MARVEL accuses SONY of literally kidnapping Spidey.
SONY literally kidnapped Spiderman? What, a bunch of Sony exectuves have Spidey chained up in the basement of their corporate HQ? This sounds like a good plot for the next comic book... sure, Spidey can defeat the Green Goblin, but does he stand a chance against capitalism run amok?
Net Evaders: 20% of non-Internet users live with someone who uses the Internet from home. Some of these self-described non-users exploit workarounds that allow them to "use" the Internet by having email sent and received by online family members and by having others in their home do online searches for information they want.
Sounds like my old man... every so often, someone sends him an email, and I have to print out a copy and fax it to him from my office. I've tried to convince him to buy a computer but nothing short of psychiatric intervention will get him over his bizarre mental aversion to using one. Lazy old bastard.
Now, all you need to do is buy and install a large theatre-style popcorn maker, a keg of beer, and a 60" high definition TV.
1. Invite friends over to watch the game or a dvd on your big-screen t.v.
2. Charge them movie theatre prices for the fountain soda, popcorn, and beer.
3. Profit!
(Repeat until your friends get tired of paying for refreshments and you run out of paying customers. Don't forget to offer "loyalty discounts" to those that stick around.)
I'd have to disagree with you violently there. I can think of several examples: The cross. National flags. The gold-star sticker.
I'm not sure you can define the cross, or national flags, or other extremely common symbols as "art", unless you want to stretch stretching the definition to the point of absurdity... i.e. saying that "art" includes all human symbols and structures that can be represented visually. Is the symbol of a circle "art"? How about a white flag, or a crescent moon?
What distinguishes art from mere symbols? "Art" has to be copied faithfully to the original form. Susan Kane's icons appear, pixel for pixel, exactly as she created them. Their origin can be traced to a single, original source (the artist).
Symbols like the cross have been visually represented in millions of different forms by millions of people. The symbolic origin is obvious (crucifixion of Christ), but there is no such "artistic" origin. The cross is a symbol not because one brilliant artist invented it, but because it was a simple and obvious way to represent an event that was passed along through oral and written tradition.
I can store the collective works of Shakespeare in a 10 Mb zip file. The collective paintings of Michelangelo, scanned and compressed with zero data loss, would probably be 100 Gb at least.
And yet, the collective works of Susan Kare could probably be compressed down to 1 or 2 kilobytes. Talk about minimalism!
I'd never really thought of icon creators as artists before, but I suppose they deserve recognition with the more familiar artists.
Just think: together with the "NBC Peacock" guy and a handful of other logo creators, Susan Kare's "art" has probably been viewed and used my more people, for more hours, than any conventional artistic works in human history... and all in the space of two short decades.
...especially since spam is always proven right over time.
Does this mean that I won't be able to double my earnings with a college degree? Turns out my earnings doubled as soon as I graduated from university.
Since we all know that Professionals with degrees can earn up to $2.2 million more? Hey, as long as I work for another 3 decades that statement will be absolutely correct.
Oh well, at least I'll still be able to enlarge my penis... This works too... my penis enlarges every time I read spam with pictures of Hot XXX Babes!!!
earn large amounts of cash for doing nothing Get this... it seems my company pays me even for the time I spend reading spam... in other words, doing nothing at all! Suckers!
meet sexy singles in my area... Hey, spam helps me meet sexy singles all the time. Trouble is they keep asking for my credit card info.
lost 50 pounds in 2 days... Yeah, I did that too. Turns out that the 50GPB British money order I sent to that nice Nigerian fellow got lost or something.
That's 6 for 6. You see, Spam never lies. And just to keep this on topic, neither does the Copyright Office.
Not all "Big Brothers of the Year" are Bad Guys...
on
2003 Big Brother Awards
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Meet the 2002 National Big Brother and Big Sister of the Year
Richard Gandarillas and Devin
Little Brother Devin is determined that his match with Big Brother of the Year Richard Gandarillas will be the longest one ever in the history of Big Brothers / Big Sisters of America.
"He is a Big Brother you can talk to. We have a lot of fun together, and he also helps me with my problems," says Devin. "He talks to me about things that can help me now and in the future."
Big Brother Richard calls their friendship "outstanding." "Devin is a bright, charismatic, 11-year-old who enjoys any challenge," he says. "He is blessed with the spirit of youth and the passion to learn, which I am eager to share. He is a great kid, and I expect someday will be a great man."
According to Richard, "The high point of my relationship with Devin can't be summed into one event. I recall the first time Devin trusted me enough to open his communication. Today, we can't wait to have conversations and share our thoughts. In our years together, we've taught each other a great deal."
In addition to his relationship with Devin, Richard is involved with Greater Columbus' BBBS in Schools program and has three school-based Littles. He has also been instrumental in developing the agency's first bilingual program for Hispanic students.
Before moving to the Columbus area and being matched with Devin, Richard had a Little through the Lynchburg, Virginia affiliate. "Big Brothers Big Sisters came into my life when the time was right for me to become involved," he says.
Without addressing the culinary merits, I should point out that the energy required to extract plankton and process it would probably exceed the energy generated by the plant... so why bother in the first place?
Remember, we're talking razor-thin energy margins here... a couple of Watts per gallon of discharge water. So if you expend more than that per gallon to filter out the bio-gunk, forget it.
Also, raw plankton is not edible to humans... sort of like pond scum. It would have to be not only boiled but treated and processed in some way... more energy down the drain. Don't for get the costs of packaging, transportation, storage, etc.
Moving up the food chain, aquaculture and fish farming are the way to go in that department. They eat the plankton, you eat the lovely fish fillet and get proteins, fats, vitamins, etc... Unfortunately it doesn't tie in with OTEC unless the fish farm needs a fresh water source
We have to remember that we probably can't stick these plants everywhere because the oceans are the engine behind our weather.
Parent post is clueless. We have to remember that we can't stick these plants everywhere for the same reason we don't cover ever square foot of land on the planet with solar panels. It's impossible, prohibitively expensive, and pointless in terms of efficiency.
OTEC will only ever be implemented in a handful of warm island locations, on such a small scale that it will have as much impact on the weather as the proverbial butterfly flapping wings in Central Park.
Also, it won't be tempting to think of it as a "free" source of energy when the construction cost is $20,000/kW installed capacity... ten times that of the equivalent combustion-powered plant.
More studies are needed, but the real environmental problem with OTEC is not ammonia, nor is it the temperature balance of the ocean. Ammonia would only be released by accident, and even then it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Temperature balance is regulated because hot and cold streams of water leaving the OTEC are mixed, and then discharged by pumping it to a depth of about 60m, where the water temperature is about equal to the discharge temperature.
The real environmental issue is the fact that
99% of the seawater going through the plant is discharged back to the ocean (rather than being evaporated to fresh water). This means that huge volumes of water - thousands of gallons per second - most be pumped to generate a relatively small amount of electricity. The problem is that for every gallon of seawater that passes through, most of the plankton, algae and other tiny sea creatures who live in that gallon don't survive the amazing journey. A 10 MW island OTEC plant would inevitably destroy thousands of tons of biomass at the bottom rung of the local food chain.
Next to the sun and the wind, the Moon's gravitational pull on the earth is about the only other source of near infinite energy this planet has.
The Moon's gravitational pull on the earth is indeed a renewable energy source... but it's not a resource. A resource is something that is actually worth exploiting. Current experimental tidal power plants are extremely expensive, environmentally disastrous (they kill all the species that feed/lay eggs on the shoreline), and produce pathetically small amounts of energy. Google the Bay of Fundy experiment for more info.
Ocean thermal energy conversion isn't much better than tidal... too low-density and remote to ever be economical.
But you forgot the best renewable of all: GEOTHERMAL! It's good for at least a billion years and there's enough of it accessible within 3km of the earth's crust to power the whole world - ten thousand times over. We just have to wait until the technology catches up so that we can harness geothermal power effectively. When that happens, all this speculation of "wind" and "moon" energy will seem as silly and archaic as Wiccans exploring the healing powers of homeopathy.
I've seen a few posts here speculating that if ocean thermal energy conversion is scalable, we potentially have a miraculous supply of renewable energy. Sorry to pop bubbles, but OTEC is way too inefficient, expensive, and low-density to work on a larger scale. It's only viable for remote islands that need fresh water, in very warm areas, with a seawater temperature gradient of at least 20 degrees celsius. Otherwise, it's too expensive and inefficient to bother.
A theoretical 100MW plant (Current experimental sizes are lower than 1 MW) would require a hugely expensive floating platform, connected to the mainland by a hugely expensive submarine electric cable.
Because OTEC is a very low-density resource, a 100 MW plant would have to be massive... pumping, processing and discharging a volume of water equal to the flow of the Colorado River into the Pacific Ocean. On top of the massive construction costs, electricity generated would cost about $0.22/kW (as opposed to wholesale price of $0.02-$0.03.kW in the US). If just 1% of world energy consumption (60,000 MW) was met by OTEC, the cost of building the infrastructure would be $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) and the discharge from the plants would exceed the combined discharge of every river one the planet into the oceans. Scalable? Maybe not.
Eventually, the monitoring system will be combined with GPS data so that parents can track the location of their precious children at all times.
This leads to some interesting possibilities for teenage pranksters. Imagine the look on Mom's and Dad's faces when, just before leaving on his three-day camping trip, little Johnny sends his cellphone to China by FedEx.
Upon answering the call, the wrongdoer hears the pre-recorded message--
"You have broken the law by posting illegal ads. You must immediately stop this activity and go to the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau for punishment. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200."
I just wish that the government wouldn't spend their lives so cheaply
Do you think that the US Gov't is spending the lives of its soldiers cheaply? I can't think of any army in history that places so much value on the lives of individual soldiers as today's US Army. To accomplish a given mission, the Army would rather spend millions of dollars on high tech surveillance and "smart" missiles than risk the life of a single US soldier in actual combat.
The soldiers may be brave and willing, but the Army is so risk-adverse they are willing to do almost anything, at any cost, to avoid American combat casualties.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at the end of the war, more soldiers die from accidents than actual combat. Probably, the Army's mortality rate won't be much higher than it would be for a similar-sized group driving on American highways, or smoking American cigarettes.
...carried a photo of protestors burning an American flag. Underneath the image, a message read: "Ohh YeaH BabY...Ur SiTe Has BeeN DeFaceD"
This is pretty much the level of sophistication of most of the antiwar protests I've seen thus far, in the streets or on the internet.
If I was a protester with genuine antiwar convictions, I'd be pretty annoyed that my credibility was being destroyed by 14 year-old script kiddies... not to mention the uninformed, loony-left, stringy-haired wannabe hippies pulling juvenile "look at me!" stunts on the streets of San Francisco.
Hydrogen is the obvious fuel of choice for portable fuel cells - it packs more energy than any other (non-nuclear) fuel into a given amount of mass.
The problem is finding a safe and efficient mechanism to transport the hydrogen. A fuel cell powered by a canister of highly compressed hydrogen gas could have the destructive power of a grenade if ignited... not something you'd want sitting next to you on a plane or subway. Meanwhile, the logistics of transporting liquid hydrogen (which must be kept cool at cryogenic temperatures) are such that it will probably never be used in portable fuel cells.
Considering how important viable hydrogen storage is to our future economy, it's amazing how few research dollars have been directed at the problem. One possible solution is sodium borohydride in an aqueous solution. Hydrogen is released when the NaBH4(aq) is passed through a catalyst. The solution is completely stable and nontoxic at room temperature, yet stores more hydrogen per liter than liquid H2.
Slashdot Mirror
MARVEL accuses SONY of literally kidnapping Spidey.
SONY literally kidnapped Spiderman? What, a bunch of Sony exectuves have Spidey chained up in the basement of their corporate HQ? This sounds like a good plot for the next comic book... sure, Spidey can defeat the Green Goblin, but does he stand a chance against capitalism run amok?
Net Evaders: 20% of non-Internet users live with someone who uses the Internet from home. Some of these self-described non-users exploit workarounds that allow them to "use" the Internet by having email sent and received by online family members and by having others in their home do online searches for information they want.
Sounds like my old man... every so often, someone sends him an email, and I have to print out a copy and fax it to him from my office. I've tried to convince him to buy a computer but nothing short of psychiatric intervention will get him over his bizarre mental aversion to using one. Lazy old bastard.
If prostitutes ever wanted to unionize, this may be the time.
Just like those Detroit auto workers, they may soon find that they've been replaced by robots...
"You've got a summons!"
...and I pity the desperately lonely souls on their evening train ride home, glued to their cell phones and talking to their appliances.
Now, all you need to do is buy and install a large theatre-style popcorn maker, a keg of beer, and a 60" high definition TV.
1. Invite friends over to watch the game or a dvd on your big-screen t.v.
2. Charge them movie theatre prices for the fountain soda, popcorn, and beer.
3. Profit!
(Repeat until your friends get tired of paying for refreshments and you run out of paying customers. Don't forget to offer "loyalty discounts" to those that stick around.)
I'd have to disagree with you violently there. I can think of several examples: The cross. National flags. The gold-star sticker.
I'm not sure you can define the cross, or national flags, or other extremely common symbols as "art", unless you want to stretch stretching the definition to the point of absurdity... i.e. saying that "art" includes all human symbols and structures that can be represented visually. Is the symbol of a circle "art"? How about a white flag, or a crescent moon?
What distinguishes art from mere symbols? "Art" has to be copied faithfully to the original form. Susan Kane's icons appear, pixel for pixel, exactly as she created them. Their origin can be traced to a single, original source (the artist).
Symbols like the cross have been visually represented in millions of different forms by millions of people. The symbolic origin is obvious (crucifixion of Christ), but there is no such "artistic" origin. The cross is a symbol not because one brilliant artist invented it, but because it was a simple and obvious way to represent an event that was passed along through oral and written tradition.
I can store the collective works of Shakespeare in a 10 Mb zip file. The collective paintings of Michelangelo, scanned and compressed with zero data loss, would probably be 100 Gb at least.
And yet, the collective works of Susan Kare could probably be compressed down to 1 or 2 kilobytes. Talk about minimalism!
I'd never really thought of icon creators as artists before, but I suppose they deserve recognition with the more familiar artists.
Just think: together with the "NBC Peacock" guy and a handful of other logo creators, Susan Kare's "art" has probably been viewed and used my more people, for more hours, than any conventional artistic works in human history... and all in the space of two short decades.
Does this mean that I won't be able to double my earnings with a college degree? Turns out my earnings doubled as soon as I graduated from university.
Since we all know that Professionals with degrees can earn up to $2.2 million more? Hey, as long as I work for another 3 decades that statement will be absolutely correct.
Oh well, at least I'll still be able to enlarge my penis... This works too... my penis enlarges every time I read spam with pictures of Hot XXX Babes!!!
earn large amounts of cash for doing nothing Get this... it seems my company pays me even for the time I spend reading spam... in other words, doing nothing at all! Suckers!
meet sexy singles in my area... Hey, spam helps me meet sexy singles all the time. Trouble is they keep asking for my credit card info.
lost 50 pounds in 2 days... Yeah, I did that too. Turns out that the 50GPB British money order I sent to that nice Nigerian fellow got lost or something.
That's 6 for 6. You see, Spam never lies. And just to keep this on topic, neither does the Copyright Office.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Meet the 2002 National Big Brother and Big Sister of the Year
Richard Gandarillas and Devin Little Brother Devin is determined that his match with Big Brother of the Year Richard Gandarillas will be the longest one ever in the history of Big Brothers / Big Sisters of America."He is a Big Brother you can talk to. We have a lot of fun together, and he also helps me with my problems," says Devin. "He talks to me about things that can help me now and in the future."
Big Brother Richard calls their friendship "outstanding." "Devin is a bright, charismatic, 11-year-old who enjoys any challenge," he says. "He is blessed with the spirit of youth and the passion to learn, which I am eager to share. He is a great kid, and I expect someday will be a great man."
According to Richard, "The high point of my relationship with Devin can't be summed into one event. I recall the first time Devin trusted me enough to open his communication. Today, we can't wait to have conversations and share our thoughts. In our years together, we've taught each other a great deal."
In addition to his relationship with Devin, Richard is involved with Greater Columbus' BBBS in Schools program and has three school-based Littles. He has also been instrumental in developing the agency's first bilingual program for Hispanic students.
Before moving to the Columbus area and being matched with Devin, Richard had a Little through the Lynchburg, Virginia affiliate. "Big Brothers Big Sisters came into my life when the time was right for me to become involved," he says.
Cute plan.
Without addressing the culinary merits, I should point out that the energy required to extract plankton and process it would probably exceed the energy generated by the plant... so why bother in the first place?
Remember, we're talking razor-thin energy margins here... a couple of Watts per gallon of discharge water. So if you expend more than that per gallon to filter out the bio-gunk, forget it.
Also, raw plankton is not edible to humans... sort of like pond scum. It would have to be not only boiled but treated and processed in some way... more energy down the drain. Don't for get the costs of packaging, transportation, storage, etc.
Moving up the food chain, aquaculture and fish farming are the way to go in that department. They eat the plankton, you eat the lovely fish fillet and get proteins, fats, vitamins, etc... Unfortunately it doesn't tie in with OTEC unless the fish farm needs a fresh water source
We have to remember that we probably can't stick these plants everywhere because the oceans are the engine behind our weather.
Parent post is clueless. We have to remember that we can't stick these plants everywhere for the same reason we don't cover ever square foot of land on the planet with solar panels. It's impossible, prohibitively expensive, and pointless in terms of efficiency.
OTEC will only ever be implemented in a handful of warm island locations, on such a small scale that it will have as much impact on the weather as the proverbial butterfly flapping wings in Central Park.
Also, it won't be tempting to think of it as a "free" source of energy when the construction cost is $20,000/kW installed capacity... ten times that of the equivalent combustion-powered plant.
More studies are needed, but the real environmental problem with OTEC is not ammonia, nor is it the temperature balance of the ocean. Ammonia would only be released by accident, and even then it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Temperature balance is regulated because hot and cold streams of water leaving the OTEC are mixed, and then discharged by pumping it to a depth of about 60m, where the water temperature is about equal to the discharge temperature.
The real environmental issue is the fact that 99% of the seawater going through the plant is discharged back to the ocean (rather than being evaporated to fresh water). This means that huge volumes of water - thousands of gallons per second - most be pumped to generate a relatively small amount of electricity. The problem is that for every gallon of seawater that passes through, most of the plankton, algae and other tiny sea creatures who live in that gallon don't survive the amazing journey. A 10 MW island OTEC plant would inevitably destroy thousands of tons of biomass at the bottom rung of the local food chain.
Next to the sun and the wind, the Moon's gravitational pull on the earth is about the only other source of near infinite energy this planet has.
The Moon's gravitational pull on the earth is indeed a renewable energy source... but it's not a resource. A resource is something that is actually worth exploiting. Current experimental tidal power plants are extremely expensive, environmentally disastrous (they kill all the species that feed/lay eggs on the shoreline), and produce pathetically small amounts of energy. Google the Bay of Fundy experiment for more info.
Ocean thermal energy conversion isn't much better than tidal... too low-density and remote to ever be economical.
But you forgot the best renewable of all: GEOTHERMAL! It's good for at least a billion years and there's enough of it accessible within 3km of the earth's crust to power the whole world - ten thousand times over. We just have to wait until the technology catches up so that we can harness geothermal power effectively. When that happens, all this speculation of "wind" and "moon" energy will seem as silly and archaic as Wiccans exploring the healing powers of homeopathy.
I've seen a few posts here speculating that if ocean thermal energy conversion is scalable, we potentially have a miraculous supply of renewable energy. Sorry to pop bubbles, but OTEC is way too inefficient, expensive, and low-density to work on a larger scale. It's only viable for remote islands that need fresh water, in very warm areas, with a seawater temperature gradient of at least 20 degrees celsius. Otherwise, it's too expensive and inefficient to bother.
A theoretical 100MW plant (Current experimental sizes are lower than 1 MW) would require a hugely expensive floating platform, connected to the mainland by a hugely expensive submarine electric cable.
Because OTEC is a very low-density resource, a 100 MW plant would have to be massive... pumping, processing and discharging a volume of water equal to the flow of the Colorado River into the Pacific Ocean. On top of the massive construction costs, electricity generated would cost about $0.22/kW (as opposed to wholesale price of $0.02-$0.03.kW in the US). If just 1% of world energy consumption (60,000 MW) was met by OTEC, the cost of building the infrastructure would be $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) and the discharge from the plants would exceed the combined discharge of every river one the planet into the oceans. Scalable? Maybe not.
Eventually, the monitoring system will be combined with GPS data so that parents can track the location of their precious children at all times.
This leads to some interesting possibilities for teenage pranksters. Imagine the look on Mom's and Dad's faces when, just before leaving on his three-day camping trip, little Johnny sends his cellphone to China by FedEx.
Upon answering the call, the wrongdoer hears the pre-recorded message--
"You have broken the law by posting illegal ads. You must immediately stop this activity and go to the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau for punishment. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200."
The series starts of quite wacky and goofy, but gets darker and deeper as the story progresses. Its easily one of my favorite series. --CmdrTaco.
Parallels to the Bush Presidency?
Billings, MT is a high growth area. Of course, I haven't heard of any of my co-workers taking a job in Billings..."
I have several co-workers who took a job in Billings. They didn't even have a choice: they were transferred from Sales and Collections.
I just wish that the government wouldn't spend their lives so cheaply
Do you think that the US Gov't is spending the lives of its soldiers cheaply? I can't think of any army in history that places so much value on the lives of individual soldiers as today's US Army. To accomplish a given mission, the Army would rather spend millions of dollars on high tech surveillance and "smart" missiles than risk the life of a single US soldier in actual combat.
The soldiers may be brave and willing, but the Army is so risk-adverse they are willing to do almost anything, at any cost, to avoid American combat casualties.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at the end of the war, more soldiers die from accidents than actual combat. Probably, the Army's mortality rate won't be much higher than it would be for a similar-sized group driving on American highways, or smoking American cigarettes.
This is pretty much the level of sophistication of most of the antiwar protests I've seen thus far, in the streets or on the internet.
If I was a protester with genuine antiwar convictions, I'd be pretty annoyed that my credibility was being destroyed by 14 year-old script kiddies... not to mention the uninformed, loony-left, stringy-haired wannabe hippies pulling juvenile "look at me!" stunts on the streets of San Francisco.
Personally, I always thought a liquid cooled rack is what happens when Pamela Anderson spills beer down her shirt...
Talk about a devious ploy... this just reinforces my suspicions that cable companies are run by supervillains with dark hats and twirly moustaches.
Hydrogen is the obvious fuel of choice for portable fuel cells - it packs more energy than any other (non-nuclear) fuel into a given amount of mass.
The problem is finding a safe and efficient mechanism to transport the hydrogen. A fuel cell powered by a canister of highly compressed hydrogen gas could have the destructive power of a grenade if ignited... not something you'd want sitting next to you on a plane or subway. Meanwhile, the logistics of transporting liquid hydrogen (which must be kept cool at cryogenic temperatures) are such that it will probably never be used in portable fuel cells.
Considering how important viable hydrogen storage is to our future economy, it's amazing how few research dollars have been directed at the problem. One possible solution is sodium borohydride in an aqueous solution. Hydrogen is released when the NaBH4(aq) is passed through a catalyst. The solution is completely stable and nontoxic at room temperature, yet stores more hydrogen per liter than liquid H2.