In the future you will be able to buy reproductions of tacky watercolor paintings depicting landscapes with inverse femtobarns. Will they have a weathered texture to their walls? Will they be colorful or drab? Will they be upside down? Will they sell them at Ikea?
Not to mention that Americo Vespucci had nothing to do personally with naming the continents. plover is evidently not well versed in the relevant history. Columbus was a powerful and influential figure during the early parts of the Spanish Conquest. To consider him a "world-class failure" is a laughable oversimplification of the facts.
Not if it had water bottles strapped to its side. If it had a loudspeaker that blared out "We mean you no harm! We are here to help! Please come out and show yourself!" or something to that effect, it would probably make it even scarier.
It would add to the cost of the Roomba. We have one and we're happy with it, aside from having to clean it out frequently by hand. Nevertheless, it cost over $300, and that was already a little more than we wanted to spend. Paying another $100-200 for self-cleaning would have kept us from buying it.
If you have carpeted floors, I definitely recommend it. It's pretty thorough. You'll be shocked at first at the amount of crap it will pull out.
Some day man will be able to fly through the air over enormous distances. Scientists in the cave near the river have managed to bang two sticks together. Normally sticks do not produce noise on their own, but when banged together they can make relatively loud sounds. In the short term, this can help wake up fellow cave dwellers, but in the future it could become the basis of all manner of inventions such as aircraft, computers, even agriculture itself.
People like talismans. They installed the same things where I work due to the supposed flu epidemic (never mind the irrelevance as a preventive measure). My coworkers are very very smart engineers, most of whom seem to have skipped biology classes in their youth. The sanitizer stations are regularly used by them. They feel they are pro-actively preventing flu and other diseases. If they're lucky, maybe they get a placebo effect.
I assume you meant upwind, otherwise you would not be complaining. There's such a place on interstate 5 about an hour or two south of the San Francisco Bay area. Driving by is nightmarish.
As pointed out above, this is probably far more important than animal use of antibiotics, at least in terms of human disease. Feedlots are a problem for many other reasons.
This is not a bad example of the superstitious fallacy that market forces fix everything, and we should deregulate all markets because regulations only get in the way, blah blah blah. Feedlots exist because in the short term they are by far most efficient from the strict standpoint of profitability. They are monstrously inefficient overall because they externalize the costs of waste disposal, coliform contamination of meat, feed costs (corn, the favorite animal feed, is subsidized), high fat-content in the resulting meat (due to the use of corn instead of forage), etc. The public must bear these costs so that meat producers can enjoy a profitable business. The power of the market is largely a myth that exists mainly in academic discussions rather than in real life.
You make a lot of undocumented claims, which sound much like the musings of an engineer who knows very little about biology. Would you please substantiate them? In particular, to claim that even a non-therapeutic dose of antibiotics does not constitute a selective pressure is as bold as it is dubious.
I think you are overly optimistic. Remember, the vignette is set 50 years in the future. The books belong(ed) to the kid's grandparents or even a more distant relative or friend. The electronic versions are most likely not loaded onto any device being used in the kid's house because the owner is long gone. The eBooks would be forgotten in some long-inactive Amazon account. If Amazon has a policy to delete the accounts of dead people after X years, then the kid won't even have that. Try 100 years later if you like. No doubt there will be many circumstances where the vignette does not fit, but digital data gets locked away deeper and harder the more time passes and the more technology changes. Have you accessed any 20 year old floppy disks lately? Do you still have access to a 5 1/4" drive? An 8" drive? Can you access cassettes from an old Apple II or an old Sinclair 2068?
It's a contrived example. In other words the Kindle is inoperable without a significant effort and expense on the part of the kid or more likely his or her parents. Even a somewhat crumbly old book could be examined in some detail on the spot. That is the point of the vignette.
The problem is that you're not enough of a sucker. The fashionistas ("early-adopters") will latch onto the latest gadget no matter what it is, how much it costs, or how many of their existing rights need to be sacrificed. iTunes is popular even though you have limited copying abilities, you have to make your own backups (carefully), you can't lend the tracks legally or easily, they are generally more expensive per track than a traditional CD, you end up not getting minor works by the artist because you only bought the hit single, etc. etc. With eBooks your books can be altered behind your back and even deleted without your knowledge or authorization. Some people are more than willing to give it all up just to have the latest cool toy.
Imagine, 50 years from now, a kid goes up to the attic and sees a Kindle with a cracked screen, broken navigation keys, and a dead battery. It is junk. Imagine the same kid in the attic uncovering boxes full of books, dozens of them, with pictures, diagrams, stories, plans, photos, etc. Which is the better outcome?
Oh don't be a party-pooper. Can't you see that slashdotters just love to shut their eyes really tight and believe all of this crap? Even if everything were transparent, it would presumably have an IOR greater than 1.0, reflectivity, specular reflections, light-interfering textures, etc. It's hard to believe how or why Airbus would put out such a patently ridiculous press release. It's worse even than typical Popular Science or Popular Mechanics foaming-at-the-mouth futurism.
Licenses for computer use are absurd. What next, for using cell phones (which are computers)? For using any net-connected device in the future that can be configured enough by users to potentially cause mayhem on the network? How many licenses per day per office would need to be processed? If it must be done online then 1) you would already need a license, and 2) it would probably involve a falsifiable process, thus rendering it into little more than a nuisance and yet another use tax and thus pointless. It has been demonstrated repeatedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and on a vast scale that making things illegal does not generally constitute a robust solution.
Slashdot Mirror
In the future you will be able to buy reproductions of tacky watercolor paintings depicting landscapes with inverse femtobarns. Will they have a weathered texture to their walls? Will they be colorful or drab? Will they be upside down? Will they sell them at Ikea?
Not quite. It's like asking a library to detect photocopied books among those they lend out. Not difficult to do, for a human.
Not to mention that Americo Vespucci had nothing to do personally with naming the continents. plover is evidently not well versed in the relevant history. Columbus was a powerful and influential figure during the early parts of the Spanish Conquest. To consider him a "world-class failure" is a laughable oversimplification of the facts.
OK, when I fuck up on my return, I get bashed in the face by the IRS. When they fuck up on your tax returns, it's a "glitch."
You're not married, are you?
Not if it had water bottles strapped to its side. If it had a loudspeaker that blared out "We mean you no harm! We are here to help! Please come out and show yourself!" or something to that effect, it would probably make it even scarier.
Luckily, Roombas do not have legs.
That's actually a cool idea. The "autonomous mount" could be a BigDog.
It would add to the cost of the Roomba. We have one and we're happy with it, aside from having to clean it out frequently by hand. Nevertheless, it cost over $300, and that was already a little more than we wanted to spend. Paying another $100-200 for self-cleaning would have kept us from buying it.
If you have carpeted floors, I definitely recommend it. It's pretty thorough. You'll be shocked at first at the amount of crap it will pull out.
Some day man will be able to fly through the air over enormous distances. Scientists in the cave near the river have managed to bang two sticks together. Normally sticks do not produce noise on their own, but when banged together they can make relatively loud sounds. In the short term, this can help wake up fellow cave dwellers, but in the future it could become the basis of all manner of inventions such as aircraft, computers, even agriculture itself.
George Washington Carver would look at this guy, mouth agape, for about ten seconds and then turn around and walk away. Why even try?
People like talismans. They installed the same things where I work due to the supposed flu epidemic (never mind the irrelevance as a preventive measure). My coworkers are very very smart engineers, most of whom seem to have skipped biology classes in their youth. The sanitizer stations are regularly used by them. They feel they are pro-actively preventing flu and other diseases. If they're lucky, maybe they get a placebo effect.
I assume you meant upwind, otherwise you would not be complaining. There's such a place on interstate 5 about an hour or two south of the San Francisco Bay area. Driving by is nightmarish.
As pointed out above, this is probably far more important than animal use of antibiotics, at least in terms of human disease. Feedlots are a problem for many other reasons.
This is not a bad example of the superstitious fallacy that market forces fix everything, and we should deregulate all markets because regulations only get in the way, blah blah blah. Feedlots exist because in the short term they are by far most efficient from the strict standpoint of profitability. They are monstrously inefficient overall because they externalize the costs of waste disposal, coliform contamination of meat, feed costs (corn, the favorite animal feed, is subsidized), high fat-content in the resulting meat (due to the use of corn instead of forage), etc. The public must bear these costs so that meat producers can enjoy a profitable business. The power of the market is largely a myth that exists mainly in academic discussions rather than in real life.
You make a lot of undocumented claims, which sound much like the musings of an engineer who knows very little about biology. Would you please substantiate them? In particular, to claim that even a non-therapeutic dose of antibiotics does not constitute a selective pressure is as bold as it is dubious.
I think you are overly optimistic. Remember, the vignette is set 50 years in the future. The books belong(ed) to the kid's grandparents or even a more distant relative or friend. The electronic versions are most likely not loaded onto any device being used in the kid's house because the owner is long gone. The eBooks would be forgotten in some long-inactive Amazon account. If Amazon has a policy to delete the accounts of dead people after X years, then the kid won't even have that. Try 100 years later if you like. No doubt there will be many circumstances where the vignette does not fit, but digital data gets locked away deeper and harder the more time passes and the more technology changes. Have you accessed any 20 year old floppy disks lately? Do you still have access to a 5 1/4" drive? An 8" drive? Can you access cassettes from an old Apple II or an old Sinclair 2068?
It's a contrived example. In other words the Kindle is inoperable without a significant effort and expense on the part of the kid or more likely his or her parents. Even a somewhat crumbly old book could be examined in some detail on the spot. That is the point of the vignette.
And the thing is, this is both ironically sarcastic, and sardonically true.
...and more or less ridiculous.
The problem is that you're not enough of a sucker. The fashionistas ("early-adopters") will latch onto the latest gadget no matter what it is, how much it costs, or how many of their existing rights need to be sacrificed. iTunes is popular even though you have limited copying abilities, you have to make your own backups (carefully), you can't lend the tracks legally or easily, they are generally more expensive per track than a traditional CD, you end up not getting minor works by the artist because you only bought the hit single, etc. etc. With eBooks your books can be altered behind your back and even deleted without your knowledge or authorization. Some people are more than willing to give it all up just to have the latest cool toy.
Imagine, 50 years from now, a kid goes up to the attic and sees a Kindle with a cracked screen, broken navigation keys, and a dead battery. It is junk. Imagine the same kid in the attic uncovering boxes full of books, dozens of them, with pictures, diagrams, stories, plans, photos, etc. Which is the better outcome?
And I'll raise you: In Soviet Russia censorship censors.. um...
the fantasy of the big bang
Just what do you mean by that?
Turn it off! Turn it off! Dude! Turn the fucking thing off!
Oh don't be a party-pooper. Can't you see that slashdotters just love to shut their eyes really tight and believe all of this crap? Even if everything were transparent, it would presumably have an IOR greater than 1.0, reflectivity, specular reflections, light-interfering textures, etc. It's hard to believe how or why Airbus would put out such a patently ridiculous press release. It's worse even than typical Popular Science or Popular Mechanics foaming-at-the-mouth futurism.
Licenses for computer use are absurd. What next, for using cell phones (which are computers)? For using any net-connected device in the future that can be configured enough by users to potentially cause mayhem on the network? How many licenses per day per office would need to be processed? If it must be done online then 1) you would already need a license, and 2) it would probably involve a falsifiable process, thus rendering it into little more than a nuisance and yet another use tax and thus pointless. It has been demonstrated repeatedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and on a vast scale that making things illegal does not generally constitute a robust solution.