Your analysis is very simplistic - US population density figures are skewed by the fact that we have vast areas in which practically no one lives - for example, you can drive for a couple hundred miles in west Texas and never pick up a radio station. There are huge swaths of the US, though, that have population densities as high as anywhere in the world - the Eastern Seaboard is a prime example. Yet broadband penetration there is nowhere near European or Japan/Korea levels. Why? Because we've allowed our telecom providers to become unregulated monopolies.
Geography is why North Dakota has poor internet service. The DC - Boston corridor? Not so much.
If private corporations can't make a profit by providing connectivity to certain areas, then they ought to get the hell out of the way and let people set up internet co-ops. But what they do instead is 1) not provide the service, 2) sue municipalities, etc, that try to provide it themselves, and 3) PROFIT!!!!
Just like electricity and water. Everyone in the US should have access to it, and if they don't, we should set up non-profit co-ops to provide it, just like we did with electricity. The idea that people should have to go without internet service because they don't live in town is ridiculous.
I signed up for the lowest tier of FiOS service a few months ago - 15Mb down, 5 up - and was pretty dazzled by the speeds. Even big files show up quite quickly. But they also offer even faster service - I want to say 35Mb up. I can honestly say that I haven't been tempted to order it, because I'm not sure why I would want it. I guess if we streamed multiple movies or something... but we don't.
Of course they do. They can choose between the cable monopoly and the phone company monopoly. Neither of which can be bothered to offer high speed broadband. At least Verizon is starting to shake up the game with FiOS (which has our local cable company hopping to improve their speeds), but FiOS is still not that widely available.
... but there's not much truth in it. The fact is that the US has extremely large swaths with very dense populations - the I-95 corridor from Richmond, VA to Boston, greater Chicago, southern California, etc... each of which has population densities easily as high as Europe. And yet broadband penetration is terrible there too.
Low population density is why North Dakota doesn't have good broadband. The Eastern Seaboard has poor broadband because we've allowed telecom companies to become unregulated monopolies.
The article was pretty disappointing anyway. It consisted of a short intro paragraph, then a bunch of examples of films the author liked.... Dude, where's the analysis? If you want to make the case that the entertainment industry "WILL be changed within the next 5 years", well, could you spell it a little more? A bunch of cool, new school film-making examples is not getting the job done here.
Are there really any user-serviceable parts inside an iPhone? And I can't think why you'd need to clean inside it, either - it's not like there's a fan inside that's pulling dusty air through it. I've owned my iPhone for almost 3 years and haven't seen the need to open it up to either clean or repair it.
... is that you're solving a problem that the Navy doesn't have. For one thing, there's no requirement to be able to recondition your CO2 scrubbers at sea. And the current system for generating O2 and removing CO2 (and other gases - the current system needs to and does remove other stuff) is perfectly serviceable. The only way this ceria based system is ever going to be in contention to replace electrolysis/scrubbing is if it could get the job done at a significantly lower cost - and given that you'd have to do a ton of R&D to get this thing into a deployable state, that seems pretty unlikely.
I don't think there's enough CO2 in air (a few hundred ppm) to make this practical. Using the waste gas stream from a coal fired plant (as suggested in TFA) would probably be a better option.
power the ceria reactor with solar during the day and thorium at night.
It would be tough to use a thorium reactor to power this. Per TFA, it's more than just getting the ceria to a certain temperature - you have to hit it with light that contains some substantial amount of UV (that's why they had to get to Switzerland - so they could use a solar simulator). I guess you could build a bunch of special light fixtures, and power them with electricity, but... that would likely be pretty expensive. You'd probably be better served to just run the thing during the daytime.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't pursue this technology, but it's likely to take as long to get this to production as it would to just switch to electric cars. I agree that it's still worthwhile to do for the other reasons you suggest, though.
They have to be more than warm - the reason the scientists had to go to Switzerland is that this process needs a certain amount of UV light to work, so they needed a solar simulator. Even a 3000 degree reactor isn't going to produce the right spectrum for this to work.
CO2 is found in the atmosphere at concentrations of a few hundred ppm. Extracting sufficient CO2 from the air to make this work economically would be non-trivial. I like the suggestion in the article to capture coal emissions and recycle them via this process to methane or syngas, but even that would involve some real engineering challenges. All that being said, I'm glad they're looking into this - it seems to have some potential as an energy source.
No doubt they got a foreign national to do the bribing or whatever.
Still illegal. It absolutely boggles my mind that they have a "charge code for bribes". At least in the defense contracting world, you get audited by the DCAA periodically, and something like that would be like sticking a "please arrest me" sign on your back.
No doubt the senior executives just told their subordinates to "get things done" and "don't bother me with the details" (wink, wink) so that anybody who could be held accountable has plausible deniability.
Dude, when you have a charge code for bribes, plausible deniability ain't so plausible. And once the cops start to make the subordinate sweat, he's going to give up the senior guys pretty easily.
These kinds of laws are routinely violated and bribes are routinely given in many Asian countries.
In my industry, that kind of thing would be detected, reported, and a huge fine and potential disbarment from government contracting would be in the offing. Not sure what business you're in, but it wouldn't fly in mine. And I know it's not just window dressing - our contracts department seriously, seriously sweats compliance with this, and I can't believe they would if enforcement was an empty threat.
I can't imagine why they would want to remove the status bar, as it's a tremendously useful feature. Presumably they'll allow you to turn it back on via about:config? If not, I won't be upgrading.
"Dual-use" technology - that which has a civilian purpose, but could also be pressed into military service (e.g. the insecticide factory that could also produce nerve gas) - is regulated by Commerce under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Strictly military technology is regulated by State under International Trafficking in Arms Regulations (ITAR). But yes - simply talking to a foreign national about a military technology, if it's more information than can be publicly obtained, is considered "exporting" technical information. You can get busted for it.
If you wanted to get the tools into the hands of the Iranian people, and didn't care if the Iranian government also got them; the thing to do would be just to grant Google a waiver, not force them to build a stupid IP block into the software. The fact that they did force them to put in the IP block inescapably leads to the conclusion that the export control authority thought it would work. Which is, in fact, pretty damn naive.
Not sure when this occurred, but did the guy ever hear of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977? It specifically outlaws that kind of thing, and penalties can be exceptionally severe.
I'm sure glad we blocked all those Iranian gov't IP addresses from accessing this hideously dangerous military technology. Because Iranian gov't officials would never, I don't know, go home and look at those sites from their home machines, right? RIGHT???
Was there any reason at all to even write this article (except to get people to watch the intrusive ad, I mean)? The whole thing consisted of name-checking the Brain virus and then pointing out that malware tookits exist. This is news? No background on Brain, no evolution of malware, no information on how Brain (or any later piece of malware) works, just "malware toolkits! Be very afraid!".
The whole article was completely devoid of anything but the shallowest once-over of the malware toolkit scene. Sometimes I really wonder what the Slashdot editorial staff is thinking when they select articles to publish. Yeah, I must be new here.
... this seems like pretty non-controversial stuff. Sometimes, "free" software has training costs that outweigh the the fact that it costs nothing to acquire? You could knock me over with a feather. Plenty of people are getting paid to write free software, and there are a bunch of business models that involve mixing, matching and selling free software with non-free (not just stereotypical hackers writing code in their basements for free)? I'm shocked, shocked to hear this.
There is a lot of free software out there, and I would be very skeptical of any claim that ALL of it has lower life-cycle costs than non-free equivalents. When choosing software, you should evaluate it on criteria including the capabilities/features, initial cost, support cost, availability of support, and of course, your level of commitment to the Free Software philosophy. The answer is not always going to be the free package (unless you're RMS). My response to this study could be boiled down to "no kidding".
Not trying to be contentious here, but what about that message appeals uniquely to women? Wouldn't men also want to be able to conveniently get to work, run errands, avoid having to stop by the gas pump, etc, in a vehicle they could customize?
I'm not trying to suggest that you're a bad person or anything - just genuinely baffled about how this feature list appeals primarily to women. I honestly think both sexes would be interested in this.
You can overcome the liability problem by providing some kind of blanket immunity - something like this was done for vaccine manufacturers. The risks of a lawsuit were considered too high by the manufacturers, so a special no-fault legal process was set up that protected manufacturers from excessive liability claims. If the benefits were considered great enough, something like this could be done for manufacturers of car autopilot systems such as this.
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Your analysis is very simplistic - US population density figures are skewed by the fact that we have vast areas in which practically no one lives - for example, you can drive for a couple hundred miles in west Texas and never pick up a radio station. There are huge swaths of the US, though, that have population densities as high as anywhere in the world - the Eastern Seaboard is a prime example. Yet broadband penetration there is nowhere near European or Japan/Korea levels. Why? Because we've allowed our telecom providers to become unregulated monopolies.
Geography is why North Dakota has poor internet service. The DC - Boston corridor? Not so much.
If private corporations can't make a profit by providing connectivity to certain areas, then they ought to get the hell out of the way and let people set up internet co-ops. But what they do instead is 1) not provide the service, 2) sue municipalities, etc, that try to provide it themselves, and 3) PROFIT!!!!
Just like electricity and water. Everyone in the US should have access to it, and if they don't, we should set up non-profit co-ops to provide it, just like we did with electricity. The idea that people should have to go without internet service because they don't live in town is ridiculous.
I signed up for the lowest tier of FiOS service a few months ago - 15Mb down, 5 up - and was pretty dazzled by the speeds. Even big files show up quite quickly. But they also offer even faster service - I want to say 35Mb up. I can honestly say that I haven't been tempted to order it, because I'm not sure why I would want it. I guess if we streamed multiple movies or something... but we don't.
Of course they do. They can choose between the cable monopoly and the phone company monopoly. Neither of which can be bothered to offer high speed broadband. At least Verizon is starting to shake up the game with FiOS (which has our local cable company hopping to improve their speeds), but FiOS is still not that widely available.
... but there's not much truth in it. The fact is that the US has extremely large swaths with very dense populations - the I-95 corridor from Richmond, VA to Boston, greater Chicago, southern California, etc... each of which has population densities easily as high as Europe. And yet broadband penetration is terrible there too.
Low population density is why North Dakota doesn't have good broadband. The Eastern Seaboard has poor broadband because we've allowed telecom companies to become unregulated monopolies.
The article was pretty disappointing anyway. It consisted of a short intro paragraph, then a bunch of examples of films the author liked. ... Dude, where's the analysis? If you want to make the case that the entertainment industry "WILL be changed within the next 5 years", well, could you spell it a little more? A bunch of cool, new school film-making examples is not getting the job done here.
That's one I wouldn't have thought of. I've managed not to crack mine so far, but this is a good tip in case I do.
Are there really any user-serviceable parts inside an iPhone? And I can't think why you'd need to clean inside it, either - it's not like there's a fan inside that's pulling dusty air through it. I've owned my iPhone for almost 3 years and haven't seen the need to open it up to either clean or repair it.
... is that you're solving a problem that the Navy doesn't have. For one thing, there's no requirement to be able to recondition your CO2 scrubbers at sea. And the current system for generating O2 and removing CO2 (and other gases - the current system needs to and does remove other stuff) is perfectly serviceable. The only way this ceria based system is ever going to be in contention to replace electrolysis/scrubbing is if it could get the job done at a significantly lower cost - and given that you'd have to do a ton of R&D to get this thing into a deployable state, that seems pretty unlikely.
I don't think there's enough CO2 in air (a few hundred ppm) to make this practical. Using the waste gas stream from a coal fired plant (as suggested in TFA) would probably be a better option.
It would be tough to use a thorium reactor to power this. Per TFA, it's more than just getting the ceria to a certain temperature - you have to hit it with light that contains some substantial amount of UV (that's why they had to get to Switzerland - so they could use a solar simulator). I guess you could build a bunch of special light fixtures, and power them with electricity, but... that would likely be pretty expensive. You'd probably be better served to just run the thing during the daytime.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't pursue this technology, but it's likely to take as long to get this to production as it would to just switch to electric cars. I agree that it's still worthwhile to do for the other reasons you suggest, though.
... and capture CO2 with chemical scrubbers.
They have to be more than warm - the reason the scientists had to go to Switzerland is that this process needs a certain amount of UV light to work, so they needed a solar simulator. Even a 3000 degree reactor isn't going to produce the right spectrum for this to work.
CO2 is found in the atmosphere at concentrations of a few hundred ppm. Extracting sufficient CO2 from the air to make this work economically would be non-trivial. I like the suggestion in the article to capture coal emissions and recycle them via this process to methane or syngas, but even that would involve some real engineering challenges. All that being said, I'm glad they're looking into this - it seems to have some potential as an energy source.
Still illegal. It absolutely boggles my mind that they have a "charge code for bribes". At least in the defense contracting world, you get audited by the DCAA periodically, and something like that would be like sticking a "please arrest me" sign on your back.
Dude, when you have a charge code for bribes, plausible deniability ain't so plausible. And once the cops start to make the subordinate sweat, he's going to give up the senior guys pretty easily.
In my industry, that kind of thing would be detected, reported, and a huge fine and potential disbarment from government contracting would be in the offing. Not sure what business you're in, but it wouldn't fly in mine. And I know it's not just window dressing - our contracts department seriously, seriously sweats compliance with this, and I can't believe they would if enforcement was an empty threat.
I can't imagine why they would want to remove the status bar, as it's a tremendously useful feature. Presumably they'll allow you to turn it back on via about:config? If not, I won't be upgrading.
"Dual-use" technology - that which has a civilian purpose, but could also be pressed into military service (e.g. the insecticide factory that could also produce nerve gas) - is regulated by Commerce under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Strictly military technology is regulated by State under International Trafficking in Arms Regulations (ITAR). But yes - simply talking to a foreign national about a military technology, if it's more information than can be publicly obtained, is considered "exporting" technical information. You can get busted for it.
If you wanted to get the tools into the hands of the Iranian people, and didn't care if the Iranian government also got them; the thing to do would be just to grant Google a waiver, not force them to build a stupid IP block into the software. The fact that they did force them to put in the IP block inescapably leads to the conclusion that the export control authority thought it would work. Which is, in fact, pretty damn naive.
Not sure when this occurred, but did the guy ever hear of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977? It specifically outlaws that kind of thing, and penalties can be exceptionally severe.
I'm sure glad we blocked all those Iranian gov't IP addresses from accessing this hideously dangerous military technology. Because Iranian gov't officials would never, I don't know, go home and look at those sites from their home machines, right? RIGHT???
Was there any reason at all to even write this article (except to get people to watch the intrusive ad, I mean)? The whole thing consisted of name-checking the Brain virus and then pointing out that malware tookits exist. This is news? No background on Brain, no evolution of malware, no information on how Brain (or any later piece of malware) works, just "malware toolkits! Be very afraid!".
The whole article was completely devoid of anything but the shallowest once-over of the malware toolkit scene. Sometimes I really wonder what the Slashdot editorial staff is thinking when they select articles to publish. Yeah, I must be new here.
... this seems like pretty non-controversial stuff. Sometimes, "free" software has training costs that outweigh the the fact that it costs nothing to acquire? You could knock me over with a feather. Plenty of people are getting paid to write free software, and there are a bunch of business models that involve mixing, matching and selling free software with non-free (not just stereotypical hackers writing code in their basements for free)? I'm shocked, shocked to hear this.
There is a lot of free software out there, and I would be very skeptical of any claim that ALL of it has lower life-cycle costs than non-free equivalents. When choosing software, you should evaluate it on criteria including the capabilities/features, initial cost, support cost, availability of support, and of course, your level of commitment to the Free Software philosophy. The answer is not always going to be the free package (unless you're RMS). My response to this study could be boiled down to "no kidding".
Not trying to be contentious here, but what about that message appeals uniquely to women? Wouldn't men also want to be able to conveniently get to work, run errands, avoid having to stop by the gas pump, etc, in a vehicle they could customize?
I'm not trying to suggest that you're a bad person or anything - just genuinely baffled about how this feature list appeals primarily to women. I honestly think both sexes would be interested in this.
You can overcome the liability problem by providing some kind of blanket immunity - something like this was done for vaccine manufacturers. The risks of a lawsuit were considered too high by the manufacturers, so a special no-fault legal process was set up that protected manufacturers from excessive liability claims. If the benefits were considered great enough, something like this could be done for manufacturers of car autopilot systems such as this.