If they were to implant the proper indicator on the housing, one could be fined for going too fast on a sidewalk. (i.e. put a light that turns on when the device goes faster than x mph.)
An indicator light that could get one a ticket would surely be the first thing that got unhooked by any intelligent Segway purchaser. If this were such a great idea, wouldn't cars have had these a long time ago? Of course for cars one could propose some sort of inspection program (which also wouldn't work), but I doubt many governments will find it desirable to institute some special program for something that is basically a toy for the wealthy.
OTOH, maybe the need for more room for these machines will provide an incentive for more and wider bike lanes, which would be excellent.
It is amazing to me how few of the posters to this topic bothered to read the above note. They've gotten all puffed up in Libertarian vs., I don't know, Communitarian(?) politics when at base level this has been a method phone companies have used to obfuscate your bill, which is one of their primary revenue drivers.
I work in telco billing software, when I work. (no I'm not particularly proud of that fact) The USF, regardless of original intentions, is a fee that telcos manipulate to charge their customers more than their published rates allow. Since it typically shows up in the "taxes" section, people are much less likely to call in and complain. Anytime the company risks complaints, it walks a fine line, because call centers are really expensive. The USF is handy, since no customer realizes when it is tweaked, even though they have to inform the regulatory agencies.
I don't usually look for idealism in any company, even a cool tech company. When I leave aside the whole cross-subsidy thing I can't help but think that the WiFi companies will do the exact same thing when they are required (allowed?) to charge the USF. Maybe that's why they haven't uttered a peep in protest.
later,
Jess
ps. This is an evil thought but ususally after "three decades", an industry no longer needs to be coddled. That only happens again much later, after about a century. Witness the U.S. steel industry.
There is a skill called management, at which a small number of managers have attained proficiency, and that would entail having some idea what one's reports are doing. I don't mean knowing what they are doing every minute, but rather knowing that this week's tasks are being completed at an acceptable rate. Any employee who is worth access to a computer and all the costs that entails is capable of managing his time at least to the hour, or if not will quickly be found out without such a system.
This system is a crutch, plain and simple. Effective managers "accept" an amazing number of things, so long as the job gets done.
I can see why a financial firm might decide it needs something like this, but in general if this sort of system is used in your workplace it's a symptom of far worse problems. If anyone, let alone a high-level manager or IT director, has the time to be concerned about, and then set up a monitoring system for, instant messaging, then the company is not receiving an adequate return on his salary. This monitoring software is the sort of ridiculous waste of resources for which any manager should be called on the carpet. As scores of others will observe, it is easily circumvented through client-side encryption. Companies that hire managers simultaneously so anal and so clueless are hauling around a lot of dead weight.
Hopefully within a couple of years we'll get the cheerful news that these monitoring companies have gone belly-up.
This seems odd enough not to be true. If they don't get paid, or only do so after a complicated collections scenario, why wouldn't long distance carriers simply stop connecting PennTel customers?
I get the sense that "pulp" has a bit of a negative connotation in this discussion. And much is being made of whether or not this or that modern work or genre conforms to some aetiological idea of an "original mythology". Apparently, what is most galling is Lucas's combination of denial of the former and pretense to the latter. We're all just assuming that there is any meaningful difference. Even David Brin in the older article to which many have referred almost forgives Star Wars' manifold crappiness because it hearkens back to some barely sensed original story.
I suspect that the stories our preliterate ancestors heard around the campfire were at least as crappy as most of the things we sit through today. This reasoning is based on nothing other than human nature. A minority of humans are good storytellers, and a minority of those are capable of telling stories that can inspire original thought. While some lucky tribes might have gotten a Kafka or a Lem, most would have been stuck with the same tired dirty jokes for centuries. Even worse would have been the "I descended from the Bear Spirit but you descended from the Worm Spirit" political propaganda yarns. While I will freely stipulate that tastes have changed, even a group of cavepersons would eventually decide to bash each other over the head with clubs rather than keep listening. If I may be permitted an aetiology of my own, perhaps this is what held back Homo sapiens as a literary creature for the first couple hundred thousand years.
I'm no scholar, but I suspect that most tenured anthropologists aren't particularly scandalized by Campbell's association with even someone like Lucas. I'm highly suspicious of "archetypes" and any reasoning based on them. Much of Campbell/Eliade/Levi-Strauss/Structuralist BS/etc. strikes me as a gigantic set of sampling errors. Once you get past "this story is typical in that it features a protagonist", I doubt the validity of any universal narrative theory. So while it is interesting and valid to say "this movie is a rip-off of this other movie" or "Shakespeare may have had this Celtic myth in mind when he wrote this", arguments from mythic authority for any work are bound to fall short. Star Wars is just as childishly entertaining as I thought when I was a kid, and is just as derivatively silly as it seems now.
Do we have solar cells that would resist the heat and acidity of the Venusian atmospere?
I think a more appropriate question would be do we have any solar cells that work in the near-total darkness that exists anywhere close to the surface of Venus. I think not. b-)
The idea of using the energy flows that exist within the local environment is a good one, though. Your Rolex idea is a great one. On Mars, we should use solar cells (or perhaps heat reservoirs that take advantage of the large temperature differences between day and night). In the atmosphere of Venus, I don't know, maybe we could use some chemical process similar to that used by the bacteria found in ocean vents. OTOH that would seem to imply some openings to the environment, and that's sort of what we're trying to avoid here.
The larger point is that it's ridiculous to power probes using radioactive crap like we've done in the past.
later,
Jess
Re:Not Really A Concern
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
countermeasures including :
Dummy warheads of same shape and size
Metal Shrapnel Grids that dissipate electric signals and make it difficult for automated identification of the missle
Hot dummys to confuse heat seekers just to name the ones I am currently aware of.
We've all heard of these, and I don't dispute that they have probably been installed in several missiles. However, since up until now no nation has ever employed any sort of ICBM defense [although when I was a kid I enjoyed the "point and shoot" ABM game on my XT clone], why has any nation bothered to install these things on a fleet-wide basis?
The fact that I've heard it a million times doesn't mean I believe it.
Slashdot Mirror
An indicator light that could get one a ticket would surely be the first thing that got unhooked by any intelligent Segway purchaser. If this were such a great idea, wouldn't cars have had these a long time ago? Of course for cars one could propose some sort of inspection program (which also wouldn't work), but I doubt many governments will find it desirable to institute some special program for something that is basically a toy for the wealthy.
OTOH, maybe the need for more room for these machines will provide an incentive for more and wider bike lanes, which would be excellent.
later,
Jess
We already have an idiot tax, which I strongly support. It's called the lottery.
later,
Jess
later,
Jess
I work in telco billing software, when I work. (no I'm not particularly proud of that fact) The USF, regardless of original intentions, is a fee that telcos manipulate to charge their customers more than their published rates allow. Since it typically shows up in the "taxes" section, people are much less likely to call in and complain. Anytime the company risks complaints, it walks a fine line, because call centers are really expensive. The USF is handy, since no customer realizes when it is tweaked, even though they have to inform the regulatory agencies.
I don't usually look for idealism in any company, even a cool tech company. When I leave aside the whole cross-subsidy thing I can't help but think that the WiFi companies will do the exact same thing when they are required (allowed?) to charge the USF. Maybe that's why they haven't uttered a peep in protest.
later,
Jess
ps. This is an evil thought but ususally after "three decades", an industry no longer needs to be coddled. That only happens again much later, after about a century. Witness the U.S. steel industry.
This system is a crutch, plain and simple. Effective managers "accept" an amazing number of things, so long as the job gets done.
later,
Jess
I don't who should be more ashamed, you or your employer.
Hopefully within a couple of years we'll get the cheerful news that these monitoring companies have gone belly-up.
later,
Jess
This seems odd enough not to be true. If they don't get paid, or only do so after a complicated collections scenario, why wouldn't long distance carriers simply stop connecting PennTel customers?
I suspect that the stories our preliterate ancestors heard around the campfire were at least as crappy as most of the things we sit through today. This reasoning is based on nothing other than human nature. A minority of humans are good storytellers, and a minority of those are capable of telling stories that can inspire original thought. While some lucky tribes might have gotten a Kafka or a Lem, most would have been stuck with the same tired dirty jokes for centuries. Even worse would have been the "I descended from the Bear Spirit but you descended from the Worm Spirit" political propaganda yarns. While I will freely stipulate that tastes have changed, even a group of cavepersons would eventually decide to bash each other over the head with clubs rather than keep listening. If I may be permitted an aetiology of my own, perhaps this is what held back Homo sapiens as a literary creature for the first couple hundred thousand years.
I'm no scholar, but I suspect that most tenured anthropologists aren't particularly scandalized by Campbell's association with even someone like Lucas. I'm highly suspicious of "archetypes" and any reasoning based on them. Much of Campbell/Eliade/Levi-Strauss/Structuralist BS/etc. strikes me as a gigantic set of sampling errors. Once you get past "this story is typical in that it features a protagonist", I doubt the validity of any universal narrative theory. So while it is interesting and valid to say "this movie is a rip-off of this other movie" or "Shakespeare may have had this Celtic myth in mind when he wrote this", arguments from mythic authority for any work are bound to fall short. Star Wars is just as childishly entertaining as I thought when I was a kid, and is just as derivatively silly as it seems now.
later,
Jess
I think a more appropriate question would be do we have any solar cells that work in the near-total darkness that exists anywhere close to the surface of Venus. I think not. b-)
The idea of using the energy flows that exist within the local environment is a good one, though. Your Rolex idea is a great one. On Mars, we should use solar cells (or perhaps heat reservoirs that take advantage of the large temperature differences between day and night). In the atmosphere of Venus, I don't know, maybe we could use some chemical process similar to that used by the bacteria found in ocean vents. OTOH that would seem to imply some openings to the environment, and that's sort of what we're trying to avoid here.
The larger point is that it's ridiculous to power probes using radioactive crap like we've done in the past.
later,
Jess
Dummy warheads of same shape and size
Metal Shrapnel Grids that dissipate electric signals and make it difficult for automated identification of the missle
Hot dummys to confuse heat seekers just to name the ones I am currently aware of.
We've all heard of these, and I don't dispute that they have probably been installed in several missiles. However, since up until now no nation has ever employed any sort of ICBM defense [although when I was a kid I enjoyed the "point and shoot" ABM game on my XT clone], why has any nation bothered to install these things on a fleet-wide basis?
The fact that I've heard it a million times doesn't mean I believe it.
later,
Jess