All of the posts so far seem to be just generic knee-jerk comments about IP.
Consider this: if they recieve well-written and enlightened criticism (as most of the already existing commentary appears to be) then we will be able to view their future actions in light of the forum results. This will provide a yardstick for anyone to compare their future actions.
If they do something that opposes the majority opinion or most sensible recommendations present in the open forum, we can criticize them. As is we have no reference for what information is available to them, so we cannot prove that they are being intentionally evil.
Even if they refuse to listen to us, it is a chance for concerned parties to submit their concerns in a single location on the record. And in case they do listen to us we should explain rationally what and why we hold our opinions, what changes we would recommend and how they would effect those involved (ex. if patents disappeared no one would have to hire a patent attorney (yay!), but would have no protection against people copying their ideas and no incentive to ever document their inventions (boo!)). If they find our explanations acceptable they may change their policies to be more to our liking.
"it's the fact that linux isn't really much of a gaming OS"
What makes an OS a gaming OS? What needs to be changed in GNU/Linux to make it a gaming OS? I can't think of anything specific about the OS that would prevent it from succeeding as a gaming OS. (of course I'm one of those old fogies that doesn't consider web browsers and media players to be a part of the OS, so YMMV)
"It's market share and not MS that keeps Linux from having many games" Market share doesn't keep the WWW inaccessible in a world of IE. Market share doesn't prevent me from filling my Audi at the same gas station you fill your Excursion. Market share doesn't keep me from running gcc on any system I choose. What keeps games from Linux is DirectX. Microsoft sabotaged OpenGL (they were part of the initial standardization group) to push its Direct3d and other associated proprietary libraries. If game developers weren't locked in DirectX and standard libraries for low-level hardware interaction were nurtured instead of aborted, most games would be multiplatform. As it is, progress on this has been set back 10 years.
Have you ever met someone with autism? My mother is a special education teacher. I've met her students.
You're right, autistic people tend to be less functional in society (loud noises or changes to routine cause them to freak out). On the other hand, they tend to be amazingly knowledgeable about a few specific things. They may not be able to carry out a conversation, but they could write research papers on dinosaurs or whatever their personal interest is (and this is in elementary school).
Autistic people have an extremely strong and narrow focus and tend to think logically. This gives them an advantage in scientific fields.
"Geekiness" does have certain common characteristics with autism (especially milder forms like aspergers). Autistic people have trouble recognizing social cues, causing them trouble socializing normally. They also can adhere to either excessive cleanliness, or its opposite. They also show a certain social apathy, not showing appropriate interests in other people.
Okay, I'll just roll on out to the local store and buy my Linux-based laptop. Then I'll use my laptop to write up my resume and save it in the industry standard document format. I'll then apply for a position at all the companies whose websites are accessible with a standards compliant browser. Then I'll celebrate this personal victory by playing one of the many games that it can run.
All they're doing is turning on a motor at the press of a button. The motor is in a jacket they put on the chickens. The button is in a replica chicken in another location.
I admit that possibility, but I fail to see a reason someone would build something like that. That would mean you'd only really ever listen to the middle songs.
The best case (fewest repeats) for a random distribution is the uniform distribution (assuming all repeats are weighted equally).
A random song means that, for the next song, every song (including the current one) is equally probable. This tends to produce the "erratic" effect of having to listen to the same random song 3 times in a row.
Shuffle means the songs are put into a randomized list and then played in that order. This ensures that songs are more evenly spaced (and are far more unlikely to repeat).
This is not some crappy western. There are no "Good" guys, there are no "Bad" guys. There are just people trying to do what they think is right. If you fool yourself into thinking that just because someone associates them with a poorly defined ideology that you also associate yourself with they are looking after your own interests exclusively, you ARE the stupidest person in the world (along with every other fanatic =P). All the politicians have their own agenda. Maybe their agenda takes the interests of their supporters into account, and maybe not. You should look critically on the actions of any person regardless of their professed viewpoints. (If you get shot by a "friend" you're just as dead as if you were shot by a "foe").
Myself, I did not endorse the invasion of Iraq (without UN approval). I do not endorse all the "patriotic" legislation to "protect" us from "terrorists". I do not endorse the refusal to extend Geneva convention guidelines to "illegal" combatants. I do not support the use of inhumane methods of interogation or the suspension of habeaus corpus by ourselves or our allies (I'm looking at you Israel), and would strongly support applying pressure to those allies to stop such practices.
I fail to see how an administration that denies people their basic human rights without any due process could be seen as the "Good" guys. On the other hand, they're not entirely bad either.
"'every convenience store learns to grab that data and sell it to Big Data for a nickel' Right. Because every time I got to the convenience store I have to present my license. Oh, wait, no I don't. FUD."
If such a thing were possible, how long would it take for states to start requiring identification for all purchases (so they can charge you sales tax for items you bought in a different state)?
"Should companies be harvesting test tube embryos, then kill them before birth, to get stem cells?"
It's not really harvesting, as that implies they're ripping things off the vine and such. They're really just keeping embryos they would have discarded, the left-overs from fertility treatment. (It's more like recycling...) It's not killing them before birth (the cells would be useless if dead), and they weren't going to be born anyway..
They're not merely trying to be forced to pay to have babies killed. They're trying to make it so they do not en any way shape or form make any financial contributions to any institutions that includes embryonic stemcell research as one of their programs (even if said contributions are earmarked for non-embryonic programs). In addition the largest supplies of embryonic stem cells are controlled by the government, and they apparently don't want them used...
So I guess you're right. They're not trying to "block research on stem cells", they're merely cutting funding to groups that are working on embryonic stem cell research and depriving them of samples to work with. Like saying to a ditch-digger: "I'm not going to pay you anymore, and I'm taking your shovel, but don't let that stop you from digging your holes"
"How many times have you "mistakenly" run a red light?" I ran one last week. I've lived in town my entire life, and a few months ago they put a stop light at an intersection that had previously only had a stop sign. It was late at night and I was on my way home. I stopped at the intersection, looked both ways and then turned left.
Re:Why is heat reclamation not worth it?
on
The Not-So-Cool Future
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"The gradient between 60C and room temperature, over a few centimeters, is not that great" yeah, but it it's over a few nanometers it's pretty big. If we built a generator on that scale it might be worthwhile...
"Another fun-fact is that it takes about ~7 years of using a solar-panel before the energy savings offset the production cost." Where do you get this from? I keep seeing that argument over and over again, but I can't seem to find any data to back it up. A little googling, found this: http://www.thecomma.co.uk/globalism/
"Lastly, thermodynamics guarantees that in the winter, in a cold place, it's impossible to waste electricity" I call BS. Most home heating is not by resistive heating, but through heat pumps which are thermodynamically required to be more efficient than any resistive heat losses. Heat pumps operate like air conditioners in reverse, pumping heat from the outside into the inside. This means that the energy from a heat pump only goes to moving already existing heat, so they can enjoy effective thermodynamic "efficiencies" of greater than 100% (which aren't real efficiencies, because they don't take into account the heat drawn from the environment, and so are called Coefficients Of Performance). A little googling provides this informative link: http://energyoutlet.com/res/heatpump/efficiency.ht ml In summary, that means that of the "wasted energy", you have a net energy waste of (COP_hp-1)*E_wasted in winter.
"The intention with a preemptive strike is to gain the advantage of initiative and to harm the enemy at a moment of minimal protection, for instance while vulnerable during transport or mobilization."[From Parent's Link]
We sure caught the Iraqis right in the middle of their mobilization, didn't we? They were obviously poised at our mutual borders readying to strike before we attacked.
Quotes from Wikipedia's "Just War" article: "War can only be waged with the right intention. Correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain is not. Thus a war that would normally be just for all other reasons would be made unjust by a bad intention. Right intention requires that democratic statesmen accept the decision of their nations' courts and electorates on the legitimacy and the justice of their action." "War can only be waged for a just cause, such as self-defense against an armed attack." "War can only be waged as a last resort. War is not just until all realistic options which were likely to right the wrong have been pursued."
2 points of distance measuring and a lookup table. 10 flops. You weren't an expert catcher the first time you tried, were you? You had to slowly build up your lookup table with practice.
If people really did that sort of math in their head, people would have no problem learning to solve math problems.
Considering they don't even know what all the human brain does, how can they even begin to guess how much computing power would be required to emulate it? It's as they say: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. PS: my cat thinks at 10 GHz.
The biggest problem I have with X is that it's single threaded: When I move or resize a window, all the other windows freeze.
What if I want to watch something occurring in one window while I'm adjusting another window? (It makes the anime skip whenever I adjust my source window size....)
I don't know anything about the Adblock Firefox extension, but if it blocks all domains whose name matches the filter (containing any ascii characters between 0x20 and 0xFF) it would be a BAD idea. Especially since the ascii characters for normal addresses don't start until 0x41 or so. This looks like it would block access to ANY websites.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't bittorrent support multiple torrents per tracker? Couldn't the **AA just scrape the entire tracker for ip addresses and sue those involved in more than x downloads at a time?
Slashdot Mirror
All of the posts so far seem to be just generic knee-jerk comments about IP.
Consider this: if they recieve well-written and enlightened criticism (as most of the already existing commentary appears to be) then we will be able to view their future actions in light of the forum results. This will provide a yardstick for anyone to compare their future actions.
If they do something that opposes the majority opinion or most sensible recommendations present in the open forum, we can criticize them.
As is we have no reference for what information is available to them, so we cannot prove that they are being intentionally evil.
Even if they refuse to listen to us, it is a chance for concerned parties to submit their concerns in a single location on the record.
And in case they do listen to us we should explain rationally what and why we hold our opinions, what changes we would recommend and how they would effect those involved (ex. if patents disappeared no one would have to hire a patent attorney (yay!), but would have no protection against people copying their ideas and no incentive to ever document their inventions (boo!)). If they find our explanations acceptable they may change their policies to be more to our liking.
"it's the fact that linux isn't really much of a gaming OS"
What makes an OS a gaming OS? What needs to be changed in GNU/Linux to make it a gaming OS? I can't think of anything specific about the OS that would prevent it from succeeding as a gaming OS. (of course I'm one of those old fogies that doesn't consider web browsers and media players to be a part of the OS, so YMMV)
"It's market share and not MS that keeps Linux from having many games"
Market share doesn't keep the WWW inaccessible in a world of IE. Market share doesn't prevent me from filling my Audi at the same gas station you fill your Excursion. Market share doesn't keep me from running gcc on any system I choose.
What keeps games from Linux is DirectX.
Microsoft sabotaged OpenGL (they were part of the initial standardization group) to push its Direct3d and other associated proprietary libraries.
If game developers weren't locked in DirectX and standard libraries for low-level hardware interaction were nurtured instead of aborted, most games would be multiplatform. As it is, progress on this has been set back 10 years.
Have you ever met someone with autism?
My mother is a special education teacher. I've met her students.
You're right, autistic people tend to be less functional in society (loud noises or changes to routine cause them to freak out). On the other hand, they tend to be amazingly knowledgeable about a few specific things. They may not be able to carry out a conversation, but they could write research papers on dinosaurs or whatever their personal interest is (and this is in elementary school).
Autistic people have an extremely strong and narrow focus and tend to think logically. This gives them an advantage in scientific fields.
"Geekiness" does have certain common characteristics with autism (especially milder forms like aspergers). Autistic people have trouble recognizing social cues, causing them trouble socializing normally. They also can adhere to either excessive cleanliness, or its opposite.
They also show a certain social apathy, not showing appropriate interests in other people.
Okay, I'll just roll on out to the local store and buy my Linux-based laptop. Then I'll use my laptop to write up my resume and save it in the industry standard document format. I'll then apply for a position at all the companies whose websites are accessible with a standards compliant browser. Then I'll celebrate this personal victory by playing one of the many games that it can run.
All they're doing is turning on a motor at the press of a button. The motor is in a jacket they put on the chickens. The button is in a replica chicken in another location.
Please tell how this is anymore cybernetic than a telephone!
You could start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cybernetics
I admit that possibility, but I fail to see a reason someone would build something like that. That would mean you'd only really ever listen to the middle songs.
The best case (fewest repeats) for a random distribution is the uniform distribution (assuming all repeats are weighted equally).
Shuffle != Random.
A random song means that, for the next song, every song (including the current one) is equally probable. This tends to produce the "erratic" effect of having to listen to the same random song 3 times in a row.
Shuffle means the songs are put into a randomized list and then played in that order. This ensures that songs are more evenly spaced (and are far more unlikely to repeat).
This is not some crappy western. There are no "Good" guys, there are no "Bad" guys.
There are just people trying to do what they think is right.
If you fool yourself into thinking that just because someone associates them with a poorly defined ideology that you also associate yourself with they are looking after your own interests exclusively, you ARE the stupidest person in the world (along with every other fanatic =P).
All the politicians have their own agenda. Maybe their agenda takes the interests of their supporters into account, and maybe not. You should look critically on the actions of any person regardless of their professed viewpoints. (If you get shot by a "friend" you're just as dead as if you were shot by a "foe").
Myself, I did not endorse the invasion of Iraq (without UN approval).
I do not endorse all the "patriotic" legislation to "protect" us from "terrorists".
I do not endorse the refusal to extend Geneva convention guidelines to "illegal" combatants.
I do not support the use of inhumane methods of interogation or the suspension of habeaus corpus by ourselves or our allies (I'm looking at you Israel), and would strongly support applying pressure to those allies to stop such practices.
I fail to see how an administration that denies people their basic human rights without any due process could be seen as the "Good" guys.
On the other hand, they're not entirely bad either.
"'every convenience store learns to grab that data and sell it to Big Data for a nickel' Right. Because every time I got to the convenience store I have to present my license. Oh, wait, no I don't. FUD."
If such a thing were possible, how long would it take for states to start requiring identification for all purchases (so they can charge you sales tax for items you bought in a different state)?
"Should companies be harvesting test tube embryos, then kill them before birth, to get stem cells?"
It's not really harvesting, as that implies they're ripping things off the vine and such. They're really just keeping embryos they would have discarded, the left-overs from fertility treatment. (It's more like recycling...)
It's not killing them before birth (the cells would be useless if dead), and they weren't going to be born anyway..
They're not merely trying to be forced to pay to have babies killed.
They're trying to make it so they do not en any way shape or form make any financial contributions to any institutions that includes embryonic stemcell research as one of their programs (even if said contributions are earmarked for non-embryonic programs).
In addition the largest supplies of embryonic stem cells are controlled by the government, and they apparently don't want them used...
So I guess you're right. They're not trying to "block research on stem cells", they're merely cutting funding to groups that are working on embryonic stem cell research and depriving them of samples to work with.
Like saying to a ditch-digger: "I'm not going to pay you anymore, and I'm taking your shovel, but don't let that stop you from digging your holes"
"How many times have you "mistakenly" run a red light?"
I ran one last week. I've lived in town my entire life, and a few months ago they put a stop light at an intersection that had previously only had a stop sign.
It was late at night and I was on my way home. I stopped at the intersection, looked both ways and then turned left.
"The gradient between 60C and room temperature, over a few centimeters, is not that great"
t ml
yeah, but it it's over a few nanometers it's pretty big. If we built a generator on that scale it might be worthwhile...
"Another fun-fact is that it takes about ~7 years of using a solar-panel before the energy savings offset the production cost."
Where do you get this from? I keep seeing that argument over and over again, but I can't seem to find any data to back it up.
A little googling, found this:
http://www.thecomma.co.uk/globalism/
"Lastly, thermodynamics guarantees that in the winter, in a cold place, it's impossible to waste electricity"
I call BS. Most home heating is not by resistive heating, but through heat pumps which are thermodynamically required to be more efficient than any resistive heat losses. Heat pumps operate like air conditioners in reverse, pumping heat from the outside into the inside. This means that the energy from a heat pump only goes to moving already existing heat, so they can enjoy effective thermodynamic "efficiencies" of greater than 100% (which aren't real efficiencies, because they don't take into account the heat drawn from the environment, and so are called Coefficients Of Performance).
A little googling provides this informative link:
http://energyoutlet.com/res/heatpump/efficiency.h
In summary, that means that of the "wasted energy", you have a net energy waste of (COP_hp-1)*E_wasted in winter.
"The intention with a preemptive strike is to gain the advantage of initiative and to harm the enemy at a moment of minimal protection, for instance while vulnerable during transport or mobilization."[From Parent's Link]
We sure caught the Iraqis right in the middle of their mobilization, didn't we?
They were obviously poised at our mutual borders readying to strike before we attacked.
Quotes from Wikipedia's "Just War" article:
"War can only be waged with the right intention. Correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain is not. Thus a war that would normally be just for all other reasons would be made unjust by a bad intention. Right intention requires that democratic statesmen accept the decision of their nations' courts and electorates on the legitimacy and the justice of their action."
"War can only be waged for a just cause, such as self-defense against an armed attack."
"War can only be waged as a last resort. War is not just until all realistic options which were likely to right the wrong have been pursued."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide
Cyanide is created by many plants, fungi, and algae.
Parent is probably the only serious post on slashdot today...
So how may kinds of people think it's gray code?
2 points of distance measuring and a lookup table. 10 flops.
You weren't an expert catcher the first time you tried, were you? You had to slowly build up your lookup table with practice.
If people really did that sort of math in their head, people would have no problem learning to solve math problems.
Considering they don't even know what all the human brain does, how can they even begin to guess how much computing power would be required to emulate it?
It's as they say: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
PS: my cat thinks at 10 GHz.
"the Human brain computes somewhere between 100 TERAflops and 1000 Teraflops"
I must not be typical...
There's no way I could add/subtract/multiply/divide 100 trillion floating point numbers each second...
The biggest problem I have with X is that it's single threaded:
When I move or resize a window, all the other windows freeze.
What if I want to watch something occurring in one window while I'm adjusting another window? (It makes the anime skip whenever I adjust my source window size....)
I don't know anything about the Adblock Firefox extension, but if it blocks all domains whose name matches the filter (containing any ascii characters between 0x20 and 0xFF) it would be a BAD idea.
Especially since the ascii characters for normal addresses don't start until 0x41 or so.
This looks like it would block access to ANY websites.
But then again I could be wrong...
funny...xpdf doesn't do that on my box. Which kernel version are you running?
Didn't the article say that there was ony a 17% repeat offender rate (article used the word
"recidivism")?
Would you like to kill those 83 people out of 100 who would otherwise go on to live normal productive lives?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't bittorrent support multiple torrents per tracker? Couldn't the **AA just scrape the entire tracker for ip addresses and sue those involved in more than x downloads at a time?