Aside from there being something fundamentally not right with the term "state secrets" being applied to the activities of a telephone company, if the phone company and the government have done nothing wrong, what do they have to worry about? Let the discovery proceed.
"Should we ban putting building up that are over 10 floors?"
Wouldn't bother me any. The only reason we have tall buildings is to cram more people into the same square foot of land and to show off our engineering skills. It's also much more expensive to move people and supplies vertically than it is to move them horizontally. Friction we can minimize, gravity we can't.
Trees evolved in cooperation with the wind. They can stay.
Every megawatt you pull from a wind or water current is a megawatt that won't be available to sustain the current on the other side of the tapping point. What will that do to the wind and sea current patterns over time? Nothing is free.
Politicians, and by extension, governments, do not like ANY form of long term information storage that they cannot directly control because it permits the public to review up their past performance and hinders their ability to modify historical records to suit their own purposes.
"if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?"
That phrase and it's relatives bespeaks a mindset so heinous there is no (polite) one-word description for it in our language. The closest I can come to one is "pre-supposition of guilt".
If I'm not doing anything wrong, you have no reason to watch me.
The music industry is obligated to provide maximum return to its share holders. Raising consumer prices to increase profit will do that and from the view of the industry and the shareholders, that's "good business". The consumers, on the other hand, are paying increasing prices with no increase in the value of the merchandise and they see that as "greed". Since the consumers greatly outnumber the shareholders, the "greed" definition wins. Time to take our money and go elsewhere.
Barring physical destruction, the text in a printed document will not change by itself and as long as the document remains in your posession you can be reasonably assured that what was in it ten years ago is still in it verbatim today. Depending on the technology and purchasing scheme, Ebooks allow the author, or anyone else with proper access, to make changes to the content without your knowledge or consent. The power to alter the record of history will be like a magnet.
I hate it when someone presents a string of numbers like that. The brain involuntarily goes into 100% utilization until the answer comes out. The sum of the differences between the first five numbers in sequence plus the fifth number equals the sixth number. 4+7+1+7=19 19+23=42
Human teeth, claws, and running speed are pretty much useless for hunting. Our other human traits (curiosity, patience, inventiveness) plus a decent hunting knife would almost bring us up to par with the wolf. That would be fair fight, at least with a deer.
It's all pretty much a joke any more. Worthless, ineffective, inefficient, and illogical knee-jerk reactions driven by ignorance and emotion. The terrorists are winning.
So much for iPod sales in the Netherlands. Any European country that levies a punitive tax on a luxury item will drive purchasers to the neighboring countries. Not only will the Netherlands lose the "stealing" tax, they will also lose whatever sales tax they would have collected. Dumb move.
Re:EMR from high tension power lines?
on
Quantum Wires
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· Score: 1
Open your PC power supply and the first thing you will notice besides the dust is the lack of the large iron core transformers that would be needed to reduce the incoming 50/60Hz AC line voltage down to the voltages needed by the rest of the PC. This is because the incoming 115/230 volts AC is immediately rectified to somewhere between 160 and 250 volts DC and applied to a switching circuit that chops the DC at a 10-50KHz rate and applies that to stepdown thansformers that can now be very small and light because of the higher frequencies. You could just as well feed this type of power supply with a DC mains input.
Re:Optical Computing versus Quantum Wires
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 1
And is the cat dead/alive because of chance or did your presupposition of its condition determine which fork of reality your mind would follow?
If Dell, who has a significant presence in Austin, were to start buying from AMD, who also has a significant presence in Austin, they may be able to get some tax breaks from the Austin city council, who also have (unfortunately for Austin residents) a significant presence on Austin.
Equilibrium is nice but what we need (and can't have) is long term stability lasting tens or hundreds of millenia. In a system of cyclic natural changes that occur at slightly different frequencies, eventually one factor will rise above its countering factors and make the planet uninhabitable by the current biology. "Equilibrium" will be reached when another form of life arises that is suited to the prevailing conditions. Unfortunately it won't be us and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it except find someplace else to live.
I agree with you up to the point about "dumb kids do a vocational track". While there are some kids who do not have the intellectual capacity for higher academic education, others either don't see the need to spend the money because they already have a sellable professional (electrician/plumber/mechanic etc.) skill or want to wait until later on in life and need vocational training so they can get a decent job in the interrim.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from there being something fundamentally not right with the term "state secrets" being applied to the activities of a telephone company, if the phone company and the government have done nothing wrong, what do they have to worry about? Let the discovery proceed.
"Should we ban putting building up that are over 10 floors?"
Wouldn't bother me any. The only reason we have tall buildings is to cram more people into the same square foot of land and to show off our engineering skills. It's also much more expensive to move people and supplies vertically than it is to move them horizontally. Friction we can minimize, gravity we can't.
Trees evolved in cooperation with the wind. They can stay.
Every megawatt you pull from a wind or water current is a megawatt that won't be available to sustain the current on the other side of the tapping point. What will that do to the wind and sea current patterns over time? Nothing is free.
Politicians, and by extension, governments, do not like ANY form of long term information storage that they cannot directly control because it permits the public to review up their past performance and hinders their ability to modify historical records to suit their own purposes.
"if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?"
That phrase and it's relatives bespeaks a mindset so heinous there is no (polite) one-word description for it in our language. The closest I can come to one is "pre-supposition of guilt".
If I'm not doing anything wrong, you have no reason to watch me.
The rest of us would settle for Microsoft not actively PREVENTING others from developing those tools.
The music industry is obligated to provide maximum return to its share holders. Raising consumer prices to increase profit will do that and from the view of the industry and the shareholders, that's "good business". The consumers, on the other hand, are paying increasing prices with no increase in the value of the merchandise and they see that as "greed". Since the consumers greatly outnumber the shareholders, the "greed" definition wins. Time to take our money and go elsewhere.
You're not an Old Fart (note the caps) until your grandchildren start building computers out of the parts in your junk bin.
Barring physical destruction, the text in a printed document will not change by itself and as long as the document remains in your posession you can be reasonably assured that what was in it ten years ago is still in it verbatim today. Depending on the technology and purchasing scheme, Ebooks allow the author, or anyone else with proper access, to make changes to the content without your knowledge or consent. The power to alter the record of history will be like a magnet.
And life goes on everywhere else. Get over it.
So it's useless. So what? A one-time pattern is still a pattern and I found it in well under a minute. I'm happy with it.
And 42 is Fox Mulder's apartment number. A fine tribute to Mr Adams.
4 8 15 16 23 42
I hate it when someone presents a string of numbers like that. The brain involuntarily goes into 100% utilization until the answer comes out. The sum of the differences between the first five numbers in sequence plus the fifth number equals the sixth number. 4+7+1+7=19 19+23=42
Human teeth, claws, and running speed are pretty much useless for hunting. Our other human traits (curiosity, patience, inventiveness) plus a decent hunting knife would almost bring us up to par with the wolf. That would be fair fight, at least with a deer.
It's all pretty much a joke any more. Worthless, ineffective, inefficient, and illogical knee-jerk reactions driven by ignorance and emotion. The terrorists are winning.
So much for iPod sales in the Netherlands. Any European country that levies a punitive tax on a luxury item will drive purchasers to the neighboring countries. Not only will the Netherlands lose the "stealing" tax, they will also lose whatever sales tax they would have collected. Dumb move.
Open your PC power supply and the first thing you will notice besides the dust is the lack of the large iron core transformers that would be needed to reduce the incoming 50/60Hz AC line voltage down to the voltages needed by the rest of the PC. This is because the incoming 115/230 volts AC is immediately rectified to somewhere between 160 and 250 volts DC and applied to a switching circuit that chops the DC at a 10-50KHz rate and applies that to stepdown thansformers that can now be very small and light because of the higher frequencies. You could just as well feed this type of power supply with a DC mains input.
And is the cat dead/alive because of chance or did your presupposition of its condition determine which fork of reality your mind would follow?
If Dell, who has a significant presence in Austin, were to start buying from AMD, who also has a significant presence in Austin, they may be able to get some tax breaks from the Austin city council, who also have (unfortunately for Austin residents) a significant presence on Austin.
Slashdot is about us.
Equilibrium is nice but what we need (and can't have) is long term stability lasting tens or hundreds of millenia. In a system of cyclic natural changes that occur at slightly different frequencies, eventually one factor will rise above its countering factors and make the planet uninhabitable by the current biology. "Equilibrium" will be reached when another form of life arises that is suited to the prevailing conditions. Unfortunately it won't be us and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it except find someplace else to live.
I agree with you up to the point about "dumb kids do a vocational track". While there are some kids who do not have the intellectual capacity for higher academic education, others either don't see the need to spend the money because they already have a sellable professional (electrician/plumber/mechanic etc.) skill or want to wait until later on in life and need vocational training so they can get a decent job in the interrim.
Ah ha - so you're the clown causing EICAR hits in my cache. Any particular reason you're using that as your sig?
You are assuming they will listen.
Human activities are making a significant contribution to the global climate change? I think our species may be having delusions of grandeur here.