The older I get, the less I'm sure that I agree with your "Thy should care about privacy" statement. As long as these companies aren't calling me or spamming me, I don't really care. If they want to track my browsing habits, whatever. If they are really that interested in seeing that a guy who browses Slashdot also regularly visits HardOCP, RPS, Penny Arcade, Netflix, Facebook, and a few gaming community forums so they can sell that information to WalMart and Amazon, whatever.
Personally, I think the whole data aggregation field is highly overvalued and sooner or later it's all going to come crashing down when companies realize that buying this data isn't enabling them to make any more profit.
Really? Because the Republicans want to tax me and liberally give to oil and defense subsidies and CEOs, while the Democrats want to tax me and liberally give to the health insurance companies and alternate energy subsidies and CEOs.
I liked mine for the three days it worked. Seeing who was calling, seeing text messages and FB messages without having to pull my phone out was great.
The fact that it would not charge, or that I've been waiting a week since I emailed tech support (from in-app, which I have to admit was nice) and got the robo-response below is something I like less.
"Pebble | Apr 01, 2013 07:33AM UTC
Hello,
Thank you for supporting Pebble!
We are currently experiencing a higher-than-average amount of emails as we start shipping more Pebbles to our Backers.
Please do not send multiple messages about the same issue, as it will only delay responses further. We’ve prepared a list of answers to common questions, so please take a few minutes to check if your question has already been answered. .."
So because she's making twice chicken scratch instead of chicken scratch, that means it's okay? I don't think wanting to make a wage above the poverty line counts as "millionaire rockstar."
On the iss astronauts can do hands on troubleshooting, and if the worst happens they can just fly replacement parts in the next resupply mission.
So if the ISS blows up and each chunk survives reentry and smashes a different nuclear plant, causes dozens of meltdowns simultaneously across the Earth we'll just fly some parts up on the next resupply?
The problem is that people are only streaming music now, not buying albums and listening to the radio. So she's losing all of her sales income, and having to subsist more and more on her $4K/year streaming reimbursements and nothing else.
And the company soon goes under because the children to whom they're paying half-wages only do 1/3 of the work of adults because of their little girly arms and having to drive two to a forklift, one at the wheel and one on the pedals.
I have no doubt that it's tiring work, but how many man-hours is that to do? If WotC sells 100,000 copies of the PDF, that's half a million dollars in their pockets (ignoring DTRPG's take, probably 1/3), for paying (just a guess) two guys $30K to work on that PDF for six months.
Which is why WotC should have busted ass on bringing affordable subscription services to their fans instead of pumping out half-assed 4E supplement after supplement that no one bought.
My friends and I waited years for the digital tabletop to be released to DDI, only to watch WotC push it further and further back, only to (apparently) drop the idea forever. After that, we said fuck it, bought a high-end webcam, and now play 3.5E over Skype, using the webcam to share the board when necessary.
What if it's something you, as the artist, decide shouldn't see the light of day? The Disney Vault was created to drive up the cost, not because Disney thinks their films are crap and no one should be exposed to them.
I bet Asimov wrote some stories in high school to which he would have been ashamed to have his name attached.
I do the same thing. Even in the greatest novels, a lot of the words are essentially just filler. It's difficult to make Scarlett taking a few steps towards Rhett carry much import. Dialogue is what is usually most memorable, and significant.
I don't think you realize how energy- and resource-hungry a laboratory is. Constant (and accurate) environmental control, both humidity and temperature. Reagents, solvents, and disposable lab equipment out the wazoo. Transfer pipettes, capillary pistons, gloves, petri dishes, chromatography media, microscope slides, sample bottles. . . my lab is a one-person lab (three shifts), about 200 square feet, and being a slow lab, we still fill two trashcans a day and generate about 10 liters of chemical waste to QC test maybe a liter of samples combined. Now scale that 200 square feet up to enough floorspace to produce 280 billion kilos of meat per year (world annual consumption). Now consider things like power and media for the actual test and growth equipment. My optical emission spectrometer (used to quantify concentrations of elements, and so would almost certainly be necessary under the anticipated FDA regulations to perform QC checks for essential nutrients like zinc and phosphates) uses about 4KW of power, a relatively minor amount of solvent, but half a gallon of liquid argon per minute. It would take it about 20 minutes for this instrument to check one sample for the standard FDA specs - that's 10 gallons of argon per sample. If you think the Haber-Bosch process for fixating nitrogen into fertilizers is environmentally expensive, you should learn about argon sequestration. And that's just one of many, many tests that would be required for lab-grown meat. How often will the nutrient baths need to be refilled? Cleaned? How often will they need to be tested for bacterial growth? How are we going to produce the nutrient media? Gonna feed the lab-meat plain old glucose? Where do you think we'll get that glucose? Gotta grow it! Right back to square one.
See, the problem is that Mother Nature has spent six billion years tuning her biological creations into efficient little factories. Talk to any chemist or physicist about solar power, and he/she will wax rhapsodic about the beauty and efficiency of Photosystems I & II, and how they are the Holy Grail of photon utilization. We first observed the photovoltaic effect almost a hundred and fifty years ago, the first step towards building an "artificial leaf," and are nowhere NEAR reproducing the efficiency of PSI&II - hell, we don't even understand the systems yet, let alone how to reproduce them, or improve upon them. The same problem exists with lab-grown meat - nothing will be as efficient at turning corn into hamburgers as a cow for at least fifty years, and probably longer.
The only reason your diet is tasty to you is because you haven't had bacon in forty years. And if ever we needed proof that greys were replacing humans with pod people, that would be it.
It's the same with nuclear energy: it's essential for medical use, but frankly, people don't know how to deal with nuclear reactors. It's not a Physics or Engineering problem -- it's a case of management incompetence. And I see no solution for that in the near future.
You can (and should) say the same thing about cars. Automobiles driven by incompetents kill more people every day than nuclear power has in its entire human history.
At least, ignoring one or two minor aberrations. Though they did work as intended. . .
Slashdot Mirror
The older I get, the less I'm sure that I agree with your "Thy should care about privacy" statement. As long as these companies aren't calling me or spamming me, I don't really care. If they want to track my browsing habits, whatever. If they are really that interested in seeing that a guy who browses Slashdot also regularly visits HardOCP, RPS, Penny Arcade, Netflix, Facebook, and a few gaming community forums so they can sell that information to WalMart and Amazon, whatever.
Personally, I think the whole data aggregation field is highly overvalued and sooner or later it's all going to come crashing down when companies realize that buying this data isn't enabling them to make any more profit.
America doesn't have a financially liberal party
Really? Because the Republicans want to tax me and liberally give to oil and defense subsidies and CEOs, while the Democrats want to tax me and liberally give to the health insurance companies and alternate energy subsidies and CEOs.
I liked mine for the three days it worked. Seeing who was calling, seeing text messages and FB messages without having to pull my phone out was great.
The fact that it would not charge, or that I've been waiting a week since I emailed tech support (from in-app, which I have to admit was nice) and got the robo-response below is something I like less.
"Pebble | Apr 01, 2013 07:33AM UTC
Hello,
Thank you for supporting Pebble!
We are currently experiencing a higher-than-average amount of emails as we start shipping more Pebbles to our Backers.
Please do not send multiple messages about the same issue, as it will only delay responses further. We’ve prepared a list of answers to common questions, so please take a few minutes to check if your question has already been answered. . ."
Whatever. I wish I had that massive trainset.
So because she's making twice chicken scratch instead of chicken scratch, that means it's okay? I don't think wanting to make a wage above the poverty line counts as "millionaire rockstar."
On the iss astronauts can do hands on troubleshooting, and if the worst happens they can just fly replacement parts in the next resupply mission.
So if the ISS blows up and each chunk survives reentry and smashes a different nuclear plant, causes dozens of meltdowns simultaneously across the Earth we'll just fly some parts up on the next resupply?
The CD player in his car must be broken, and he's forced to listen to the radio.
The problem is that people are only streaming music now, not buying albums and listening to the radio. So she's losing all of her sales income, and having to subsist more and more on her $4K/year streaming reimbursements and nothing else.
. . . how wasteful most commercial software packages are.
And the company soon goes under because the children to whom they're paying half-wages only do 1/3 of the work of adults because of their little girly arms and having to drive two to a forklift, one at the wheel and one on the pedals.
And this is why we all know and praise Scottish engineering.
He meant forty years ago. He's just old and his Alzheimer's kicked in.
I have no doubt that it's tiring work, but how many man-hours is that to do? If WotC sells 100,000 copies of the PDF, that's half a million dollars in their pockets (ignoring DTRPG's take, probably 1/3), for paying (just a guess) two guys $30K to work on that PDF for six months.
Which is why WotC should have busted ass on bringing affordable subscription services to their fans instead of pumping out half-assed 4E supplement after supplement that no one bought.
My friends and I waited years for the digital tabletop to be released to DDI, only to watch WotC push it further and further back, only to (apparently) drop the idea forever. After that, we said fuck it, bought a high-end webcam, and now play 3.5E over Skype, using the webcam to share the board when necessary.
What if it's something you, as the artist, decide shouldn't see the light of day? The Disney Vault was created to drive up the cost, not because Disney thinks their films are crap and no one should be exposed to them.
I bet Asimov wrote some stories in high school to which he would have been ashamed to have his name attached.
So you've never bought a game through Steam?
Which is why Dubya is so very quotable.
I do the same thing. Even in the greatest novels, a lot of the words are essentially just filler. It's difficult to make Scarlett taking a few steps towards Rhett carry much import. Dialogue is what is usually most memorable, and significant.
I don't think you realize how energy- and resource-hungry a laboratory is. Constant (and accurate) environmental control, both humidity and temperature. Reagents, solvents, and disposable lab equipment out the wazoo. Transfer pipettes, capillary pistons, gloves, petri dishes, chromatography media, microscope slides, sample bottles. . . my lab is a one-person lab (three shifts), about 200 square feet, and being a slow lab, we still fill two trashcans a day and generate about 10 liters of chemical waste to QC test maybe a liter of samples combined. Now scale that 200 square feet up to enough floorspace to produce 280 billion kilos of meat per year (world annual consumption). Now consider things like power and media for the actual test and growth equipment. My optical emission spectrometer (used to quantify concentrations of elements, and so would almost certainly be necessary under the anticipated FDA regulations to perform QC checks for essential nutrients like zinc and phosphates) uses about 4KW of power, a relatively minor amount of solvent, but half a gallon of liquid argon per minute. It would take it about 20 minutes for this instrument to check one sample for the standard FDA specs - that's 10 gallons of argon per sample. If you think the Haber-Bosch process for fixating nitrogen into fertilizers is environmentally expensive, you should learn about argon sequestration. And that's just one of many, many tests that would be required for lab-grown meat. How often will the nutrient baths need to be refilled? Cleaned? How often will they need to be tested for bacterial growth? How are we going to produce the nutrient media? Gonna feed the lab-meat plain old glucose? Where do you think we'll get that glucose? Gotta grow it! Right back to square one.
See, the problem is that Mother Nature has spent six billion years tuning her biological creations into efficient little factories. Talk to any chemist or physicist about solar power, and he/she will wax rhapsodic about the beauty and efficiency of Photosystems I & II, and how they are the Holy Grail of photon utilization. We first observed the photovoltaic effect almost a hundred and fifty years ago, the first step towards building an "artificial leaf," and are nowhere NEAR reproducing the efficiency of PSI&II - hell, we don't even understand the systems yet, let alone how to reproduce them, or improve upon them. The same problem exists with lab-grown meat - nothing will be as efficient at turning corn into hamburgers as a cow for at least fifty years, and probably longer.
Plastic crowbar with a WiiMote socket?
That's true. . . but you would be amazed to learn what we're legally permitted to dump down the sink.
The only reason your diet is tasty to you is because you haven't had bacon in forty years. And if ever we needed proof that greys were replacing humans with pod people, that would be it.
So that's where Jimmy Hoffa went!
It's the same with nuclear energy: it's essential for medical use, but frankly, people don't know how to deal with nuclear reactors. It's not a Physics or Engineering problem -- it's a case of management incompetence. And I see no solution for that in the near future.
You can (and should) say the same thing about cars. Automobiles driven by incompetents kill more people every day than nuclear power has in its entire human history.
At least, ignoring one or two minor aberrations. Though they did work as intended. . .
Wait until someone inserts the GFP gene into these lab-grown burgers so kids can have fluorescent hamburgers at McDonald's.