.
Whoah boy! You're going pretty fast and far afield on some assumptions. Just as valid would be: Using cheap off-the-shelf commercial satellite-phone transmitters this proof-of-concept..."
For a real Tumbleweed-type probe more specific hardware would be used. It would undoubtedly take advantage of the martian orbiters that are already in fairly polar orbits (thus the current irregular communications windows). However for now Iridium is cheap, doesn't require extra-paperwork or expensive custom hardware, and frankly they're focusing on the novel bouncy-stuff rather then the rather straightforward comms issues.
Also, look at the data that were being recorded... position, air temperature, pressure, humidity, and light intensity. Position is likely hard to determine without a Martian GPS system. Even so, the rest of those parameters can be deduced from current orbiters, especially "humidity". I can tell you that now -- it's somewhere close to 0%. It's a dry heat^w cold.
Um, no. Again, this is stuff that could trivially and cheaply be tossed onto a proof-of-concept, not specifically what would be included on a Mars-bound probe.
However we DON'T know those things about Mars particularly well. Indeed after the rovers landed a bright person figured out how temperatures could be identified for the radio transmission path and it turns out the martian atmosphere is more chaotic with all kinds of thermal upwellings then had been assumed. Getting some widely dispersed numbers of local values would be useful, particularly for confirming assumptions used in interpreting remote sensing guesstimates.
The nature of the object means that those are pretty much all the sensor readings you're going to get, too... add pretty pictures to the mix, of course. But this isn't something that can bore holes in rocks or take detailed spectra of interesting spots, because there's no way to anchor the ball to the ground.
Well, ionization, lighting under clouds, dust volumes, "pretty pictures" of more of the place up close, particularly from non-flat parts, etc. All very valuable. Sure areology is important but there's a lot that can be learned from the surface and ground-level environment that doesn't require drilling holes.
For comparison imagine what you can learn just walking down a street with your native senses, information that can't be gained from a spy satellite, particularly one not already calibrated for your environment. Not even manipulating anything you'll learn a lot, be able to infer and correlate a lot more. Sure a Tumbleweed probe is more limited in some sorts of sensing, on the other hand it'll likely be able to go farther and longer then a Beagle-type probe.
If it can be done "fast and cheap", go for it. It might give some good close-up photos of places to send a more capable lander. But I'd suggest launching another Beagle (with airbags) first, if we're wanting best bang for the buck.
The question is what bang you're looking for, and what kinda bucks you can afford.
Beagle-type probes can do some things, Tumbleweeds look like they'll be complimentary for others. Is it more valuable to intensely study, and even interact with, a handful of flat places or get measurements of a far wider swath of the plant? At least now we know that we've got alternatives to wheeled carts for exploring.
Every few years we hear of another nifty free-space manual input. Again and again folks learn: GUI's and the human body aren't well suited for these, at least not within the contraints of a high efficiency/low physical labor/space constrained way.
Light pens, touch screens, ultrasonic rangefinders, tracker cameras, gyroscopic whatevers - all ignore the fundamental issue of "Gorilla Arm". Simply put nobody wants to be holding out their arms making little precise motions for any length of time.
Keyboards, as awfully designed as they usually are, at least allow one's arms to hang down. The same for mice - there's a reason your typing and mousing surfaces are typically 2' lower then your worktop. Ask any craftsperson - they use worbenches precisely to avoid their arms stretched out in front of them all day.
So unless you're into interpretive dance and don't mind the slowness of big gestures (and are up for the cardio) this whole category of technology is innapropriate for extended use. Particularly for the sedentary cubed masses. Invest in some good ergo furniture and input devices, get some decent lighting, and leave the hand-waving to the PHB's.
Adobe Illustrator, Corel CorelDraw, Dia, Inkwell, Jasc Webdraw, Macromedia Freehand, Sodipodi, etc. Perhaps you've heard of a few of these, some of them are rather well known. There are more, those are just off of the top of my head.
Frankly about every major vector editor supports SVG. Or use any vector editor, or really any package including things like AutoDesk AutoCAD, MS Visio, MS Project, MS PowerPoint, Lotus 123, etc. you like and convert your files to SVG using any of the above, or SVGconvert, or the like.
For those with short memories in the bubble offering things like great chairs, good food, and in-house diversions was good sense. You were competing with every other employer in the over-heated market and that sort of stuff was just plain expected.
Indeed, frankly, a lot of it is still justifiable.
A good chair means that 100k/year coder is gonna be able to work out their inspiration without the distractions of an aching back or sticky ass. For a $500 more then the standard office crap-chair that's a good investment, especially as a capital depreciation and defense in an bad-ergo disability suite.
Similar for food, drink, and toys. It keeps the crew in the building, talking to each other. It means they're not taking their hour off to troop to the local lunch hole where they'll be sitting at the table next to the competition spilling your plans. Figure $arcade-game = $day-at-teamwork-camp, not a bad value amortized.
Furthermore it's amazing the kinda allegiance baubles and amenities like that will buy. I've seen folks turn down 30% larger paychecks for a trendy office space, free fruit juice, and a tres kewl atmosphere. Multiply that by a full of staff and per-person it comes down to a great value with the improved recruiting and retention, costs a fraction the headhunter, interview, and training costs.
Lastly, cars and motorcycles? Promo costs. Tax code is nice to 'em and they get your name out there. Check around your current employer and you'll probably be amazed at some of the trophies and gifts and banners and other paraphernalia that they're purchasing as a matter of course.
Particularly for.com's half of the "product" was name and buzz, scoring the next VC round. Flashy toys things were standard, indeed de rigeur. Getting an article in the local paper, your logo shown at a rave, instant PR and cheap at the price. It's easy to be snide afterwards but then those were the rules of the game and what got you your paycheck, sensible or not.
Kodak was prescient in developing the Kodak PhotoCD standard. It was a remarkable development: Let folks drop their film rolls off for developing and get them back along with, for ~US$10, a CD of images from their film.
But these aren't just scans, they're high resolution scans, color-corrected, in five different sizes. Sure there's the film, developing, and CD costs, but unless one is taking an enormous number of shots they're still a good bang-for-the-buck deal for the average special-event snapper.
Not only does one get a handy digital copy, certainly far better then all but the latest prosumer digital camera models can produce, but also one needn't invest into a new camera but continue to use one's tried, true, and relatively cheap equipment already out there.
Kodak even managed to get their PhotoCD technology put into about every CD reading device out there. Almost every PC CDROM supports PhotoCD. Many DVD players support PhotoCD. Numerous Kodak development shops can process the film and give you a CD in an hour. Even most major photo software can read a Kodak PhotoCD natively.
So where'd the blow it? They could have shared the digital photography revolution. Kept selling film for quality and offered digital prints for versatility. But truth be told Kodak had no clue how to counter the sexy new digital cameras.
Instead of trying to sell their system's versatility they offered it as a poor alternative. Instead of bringing in new customers lie digital cameras were they kept selling to their shrinking existing base of customers. Instead of doing a massive give-away promotion to jumpstart the whole thing they've steadfastly clung to their high prices.
They took their eye off the consumables business and instead tried to cash in too early on the PhotoCD tech, in the process losing both markets. They've even abandoned third parties being able to make PhotoCDs any more - their last software product went off the market years ago and there's no legitimate source left.
With folks scurrying around buying software to make VCD slideshows on often buggy players it's ironic that much of the needed tech is already working in their drives. Just the company owning it won't sell tools to use it.
Kodak's not going under, at least not soon. Polaroid's instant film market was pretty much decimated, that and years of dreadful mismanagement did them in. (To whomever now works for the last batch of Polaroid execs - SELL & RUN!) Kodak still has a viable business. Indeed they're even transitioning over pretty well. But they could have had a much easier time of it and owned a lot more of it if they'd have played their cards right.
We've all heard the jokes about working from home in the nude, and then wearing a shirt or using hand puppets or inserting fake backgrounds into video calls to the office. However the reality is that most folks really don't appreciate having to look presentable on what is essentially an audio call.
Indeed it's already hard enough for many folks with audio only. I can't count the number of times I've had to ask conference callers to stop eating, or in a few cases that perhaps they could try to pee quieter and have waited 'til after the call to flush.
Videophones themselves have had numerous fals starts. The Bell demos are classics from the 60's (particularly memorable in the film 2001.) Then in the late 80's and early 90's home video phone models briefly became somewhat popular. Rarely successfully interoperable they seemed to sell mostly to gadget folks wanting distant grandkids and grandparents to see each other.
Then came the broadband/instant messaging explosion in the late 90's and along with it lots of webcams. Offering small blurry jerky windows the PC-tethered cams allowed a few families and travelers to wave at each other. It also sparked an entire new market of slo-mo sexual voyeurism.
Now broadband has fairly wide market penetration, the camera sensors have improved, new codecs stream well, and hardware connections have moved from serial to USB 1 to USB 2 or FireWire/IEEE 1394. We even have ubiquitous clients like AOL Instant Messenger, MS Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, all including video chat in their free clients.
Cellphones have also gotten into the game with still cameras now standard on many models and live cameras starting to hit the market. "MMS" is being ballyhooed as the next text-messaging.
However what appears to be lagging is the new video-etiquette.
It used to be tourists busily video documenting their vacations that got on everyone's nerves. Then it was instant messaging folks who often annoying with trying to strike up light chat when one was deep in thought or a meeting, or vice versa. Or being offended at others who were accessible but not immediately available.
then came the invasion of cheap digital cameras. It's thankfully dying down now but for a few years one couldn't turn around at a party or conference without a flash going off in one's eyes and knowledge that like it or not, welcome or not, your stunned countenance was going to show up on a photo album or web page somewhere.
Of course today's universal complaint is cellphone users. Yakking away in previously quiet places, blithely wandering from road lane to road lane, standing in aisles oblivious to folks trying to pass. Obtrusively sharing their no-longer-private lives with everyone around whether we care to hear them or not.
So how will we stay out of the picture? It's bad enough with stills being taken, overtly and surreptiously, with phonecams. Now they're gonna be making mini-movies. Instead of having to take a series of shots phonecam wielders will be able to pan a room and document everyone without any opportunity for thanks-but-no.
"Why won't you turn your cam on?" "Are you really where you say you are?" "Johnson, starting next week we want you to sit in front of these lights and put some powder on that shine, you'll be taking video calls. Oh, and go shopping, tests show our clients respond well to blue shirts." "What do you mean you left your cam on the whole time we were... ?!!!"
Plus audio conference calls and endless PowerPoint presentations are bad enough, now we'll have to see every schmoo who dreampt of being a TV newsman share their talents at every opportunity. Indeed no longer will sending out a report be enough, we'll have to "present" them too. Today's video conference rooms will bloom into tomorow's full in-office studios.
Of course there are upsides too. Now we'll be able to see our loved ones when we miss them. Also walk folks through things remotely "Let me see it - yep, that's it." And the idea of s
Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in the idea of open standards and interoperable, browser-neutral web sites.
Yes, well there's your problem. These aren't specs for web browsers.
Yes, they're available via http and include many web technologies but really these are about metadata and relationship information, not presentation. There's more to "The Web" then endless HTML pages, and that other space is where these are aimed at. Material using these newly set standards can be linked and searched and eventually massaged for presentation but the raw stuff isn't intended for your traditional web browser to use itself.
However, it seems to me that nowadays the W3C is more interested in pushing their political agenda and ideas than they are in codifying and standardizing widely used technology.
Y'know, thats a really interesting opinion, but it would be more so if you were to tie it to the topic at hand. Yes these are quickly evolving technologies and yes, what's out in the field doesn't always match what's in the standards process. However when you talk to the folks doing this stuff IRL most will tell you they're trailblazing out of need and are quite enthusiastic about a standard eventually happening they can use. Indeed many of them are actively involved in the standard-setting process and applying the lessons they've learned.
Sometimes the W3C does seem out in left field: It's got any number of way-far-ahead things cooking, as well as any number of other passed-by ones still stumbling along. It's hard to predict when starting up a committee what will be needed when they're done, nor always how it will end up being used, or if it will all be quickly irrelevant. On the other hand they're right on target much of the time, and if occasionally laggard they're as often prescient.
But back to the immediate topic both these specs being set will be welcomed in many circles. Neither appears perfect but both seem quite good, immediately usable, and without great conflict to past practice.
The concentrated acid rain is eroding your wall, there is little protection to your wall by puting [sic] a ring of limestone around the base of the building. When the rain got absorbed into concrete through tiny cracks, it is eroding the structural steel bar/beam. But you might consider sprinkling the building exterior with lime water and make the window cleaning guys rich becuase [sic] when lime water dries up, a smear remain [sic] on the glass, someone has to clean it.
Wow, you know soo much! So that urban structures are already subjected to "acid rain" isn't news to you either. Or that concrete is significantly alkaline. Or that there's even new window glass on the market that cleans itself.
There's a new product on the market, called "flour". It's made from wheat. In the US some of it is hard northern wheat (and yes, Canadian wheat is excellent.) Other is made from softer southern wheat. In both the bran is regularly milled off to produce a product called "white flour". Leave the bran on and it is "whole wheat flour" (clever that). You might have heard of these exotic products. Heck, you might even have some in your pantry right now!
High gluten white flour is used to make white bread. Hard northern wheat white flour, particularly Canadian wheat white flour, is preferred for this. A common brand is King Arthur. Softer southern wheat white flour is lower gluten and better for things like cakes. A common brand is Swansdown. A mix of the two makes all-purpose flour. A common brand is Robin Hood.
In neither case does one need to add TiO2 to the flour to whiten it. Simply milling off the brown bran and then grinding the flour results in it being white. Leave the bran on and it is, taadaaa! Brown, aka whole wheat flour.
That said TiO2 is indeed in many products. Its a primary ingredient in toothpaste. It is also useful as an anticaking agent. Indeed it would be surprising if some TiO2 didn't make it into bread simply from being a component in several common bread ingredients.
But TiO2 in bread to make it white? No, the flour making up the bread is white enough on it's own. It would take a lot of TiO2 to brighten up something as structurally complex as bread, enough to significantly complicate the baking process.
So, thanks for trying, but apparently you got the wrong half of "half jokingly". And check out the bread thing, good stuff, especially when you learn how those amber waves of grain become sacks of white flour in nearly (apparently "everyone else's" in your case) pantry.
"New Scientist is reporting..." translation = "As seen on fark yesterday..."
Let's at least make a half-assed attempt at giving credit where credit is due.
Yeah, nooobody else covered this story, nooobody reads the New Scientist website or rss feeds, fark was the ooonly source for this story in the whooole universe. Let me guess, fark invented that interwebby thing, right?
The paint doesn't get "used up" or eventually begin to "leak" the neutralized materials. Rather it simply catalyzes a series of reactions converting Nitrous Oxide to Nitric Acid.
In goes noxious gas (pun intended) and out comes a weak acid. Put a ring of limestone gravel or pavers around the base of the building and even that would be neutralized.
Of course the bigger question is if this paint and other materials like it are cheaper then catching the gasses closer at their sources, or at least ensuring those sources aren't so close to folk's lungs and other living creatures not appreciative of such.
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general_re, glad you found someone who agrees with your position but it's not mainstream and neither from an unbiased source or one with a great deal of creditability.
My advice to anyone? Do your own thinking and don't listen without question to anyone who promises you anything. Oh, and those that try and talk down to strangers, usually they're not worth the attention.
Seriously,I used to do IT in a leading US hospital, have a buncha buddies at the other local big ones (that's not hard in Boston) and the amount of hardware bought for pure ego and prestige was incredible.
Did we need a dual-phaser radiation whatsit? No. Did we have the patient demand for it? No. But, but our not-quite-as-prestigious neighbors got one... And the rising young star we're trying to lure from Johns Hopkins wants one... And it would just make our whatever unit just so beyond "world class" we've gotta get one! Heck, once we've got it we'll start running the patients through it like cattle, don't worry.
Many US hospitals are larded up with lots of shiny "must-have" hardware that honestly not more then one or two hospitals in a region really need.
In Canada they step back, take a look at that bigger picture and say yeah, it makes more sense to ship some folks down south of the border to use the expensive stuff the 'Merkins bought for themselves and are now desperate for patients to justify. Sure it doesn't make for big bragging points but then universal healthcare kinda trumps the US's horribly broken system, the occasional shiny dual-phaser radiation whatsits notwithstanding.
FWIW I'm a US citizen, live in Quebec. Now I'm in Montreal but I spent a couple of years living out in the farmlands where I was the anglophone in town. Frankly my experience with the healthcare here has been fine, even considering it's pay-as-you-go in my case. Indeed a heck of a lot better then my US top-tier HMO-from-hell where there were even longer waits for everything, appointments were always at least an hour late, and I co-paid for everything.
My biggest problem here? The office finding english paperwork for me to sign. Oh, did I mention the last time I saw a doc here (a few years ago for pnumonia) I got in 10 minutes after walking into the clinic, got quality care, and they called my house three times, first time with the doctor and twice more with real nurses just following up on me? Oh, CA$40 for the visit and CA$60 for the pills.
My advice? Stop listening to the US's big-healthcare underwritten propaganda and ask some folks who've actually used healthcare on both sides of the border, figure out whose getting the better value; both individually and as a society.
- Make two or three copies of everything you REALLY want to keep (don't get lazy and save everything, show a bit of judgment.)
- Figure out some sort of indexing strategy so you can find stuff later. Don't get all fancy, consider portable like a flat text file listing materials and what CDs they're on.
- Keep one set someplace convenient, but fairly well secured, temperature controlled, not damp, etc. Send off the other copies to elsewhere under like conditions.
- Once a year check all the caches of materials and test-read some samples. Take the opportunity to add what's new, update the indexes, etc.
- Every n-years send the whole lot out for duplication to whatever is the format du jure. Don't get stuck with punch cards / paper tape / reel to reel magtapes / laser disks / IBM PC to cassette tape / Bournelli disks / magneto-optical / and soon CDs, keep up with the times.
Face it, CDR production is already winding down as industry prepares to move to DVDR. A few years after that it'll be ???. Don't get locked in to any of those, instead spend your effort on keeping your files in portable formats, searchable, and secure. Mediums will come and go, bits can be forever.The fella asks a perfectly legitimate question: What about projection displays in 24/7 environments like network centers? He then points out that perfection isn't required for this, it's a "good-enough" non-videophile situation.
You then get all supercilious about his even having the temerity to ask such a question, and downright rude about folks who might watch lots of TV. You cap it off with an obvious comment on bulb quality, again, after the poster pointed out quality wasn't an issue and a bit of accommodation was acceptable (rear-projecting onto a 30 inch screen doesn't require a bright bulb anyway.)
Way to drive down the quality of real signal to noise here, Bub. Can't thank you enough for working out your social insecurities on a legitimate poster asking a useful and /.-audience relevant question. Hope you feel all big and proud of yourself now for cutting him down to (your) size.
Finally, on a personal note, while it may be unheard of in your snide little world there are folks who do watch lots of TV: My Mom is one. She's retired and has fought bouts of depression for 50 years. Yes, there are days she's doing well to get out of bed to watch the big TV thankyouverymuch.
Frankly the one who needs surgery is you: Attitude and social skill upgrade, stat.
"It's got-wide bore cams, dual exhausts, and a microflake red paint finish"
I mean, beyond the most insecure fanboy when does the raw speed of a modern PC matter?
- Does it run 'fast enough'?
- Are the tools I need available?
- Can I be efficient with this?
- Will it hold up long enough to pay back it's investment?
- Thus, is it a good value for me?
What does it matter exactly how many clock-cycles this thing burns off while waiting for you to type in your nextWe reached the point a few years ago where, for most folks doing most tasks, any computer was good enough. Yes if you're doing huge math problems, or 3D rendering (same thing really) or other similar comparatively exotic activities then CPU-to-CPU comparisons (and motherboard architecture and bus bandwidth and memory latency etc.) are interesting metrics.
But for 99% of folks, and even for ~90% of /.'ers, clockspeeds only good for bragging rights and extreme future-proofing of machines.
Computers are toasters now and everything on the market is gonna be good enough for the vast majority of folks. The important questions now are not "Can it do it" but "How best to do these, and how can I, with my workflow and my available skillset and my needs, best get them done?"
So look at what you use a computer for, what your time and efforts are worth, what tools you use and need and have investment in, and judge if Product A can do what you need, if Product B can too, and then which is a better value for your particular situation, clock-speeds be damned.
Oh, and these new laptops ROCK!
Indeed among my social circle it's common to leave clubs a half hour before last call (3am) or plan on hanging out in a late night coffee shop or restaurant for 'til at least 4am before braving the downtown streets. Even then many of us intentionally take indirect routes to avoid the drunks.
Its also useful to know that by US terms Montreal isn't a violent city. Indeed when I moved here I was appalled at all of the car crashes that lead the evening news. At least, I was appalled until I realized it was simply the maxim if it bleeds it leads in action and where US cities would have killings and gunfire in Montreal the news was having to settle (!) for mostly car accidents.
The result is for the press, especially the extensive tabloid press, accidents and incidents like this are big news. Every media outlet in Montreal is talking about this today, and I'm sure tonight many partiers will be reconsidering their travel strategies.
Finally, Ste. Catherine is the east-west "Main Street" through Montreal. Its a heavily built up with large and small stores, theaters, restaurants, and yes being Montreal, stripper clubs mixed in too. Even at 1am it is always heavily trafficked, both with vehicles and people coming and going through downtown.
Frankly at Ste. Catherine & Foy there's no way one could reach the speeds this yoyo was going unless one floored the gas and held it (as his blackbox read.) It's not like cruising down main street in some small plains town where the signs at 1am are a formality and there's not a soul to be seen, this is a light every block with folks on the sidewalks everywhere and steady traffic throughout.
So yeah, it looks like Quebec courts are gonna start using the 'expert testimony' of black boxes. Frankly I'm not concerned as the courts here do pretty much bend over backwards to find reasonable doubt and I've heard of cases dropped and evidence suppressed on some exceedingly conservative grounds.
Compared to eyewitness testimony from traumatized folks, measuring skid marks and vehicle deformation, debris fields patterns, etc. these numbers are probably going to be useful, especially at confirming or contradicting all of the other evidence. in my book that's a good thing and you're vehicle is right is right in being mined for information, be it a crushed windshield, blood on the bumper, or data in it's black box.
As I pointed out elsewhere Brad is well aware of his rights (early online publisher, author of "10 Big Myths about copyright explained", Chairman of the Board of the EFF ), rather folks need to be more aware of their own rights.
Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on /. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is...
Sure there are lotsa other places to look too but this is a tidally-locked object not far from where many inner-system comets end up, ie the Sun. It'd be curiouser if Mercury hadn't intercepted a few comets over the eons and there weren't some traces of those collisions left on the benign parts of the planet.
Also as the article notes one can buy more extensive add-on products like IBM's Mac/PC ViaVoice & Dragon's family of products as well as numerous other lesser-known and more specialized ones.
That's today, already on millions of desktops, ready and capable of driving web browsers, sitting there ignored.
Why?
- Few folks are even aware that speech recognition or speech generation are trivially or already installed on their computers
- When general users do use these capabilities they're usually disappointed they're not more like the ones on TV, where a simple ambiguous command is immediately interpreted and plot-appropriate material magically recited out
- Most folks don't have microphones plugged into their computers, or they're ones unsuitable for speech recognition
- Few folks bother to spend the time and energy into fine-tuning their microphones and training the speech recognition for their particular speech pattern and vocabulary
- Reading text is faster then hearing it, even at faster-then-typical-human-speech recitation speeds. The same goes for typing being faster then dictation
- Screens and keyboards afford a minimal level of privacy. With them eavesdropping generally requires line of site, not just sitting in the next cubicle over and unavoidably hearing everything
So, where will this be useful? Anywhere keyboards aren't. Web phones. Industrial environments (well, quiet ones). For physically challenged folks with visual or manual problems. But sitting in the typical office workspace? Not gonna (still) revolutionize the world.Chandler is "Intended as an open source personal information manager for email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as well as a platform for developing information management applications". That's pretty much the exact same decentralized server-less information distribution and synchronization space Groove is in. Building that while sitting on the Groove board, well, the conflict-of-interest is pretty obvious.
By the way, not to join the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd but it was was widely reported several years ago that Notes' vaunted security was compromised in international (non-US) versions by including an NSA private key. Supposedly 24 of the 64 bits used in the keys were always an NSA key, thus leaving holders of the US's key 40 bits to crack instead of the 64 needed by anyone else. This news apparently caused consternation among non-US customers, especially folks like embassies and other government agencies. I don't recall how the whole thing played out, not even how valid it was, and probably worded it wrong, but I'd be concerned about Groove having a similar set of "privileged keys".
btw In museum circles horror stories of unsuitable trophy buildings like this are legion.
For a real Tumbleweed-type probe more specific hardware would be used. It would undoubtedly take advantage of the martian orbiters that are already in fairly polar orbits (thus the current irregular communications windows). However for now Iridium is cheap, doesn't require extra-paperwork or expensive custom hardware, and frankly they're focusing on the novel bouncy-stuff rather then the rather straightforward comms issues.
Um, no. Again, this is stuff that could trivially and cheaply be tossed onto a proof-of-concept, not specifically what would be included on a Mars-bound probe.However we DON'T know those things about Mars particularly well. Indeed after the rovers landed a bright person figured out how temperatures could be identified for the radio transmission path and it turns out the martian atmosphere is more chaotic with all kinds of thermal upwellings then had been assumed. Getting some widely dispersed numbers of local values would be useful, particularly for confirming assumptions used in interpreting remote sensing guesstimates.
Well, ionization, lighting under clouds, dust volumes, "pretty pictures" of more of the place up close, particularly from non-flat parts, etc. All very valuable. Sure areology is important but there's a lot that can be learned from the surface and ground-level environment that doesn't require drilling holes.For comparison imagine what you can learn just walking down a street with your native senses, information that can't be gained from a spy satellite, particularly one not already calibrated for your environment. Not even manipulating anything you'll learn a lot, be able to infer and correlate a lot more. Sure a Tumbleweed probe is more limited in some sorts of sensing, on the other hand it'll likely be able to go farther and longer then a Beagle-type probe.
The question is what bang you're looking for, and what kinda bucks you can afford.Beagle-type probes can do some things, Tumbleweeds look like they'll be complimentary for others. Is it more valuable to intensely study, and even interact with, a handful of flat places or get measurements of a far wider swath of the plant? At least now we know that we've got alternatives to wheeled carts for exploring.
Every few years we hear of another nifty free-space manual input. Again and again folks learn: GUI's and the human body aren't well suited for these, at least not within the contraints of a high efficiency/low physical labor/space constrained way.
Light pens, touch screens, ultrasonic rangefinders, tracker cameras, gyroscopic whatevers - all ignore the fundamental issue of "Gorilla Arm". Simply put nobody wants to be holding out their arms making little precise motions for any length of time.
Keyboards, as awfully designed as they usually are, at least allow one's arms to hang down. The same for mice - there's a reason your typing and mousing surfaces are typically 2' lower then your worktop. Ask any craftsperson - they use worbenches precisely to avoid their arms stretched out in front of them all day.
So unless you're into interpretive dance and don't mind the slowness of big gestures (and are up for the cardio) this whole category of technology is innapropriate for extended use. Particularly for the sedentary cubed masses. Invest in some good ergo furniture and input devices, get some decent lighting, and leave the hand-waving to the PHB's.
Frankly about every major vector editor supports SVG. Or use any vector editor, or really any package including things like AutoDesk AutoCAD, MS Visio, MS Project, MS PowerPoint, Lotus 123, etc. you like and convert your files to SVG using any of the above, or SVGconvert, or the like.
Indeed, frankly, a lot of it is still justifiable.
A good chair means that 100k/year coder is gonna be able to work out their inspiration without the distractions of an aching back or sticky ass. For a $500 more then the standard office crap-chair that's a good investment, especially as a capital depreciation and defense in an bad-ergo disability suite.
Similar for food, drink, and toys. It keeps the crew in the building, talking to each other. It means they're not taking their hour off to troop to the local lunch hole where they'll be sitting at the table next to the competition spilling your plans. Figure $arcade-game = $day-at-teamwork-camp, not a bad value amortized.
Furthermore it's amazing the kinda allegiance baubles and amenities like that will buy. I've seen folks turn down 30% larger paychecks for a trendy office space, free fruit juice, and a tres kewl atmosphere. Multiply that by a full of staff and per-person it comes down to a great value with the improved recruiting and retention, costs a fraction the headhunter, interview, and training costs.
Lastly, cars and motorcycles? Promo costs. Tax code is nice to 'em and they get your name out there. Check around your current employer and you'll probably be amazed at some of the trophies and gifts and banners and other paraphernalia that they're purchasing as a matter of course.
Particularly for .com's half of the "product" was name and buzz, scoring the next VC round. Flashy toys things were standard, indeed de rigeur. Getting an article in the local paper, your logo shown at a rave, instant PR and cheap at the price. It's easy to be snide afterwards but then those were the rules of the game and what got you your paycheck, sensible or not.
But these aren't just scans, they're high resolution scans, color-corrected, in five different sizes. Sure there's the film, developing, and CD costs, but unless one is taking an enormous number of shots they're still a good bang-for-the-buck deal for the average special-event snapper.
Not only does one get a handy digital copy, certainly far better then all but the latest prosumer digital camera models can produce, but also one needn't invest into a new camera but continue to use one's tried, true, and relatively cheap equipment already out there.
Kodak even managed to get their PhotoCD technology put into about every CD reading device out there. Almost every PC CDROM supports PhotoCD. Many DVD players support PhotoCD. Numerous Kodak development shops can process the film and give you a CD in an hour. Even most major photo software can read a Kodak PhotoCD natively.
So where'd the blow it? They could have shared the digital photography revolution. Kept selling film for quality and offered digital prints for versatility. But truth be told Kodak had no clue how to counter the sexy new digital cameras.
Instead of trying to sell their system's versatility they offered it as a poor alternative. Instead of bringing in new customers lie digital cameras were they kept selling to their shrinking existing base of customers. Instead of doing a massive give-away promotion to jumpstart the whole thing they've steadfastly clung to their high prices.
They took their eye off the consumables business and instead tried to cash in too early on the PhotoCD tech, in the process losing both markets. They've even abandoned third parties being able to make PhotoCDs any more - their last software product went off the market years ago and there's no legitimate source left.
With folks scurrying around buying software to make VCD slideshows on often buggy players it's ironic that much of the needed tech is already working in their drives. Just the company owning it won't sell tools to use it.
Kodak's not going under, at least not soon. Polaroid's instant film market was pretty much decimated, that and years of dreadful mismanagement did them in. (To whomever now works for the last batch of Polaroid execs - SELL & RUN!) Kodak still has a viable business. Indeed they're even transitioning over pretty well. But they could have had a much easier time of it and owned a lot more of it if they'd have played their cards right.
Indeed it's already hard enough for many folks with audio only. I can't count the number of times I've had to ask conference callers to stop eating, or in a few cases that perhaps they could try to pee quieter and have waited 'til after the call to flush.
Videophones themselves have had numerous fals starts. The Bell demos are classics from the 60's (particularly memorable in the film 2001.) Then in the late 80's and early 90's home video phone models briefly became somewhat popular. Rarely successfully interoperable they seemed to sell mostly to gadget folks wanting distant grandkids and grandparents to see each other.
Then came the broadband/instant messaging explosion in the late 90's and along with it lots of webcams. Offering small blurry jerky windows the PC-tethered cams allowed a few families and travelers to wave at each other. It also sparked an entire new market of slo-mo sexual voyeurism.
Now broadband has fairly wide market penetration, the camera sensors have improved, new codecs stream well, and hardware connections have moved from serial to USB 1 to USB 2 or FireWire/IEEE 1394. We even have ubiquitous clients like AOL Instant Messenger, MS Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, all including video chat in their free clients.
Cellphones have also gotten into the game with still cameras now standard on many models and live cameras starting to hit the market. "MMS" is being ballyhooed as the next text-messaging. However what appears to be lagging is the new video-etiquette.
It used to be tourists busily video documenting their vacations that got on everyone's nerves. Then it was instant messaging folks who often annoying with trying to strike up light chat when one was deep in thought or a meeting, or vice versa. Or being offended at others who were accessible but not immediately available.
then came the invasion of cheap digital cameras. It's thankfully dying down now but for a few years one couldn't turn around at a party or conference without a flash going off in one's eyes and knowledge that like it or not, welcome or not, your stunned countenance was going to show up on a photo album or web page somewhere.
Of course today's universal complaint is cellphone users. Yakking away in previously quiet places, blithely wandering from road lane to road lane, standing in aisles oblivious to folks trying to pass. Obtrusively sharing their no-longer-private lives with everyone around whether we care to hear them or not.
So how will we stay out of the picture? It's bad enough with stills being taken, overtly and surreptiously, with phonecams. Now they're gonna be making mini-movies. Instead of having to take a series of shots phonecam wielders will be able to pan a room and document everyone without any opportunity for thanks-but-no.
"Why won't you turn your cam on?" "Are you really where you say you are?" "Johnson, starting next week we want you to sit in front of these lights and put some powder on that shine, you'll be taking video calls. Oh, and go shopping, tests show our clients respond well to blue shirts." "What do you mean you left your cam on the whole time we were ... ?!!!"
Plus audio conference calls and endless PowerPoint presentations are bad enough, now we'll have to see every schmoo who dreampt of being a TV newsman share their talents at every opportunity. Indeed no longer will sending out a report be enough, we'll have to "present" them too. Today's video conference rooms will bloom into tomorow's full in-office studios.
Of course there are upsides too. Now we'll be able to see our loved ones when we miss them. Also walk folks through things remotely "Let me see it - yep, that's it." And the idea of s
Yes, they're available via http and include many web technologies but really these are about metadata and relationship information, not presentation. There's more to "The Web" then endless HTML pages, and that other space is where these are aimed at. Material using these newly set standards can be linked and searched and eventually massaged for presentation but the raw stuff isn't intended for your traditional web browser to use itself.
Y'know, thats a really interesting opinion, but it would be more so if you were to tie it to the topic at hand. Yes these are quickly evolving technologies and yes, what's out in the field doesn't always match what's in the standards process. However when you talk to the folks doing this stuff IRL most will tell you they're trailblazing out of need and are quite enthusiastic about a standard eventually happening they can use. Indeed many of them are actively involved in the standard-setting process and applying the lessons they've learned.Sometimes the W3C does seem out in left field: It's got any number of way-far-ahead things cooking, as well as any number of other passed-by ones still stumbling along. It's hard to predict when starting up a committee what will be needed when they're done, nor always how it will end up being used, or if it will all be quickly irrelevant. On the other hand they're right on target much of the time, and if occasionally laggard they're as often prescient.
But back to the immediate topic both these specs being set will be welcomed in many circles. Neither appears perfect but both seem quite good, immediately usable, and without great conflict to past practice.
And guess what... it also uses TiO2 & sunlight!
High gluten white flour is used to make white bread. Hard northern wheat white flour, particularly Canadian wheat white flour, is preferred for this. A common brand is King Arthur. Softer southern wheat white flour is lower gluten and better for things like cakes. A common brand is Swansdown. A mix of the two makes all-purpose flour. A common brand is Robin Hood.
In neither case does one need to add TiO2 to the flour to whiten it. Simply milling off the brown bran and then grinding the flour results in it being white. Leave the bran on and it is, taadaaa! Brown, aka whole wheat flour.
That said TiO2 is indeed in many products. Its a primary ingredient in toothpaste. It is also useful as an anticaking agent. Indeed it would be surprising if some TiO2 didn't make it into bread simply from being a component in several common bread ingredients.
But TiO2 in bread to make it white? No, the flour making up the bread is white enough on it's own. It would take a lot of TiO2 to brighten up something as structurally complex as bread, enough to significantly complicate the baking process.
So, thanks for trying, but apparently you got the wrong half of "half jokingly". And check out the bread thing, good stuff, especially when you learn how those amber waves of grain become sacks of white flour in nearly (apparently "everyone else's" in your case) pantry.
Wow, good catch there, dude.
In goes noxious gas (pun intended) and out comes a weak acid. Put a ring of limestone gravel or pavers around the base of the building and even that would be neutralized.
Of course the bigger question is if this paint and other materials like it are cheaper then catching the gasses closer at their sources, or at least ensuring those sources aren't so close to folk's lungs and other living creatures not appreciative of such.