This would mean skipping the whole hydrogen step, and having your car directly connected to the grid, just like the electric trains are today.
Which is, actually, the great fallacy of the electric car. Regardless of whether you are using storage batteries, fuel-cells, hydrogen combustion, flywheels, fireflies or some other technique to store energy, that energy comes from the grid. Furthermore, in the U.S. that grid is primarily supplied by fossil-fueled (mostly coal-fired) power plants that aren't particularly efficient. Converting coal to steam to mechanical energy to electricity to hydrogen back to electricity and then, again, into mechanical motion is a rather roundabout way to power a car, with heavy losses at every step. The total conversion cycle is going to be hideously wasteful compared to just burning gasoline.
Hell, if we're gonna burn coal we'd be far better off (from an efficiency perspective) just burning the stuff in our cars.
If the people that the job is being outsourced to are better qualified, then they deserve the job.
Wow. I think you just won the official Slashdot Simplification Award for reducing a complex set of issues affecting the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of human beings down to, well... nothing.
I disagree. Christians are just as capable of using their Good Book(s) to justify anything they want as the Muslims or anyone else. When you say that Christianity doesn't require strict adherence to religious texts you are correct... but that just leaves people a Hell of a lot more wiggle room. Most of them abuse it, to varying degrees, and other people suffer for that, to varying degrees.
Truth is, there's a couple thousand years of bloody history on all sides to refute any argument that Christians are intrinsically superior to anyone else. Their religion may or may not be, but as human beings Christians have shown themselves to be no better than the rest. Fact is, true grace is a rarity, and mere claims to faith mean little. Most people do what they want, not what the Book says... although if you look hard enough, you can make it say anything.
I'm about as religious as a doorknob myself, but the people I know who profess their belief in a Supreme Being (thereby relegating themselves to the status of "pet", but that's another issue) generally fall into two camps: those who believe in their God and live the life that He demands... and those who use their religion as a tool for rationalizing and excusing their bad behavior.
Apples to oranges, really... this guy had incontrovertible evidence that his rights had been stepped upon, the court agreed with him. The RIAA operates to a much lower standard, both in terms of the "evidence" they present, and their reprehensible courtroom behavior. If this guy had manufactured some evidence out of thin air and used it to sue someone at random, I'd say you'd be closer to the mark.
Keep in mind also, that the creeps who ripped him off used his work to make a substantial sum of money. Indeed, they pretty much pirated his work in the legal sense of the term (this wasn't for personal use, it was for profit.) If the RIAA were suing someone that took a copyrighted work, put their name on it and sold it as their own, I don't think many people here would complain.
just maybe an inkling of common sense will emerge from Congress and some reform will take place.
Be careful what you wish for... you just might get it. Expecting Congress (who, after all, are largely responsible for the current state of affairs) to implement proper reform is asking a lot. At this point, I'd settle for just not making things worse: any "reform" is likely to be so corrupted by special interests as to be worse that nothing.
Now if IBM will just refuse to license these waits (except maybe to expensive French restaurants that I'd never go to anyway) we'll find a general improvement in the dining experience.
Because Google would/never/ considering doing anything in terms of an operating system. That's just silly!
I know you're just being funny, but you're right that they probably wouldn't bother coming up with their own proprietary OS. I mean, they already use Linux internally anyway: that plus a lot of their own code is one of their strengths.
Now, what would cause problems for Microsoft would be a Google distro marketed to the Dells and HPs and Lenovos of the world, and also on store shelves. Google has both the brand recognition and the in-house technical skill to pull that off, and it's probably that which keeps Ballmer awake at night. Hell, much of the overseas market would jump on a Google OS in a heartbeat: Microsoft is not well-liked in many parts of the world. I kinda hope they do it, just to shake up Redmond a little.
Worse yet for Microsoft, if such a Linux distro just happened to integrate phenomenally well with Google's online services and Android offering... well.
They already foot the bill for the military, let 'em foot the bill for health care and for the same reasons.
Do you have any idea how corrupt and wasteful the military/industrial complex is? It's too bad my father isn't still around: he'd enlighten you in great detail. The reality is the government does nothing efficiently. That's not always bad... I'm glad the DHS and TSA aren't very efficient at what they do. But when it comes to providing certain kinds of services you don't want the Feds directly supplying them: traditionally, the best solution is usually a heavily-regulated private sector (the old Bell System was a good example of this.) Unfortunately, our government's ability to effectively develop and enforce such regulation is severely handicapped nowadays.
That would be the federal government's sole responsibility, not deciding on treatment or deciding anything else.
You making, I believe, the fundamental mistake of assuming that the government would handle matters any differently. It won't. Both gain and maintain power by a form of elitism created by having the power to exclude. Once they can tell you "no, we won't treat you for this condition unless..." they own you. If you think government types aren't as addicted to that power as those who run insurance companies, you're fooling yourself. You can bet your left kidney that any legislation written to create a nationalized health care system would grant the bureaucrats the same (or greater) power that Medicare officials have in determining who gets treated and for what. They won't be able to resist the opportunity for a further extension of their already-excessive power base.
The ultimate problem is one of the middleman. The system has completely divorced the cost and availability of medical care from our ability to pay for it. That's what middlemen do, when you get right down to it, all the while picking off a healthy chunk of each transaction for themselves. In the long run, it's irrelevant whether that middleman is a regulated publicly-held corporation, or a ballooning government agency. Corruption will occur, bureaucracy will grow exponentially, with health care providers and equipment suppliers milking the system all down the line. That's the way things run in this country today, it's the way Medicare has always been operated, and expecting a completely nationalized system to work any differently is naive. When leaders (or potential leaders) claim otherwise, they are being utterly disingenuous, and immediately disqualify themselves for my vote.
I'll say it again, because it bears repeating... just because socialized/nationalized medicine works for other societies, other cultures, has no relevance to whether it will work for us. Our own history is pretty clear on the fact that it won't. One wonders where our Canadian friends will go for lifesaving treatment when their system puts them on a waiting list, and we Americans have completely screwed up by letting the Feds run the show.
However, in my country's defense, I might add that we talking issues of somewhat different scale here. The Muslims are upset about a fucking CARTOON, and are sufficiently upset about said cartoon to issue death threats. President Bush was referring to our response to the murder of several thousand American citizens and visitors to this country. I don't agree with Bush on much of anything, but let's keep matters in perspective.
Come to think of it, that almost sounds like I'm talking about Steve Jobs.
Well, let's face it. Jobs is not the first leader in history to possess a personal reality distortion field. There have been a number of interesting sci-fi stories about ancient artifacts that allow those who possess them to control men's minds (Martin Caidin's Messiah Stone, for example):
Doug Stavers plays the mercenary game, and every time he plays he wins: in Africa, Central America, Vietnam or in the USA. Now he's on the biggest hunt of his life: to find and seize a certain object that, incredibly, confers the power of absolute belief on its owner. Christ once wore it. So did Mohammed. The last to own it was Adolf Hitler. The next will rule the world. It's code name is "The Messiah Stone".
I figure either Steve Jobs or Google's leaders have it now ("What are we going to do today, Brin?", "Same thing we always do Sergey... try and take over the world.")
Yes, well, the same corporate forces that got them put in force here are very much alive in Europe. I'd not feel too secure in that "inventing circles" bit. The EU has stringent IP laws that rival if not exceed America's in many respects. The nations most like to achieve the most in technical innovation are India and China: the EU is just as bogged down in Imaginary Property as the U.S. The sad thing is that they probably won't be able to market at lot of stuff here because of IP restrictions and lawsuits.
Honestly, I'm less concerned about the format in which data is made available (just get it out there, we'll convert it into whatever we need) than I am about the format in which it is archived. The reason for open formats is as much about long-term retrievability of information, as it is about document interchange. The very last thing we want is important data being stored in some form that simply cannot be read after some interval. We're already having big problems regarding obsolescence of physical media. For example, there's terabytes stored on 9 track tapes which are in danger of being lost forever. I see no reason to further complicate the issue by using file formats that can only be read by proprietary or vendor-specific software.
I didn't say they would, just that they could. Hell, if they just hired a half-dozen of the brighter Slashdotters they'd end up with a better solution than anything Microsoft would throw at them.
Or they could do it with (amongst others and just as big names I know): Google, Redhat, Novell, Canonical and dozens of other companies who are FOSS and provide paying customers with support.
Yes, and more to the point, this is the Federal Government we're talking about here, with the resources to hire the right people and provide in-house support if it really needed to do so. The need for support is simply not a deciding factor in this case... the GP doesn't have the bigger picture. Honestly, the Feds would be far better off coming up with their own solution to the problem: hire somebody really good to lay out the system and then build a staff to maintain and improve it. In the long run, they'll end up with a system that will do what they want, not what Microsoft tells them they want, and serves the needs of We the People.
It isn't just proprietary, closed-source companies who offer support.
Not only offer it, but in Red Hat's case it's their bread-and-butter.
Printing them again, knowing what it might cause: provocation.
So what? These people need to be continually provoked until they understand and accept that there's no percentage in getting upset about it. People using threats and intimidation to censor other people should offend every civilized human being.
Look, this is the bully syndrome at work, and by not continually provoking them, by giving in to their threats, you're simply following a policy of appeasement. That never works with a bully, ever, because next time they'll want more. I am not prepared to give it to them.
Furthermore, we're talking about material published on the Internet in another country. They have zero grounds for imposing their own sense of what is acceptable on the rest of the world. It's time they grew up and accepted the fact that the rest of us don't care what they think. As an American, I have to suffer through enough irrational and outright wrong anti-U.S. crap every day, but I don't go around making threats or demanding the Web sites be blocked just because I don't like it.
These people just need to grow up. Until they do, trying to avoid "provoking" them is not a concern of mine, since they don't seem to care if they provoke me. Not, I might add, that it matters what they say about me or my country. I'm an adult, my skin is pretty thick in that regard.
True, but I'm not necessarily talking about the end user... there's a lot of money that could be well-spent on just securing their networks. Banks have money but like most corporations tend to be cheap when it comes to security. Hitting them in their pocketbooks like this may be just the kick in the pants they need to take the proper steps.
There are probably some ways that security could be improved from the end-user's perspective as well. I understand that in some countries (I don't know if any U.S. banks do this) users of Internet banking services have a hardware device that plugs into their PC to identify them. I don't know how well that works, never having used anything like that myself, but if implemented correctly it would at least cut down on password phishing schemes.
Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Not Sharing Settlement Money With Artists
... con artists are artists too.
Of course they are
Well, fortunately the suit would be filed posthumously. I believe that will have less weight with court.
P.O. box works fine for most things ... and if you need to receive something larger there's always the local Fedex/UPS center.
This would mean skipping the whole hydrogen step, and having your car directly connected to the grid, just like the electric trains are today.
Which is, actually, the great fallacy of the electric car. Regardless of whether you are using storage batteries, fuel-cells, hydrogen combustion, flywheels, fireflies or some other technique to store energy, that energy comes from the grid. Furthermore, in the U.S. that grid is primarily supplied by fossil-fueled (mostly coal-fired) power plants that aren't particularly efficient. Converting coal to steam to mechanical energy to electricity to hydrogen back to electricity and then, again, into mechanical motion is a rather roundabout way to power a car, with heavy losses at every step. The total conversion cycle is going to be hideously wasteful compared to just burning gasoline.
Hell, if we're gonna burn coal we'd be far better off (from an efficiency perspective) just burning the stuff in our cars.
If the people that the job is being outsourced to are better qualified, then they deserve the job.
... nothing.
Wow. I think you just won the official Slashdot Simplification Award for reducing a complex set of issues affecting the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of human beings down to, well
I suppose, if their ISP happened to be in the U.S. and if the U.S. happened to have jurisdiction. This is taking place in France you know.
I disagree. Christians are just as capable of using their Good Book(s) to justify anything they want as the Muslims or anyone else. When you say that Christianity doesn't require strict adherence to religious texts you are correct ... but that just leaves people a Hell of a lot more wiggle room. Most of them abuse it, to varying degrees, and other people suffer for that, to varying degrees.
... although if you look hard enough, you can make it say anything.
... and those who use their religion as a tool for rationalizing and excusing their bad behavior.
Truth is, there's a couple thousand years of bloody history on all sides to refute any argument that Christians are intrinsically superior to anyone else. Their religion may or may not be, but as human beings Christians have shown themselves to be no better than the rest. Fact is, true grace is a rarity, and mere claims to faith mean little. Most people do what they want, not what the Book says
I'm about as religious as a doorknob myself, but the people I know who profess their belief in a Supreme Being (thereby relegating themselves to the status of "pet", but that's another issue) generally fall into two camps: those who believe in their God and live the life that He demands
The latter type is vastly more common.
Why do I have to pay for someone's placebo habit?
Presumably because they're cheaper than real medicine.
You sell the photo.
Apples to oranges, really ... this guy had incontrovertible evidence that his rights had been stepped upon, the court agreed with him. The RIAA operates to a much lower standard, both in terms of the "evidence" they present, and their reprehensible courtroom behavior. If this guy had manufactured some evidence out of thin air and used it to sue someone at random, I'd say you'd be closer to the mark.
Keep in mind also, that the creeps who ripped him off used his work to make a substantial sum of money. Indeed, they pretty much pirated his work in the legal sense of the term (this wasn't for personal use, it was for profit.) If the RIAA were suing someone that took a copyrighted work, put their name on it and sold it as their own, I don't think many people here would complain.
just maybe an inkling of common sense will emerge from Congress and some reform will take place.
... you just might get it. Expecting Congress (who, after all, are largely responsible for the current state of affairs) to implement proper reform is asking a lot. At this point, I'd settle for just not making things worse: any "reform" is likely to be so corrupted by special interests as to be worse that nothing.
Be careful what you wish for
Now if IBM will just refuse to license these waits (except maybe to expensive French restaurants that I'd never go to anyway) we'll find a general improvement in the dining experience.
Because Google would /never/ considering doing anything in terms of an operating system. That's just silly!
... well.
I know you're just being funny, but you're right that they probably wouldn't bother coming up with their own proprietary OS. I mean, they already use Linux internally anyway: that plus a lot of their own code is one of their strengths.
Now, what would cause problems for Microsoft would be a Google distro marketed to the Dells and HPs and Lenovos of the world, and also on store shelves. Google has both the brand recognition and the in-house technical skill to pull that off, and it's probably that which keeps Ballmer awake at night. Hell, much of the overseas market would jump on a Google OS in a heartbeat: Microsoft is not well-liked in many parts of the world. I kinda hope they do it, just to shake up Redmond a little.
Worse yet for Microsoft, if such a Linux distro just happened to integrate phenomenally well with Google's online services and Android offering
They already foot the bill for the military, let 'em foot the bill for health care and for the same reasons.
... I'm glad the DHS and TSA aren't very efficient at what they do. But when it comes to providing certain kinds of services you don't want the Feds directly supplying them: traditionally, the best solution is usually a heavily-regulated private sector (the old Bell System was a good example of this.) Unfortunately, our government's ability to effectively develop and enforce such regulation is severely handicapped nowadays.
..." they own you. If you think government types aren't as addicted to that power as those who run insurance companies, you're fooling yourself. You can bet your left kidney that any legislation written to create a nationalized health care system would grant the bureaucrats the same (or greater) power that Medicare officials have in determining who gets treated and for what. They won't be able to resist the opportunity for a further extension of their already-excessive power base.
... just because socialized/nationalized medicine works for other societies, other cultures, has no relevance to whether it will work for us. Our own history is pretty clear on the fact that it won't. One wonders where our Canadian friends will go for lifesaving treatment when their system puts them on a waiting list, and we Americans have completely screwed up by letting the Feds run the show.
Do you have any idea how corrupt and wasteful the military/industrial complex is? It's too bad my father isn't still around: he'd enlighten you in great detail. The reality is the government does nothing efficiently. That's not always bad
That would be the federal government's sole responsibility, not deciding on treatment or deciding anything else.
You making, I believe, the fundamental mistake of assuming that the government would handle matters any differently. It won't. Both gain and maintain power by a form of elitism created by having the power to exclude. Once they can tell you "no, we won't treat you for this condition unless
The ultimate problem is one of the middleman. The system has completely divorced the cost and availability of medical care from our ability to pay for it. That's what middlemen do, when you get right down to it, all the while picking off a healthy chunk of each transaction for themselves. In the long run, it's irrelevant whether that middleman is a regulated publicly-held corporation, or a ballooning government agency. Corruption will occur, bureaucracy will grow exponentially, with health care providers and equipment suppliers milking the system all down the line. That's the way things run in this country today, it's the way Medicare has always been operated, and expecting a completely nationalized system to work any differently is naive. When leaders (or potential leaders) claim otherwise, they are being utterly disingenuous, and immediately disqualify themselves for my vote.
I'll say it again, because it bears repeating
However, in my country's defense, I might add that we talking issues of somewhat different scale here. The Muslims are upset about a fucking CARTOON, and are sufficiently upset about said cartoon to issue death threats. President Bush was referring to our response to the murder of several thousand American citizens and visitors to this country. I don't agree with Bush on much of anything, but let's keep matters in perspective.
Because the same statement applies to the USA.
Absolutely. What's your point?
Come to think of it, that almost sounds like I'm talking about Steve Jobs.
... try and take over the world.")
Well, let's face it. Jobs is not the first leader in history to possess a personal reality distortion field. There have been a number of interesting sci-fi stories about ancient artifacts that allow those who possess them to control men's minds (Martin Caidin's Messiah Stone, for example):
Doug Stavers plays the mercenary game, and every time he plays he wins: in Africa, Central America, Vietnam or in the USA. Now he's on the biggest hunt of his life: to find and seize a certain object that, incredibly, confers the power of absolute belief on its owner. Christ once wore it. So did Mohammed. The last to own it was Adolf Hitler. The next will rule the world. It's code name is "The Messiah Stone".
I figure either Steve Jobs or Google's leaders have it now ("What are we going to do today, Brin?", "Same thing we always do Sergey
Personally I think it's Steve.
Yes, well, the same corporate forces that got them put in force here are very much alive in Europe. I'd not feel too secure in that "inventing circles" bit. The EU has stringent IP laws that rival if not exceed America's in many respects. The nations most like to achieve the most in technical innovation are India and China: the EU is just as bogged down in Imaginary Property as the U.S. The sad thing is that they probably won't be able to market at lot of stuff here because of IP restrictions and lawsuits.
Honestly, I'm less concerned about the format in which data is made available (just get it out there, we'll convert it into whatever we need) than I am about the format in which it is archived. The reason for open formats is as much about long-term retrievability of information, as it is about document interchange. The very last thing we want is important data being stored in some form that simply cannot be read after some interval. We're already having big problems regarding obsolescence of physical media. For example, there's terabytes stored on 9 track tapes which are in danger of being lost forever. I see no reason to further complicate the issue by using file formats that can only be read by proprietary or vendor-specific software.
I didn't say they would, just that they could. Hell, if they just hired a half-dozen of the brighter Slashdotters they'd end up with a better solution than anything Microsoft would throw at them.
John Locke? I'm Lost..
... admit it. That was funny.
Come on, mods
Or they could do it with (amongst others and just as big names I know): Google, Redhat, Novell, Canonical and dozens of other companies who are FOSS and provide paying customers with support.
... the GP doesn't have the bigger picture. Honestly, the Feds would be far better off coming up with their own solution to the problem: hire somebody really good to lay out the system and then build a staff to maintain and improve it. In the long run, they'll end up with a system that will do what they want, not what Microsoft tells them they want, and serves the needs of We the People.
Yes, and more to the point, this is the Federal Government we're talking about here, with the resources to hire the right people and provide in-house support if it really needed to do so. The need for support is simply not a deciding factor in this case
It isn't just proprietary, closed-source companies who offer support.
Not only offer it, but in Red Hat's case it's their bread-and-butter.
Printing them again, knowing what it might cause: provocation.
So what? These people need to be continually provoked until they understand and accept that there's no percentage in getting upset about it. People using threats and intimidation to censor other people should offend every civilized human being.
Look, this is the bully syndrome at work, and by not continually provoking them, by giving in to their threats, you're simply following a policy of appeasement. That never works with a bully, ever, because next time they'll want more. I am not prepared to give it to them.
Furthermore, we're talking about material published on the Internet in another country. They have zero grounds for imposing their own sense of what is acceptable on the rest of the world. It's time they grew up and accepted the fact that the rest of us don't care what they think. As an American, I have to suffer through enough irrational and outright wrong anti-U.S. crap every day, but I don't go around making threats or demanding the Web sites be blocked just because I don't like it.
These people just need to grow up. Until they do, trying to avoid "provoking" them is not a concern of mine, since they don't seem to care if they provoke me. Not, I might add, that it matters what they say about me or my country. I'm an adult, my skin is pretty thick in that regard.
True, but I'm not necessarily talking about the end user ... there's a lot of money that could be well-spent on just securing their networks. Banks have money but like most corporations tend to be cheap when it comes to security. Hitting them in their pocketbooks like this may be just the kick in the pants they need to take the proper steps.
There are probably some ways that security could be improved from the end-user's perspective as well. I understand that in some countries (I don't know if any U.S. banks do this) users of Internet banking services have a hardware device that plugs into their PC to identify them. I don't know how well that works, never having used anything like that myself, but if implemented correctly it would at least cut down on password phishing schemes.
Unfortunately Carl Sagan has already been honored, but there are other persons too...
... there's me. I think ScrewMaster's Very Large Array sounds about right.
Well