If climate change is real and man-made, the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time.
I guess I can understand the need to identify a cause for global warming - if we can arrest anthropogenic sources of change then it follows we can perhaps slow or stop climate changes induced by people.
If much of the change is related to us burning fossil fuels I think we're basically screwed. Fossil fuels accounts for about 85% of the United States's energy use (see EIA Renewable Energy). With a number that high can anyone imagine a social policy change or technological advance that would reduce the amount of CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere? The US can't pass a bill to save it's postal service - what chance is there in something like the Manhatten Project or Apollo project were science and business collaborate to create something historic and game changing?
A 1930 Model A Ford owner reports getting 20 miles per gallon, for christ's sake. Today the Ford Explorer gets 20 - 28 miles per gallon. In almost 100 years we basically have the same thing in a more deadly model getting roughly the same mileage? Nah... if that's the best we can do it's time to stock up on dry ice and sun screen.
How did we get to a place where states like Russia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are — explicitly or implicitly — thought to be more "free" by ANY measure than the US, UK, and Sweden?
That's a red herring, but one possible answer is immediately obvious: because Ecuardor is offering him freedom whereas Sweden and the US are less than forthcoming about his prospects.
Free also means a lot of different things. But as a measure of incarceration the U.S. has 730 people incerated per 100,000; wheras Ecuador has 86. That's a sizable difference - List of countries by incarceration rate.
Requiring people to buy new sets of chargers, cables, accessories, docks for a new product just shouldn't be necessary with what is already available.
The don't require anyone to buy anything else. The box comes with a USB charging cable and why do you need a dock? It can sync wirelessly now.It would be nice if they included the travelling charger in the box, but anyone who reads the description will know that's not included.
If people rush out and spend half again as much on accessories that's their choice. A +10 Shirt of Protection from Marketing is the only thing that will save them.
While you are correct in citing the examples you did about Ecuador, many of those same organizations have slammed the UK and US for their abuses of power against journalists, protestors and dissidents. If you were an Ecuadoran citizen and read this about the United States or this about the UK you'd probably feel safer staying put.
You would think having redundant power would be a fundamental crucial thing to get right in owning and operating a data centre, yet Amazon seems unable to handle this relatively easy task.
How much power would they need available to counteract the total failure of the electric grid in their area? In the case of this type of storm you can't rely upon basic services being up: like water, electricity, and without power mobile or land line communication. So that means the only way to have a redudant power source would be to handle all electricity needs on-site for x number of hours. That seems a little extreme, at least in this case?
LMAO. Average by what measure? Because the average pilot at that time flew all the way around world, meaning she is not average because she didn't make it?
predicting white collar crime on Wall Street. Cops the world over do this already - it's why you don't see cops cruising suburbs but you do see them on those streets where you can spend $50 and get high and laid in 20 minutes. I'd love to see them police Wall Street this way, though. That would change instantly change my opinion on minimum sentencing:-)
This is good news for Nebraska. The western side of the state is very sparsely populated, and getting more so as kids leave small towns for the city. More than half the state's population live in the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln. Getting development and jobs out there will help keep small town life alive for longer.
The troubling part is that western Nebraska is over the Ogallala aquifer that supplies water to much of the plains states. I shudder to think what would happen if it got contaminated with rare-earths.
I wonder how long those small towns will remain small if there is a new resource extraction industry that pops up? Seems to me that often means a new six-lane road filled with chain fast food joints, unfortunately.
Fellow Aspie here. Here's what childhood sounds like to somebody unknowingly living in the uncanny valley (or at least my childhood):
"You're such a freak!"
"Nobody likes you."
"I bet you don't have any friends."
"Ew, get away from me."
IIRC correctly I heard those exact things when a First Edition D&D Dungeon Master's Guide fell out of my locker in high school. I spent nearly all of U.S. History, Political Science and English classes designing dungeons for my friend's bemusement. We had desks that had a shelf under them. I could balance the DMG on that and my knees to reference the tables needed when building encounters.
You know, if Aspberger's syndrome had been defined when Erving Goffman was writing I think our understanding of the interaction you describe would be very different. I did my Master's Thesis on people with multiple disabilities that had at least one disability 'negatively' impacting 'normal' face-to-face interaction. It was informed heavily by symbolic interactionism.
What I saw was that any disability could be 'overcome' in a face-to-face interaction in a public setting (a public bus, buying something at the store, ordering food in a restaurant, and so on) as long as the person with the disability could have that split-second response to verbal and non-verbal queues. For example, a paraplegic who could verbally communicate such that you wouldn't know he had a disability by just listening to him had much smoother interactions than someone who had cerebral palsy and had a more halted manner of speech.
When you mentioned that short delay before returning a smile it brought back quite a few memories of my time spent with folks who had physical disabilities that prevented them from having that split-second response to a question. It's amazing how little can disrupt social interactions - using the word 'fuck' in the wrong setting can be just as disruptive as someone who stutters.
Goffman's book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a very accessible book on this topic and considered a classic of American sociology and a groundbreaking work in the symbolic interactionism tradition.
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
That describes my reaction to watching politicians.
I had a Ninetendo 3DS for about two months before I realized I couldn't handle the 3D effects. I literally went from feeling buzzed to headache in about 45 minutes.
But the real world is 3D - perhaps the difference is the implementation of trickery, which is why 3D often seems more 'fake' to me than a 2D film.
Ever take an eye exam while renewing your driver's license? Your iris scans may already be on file!
That's just it - I can't remember ever having an exchange with a county, city, state or federal agency where I had a measurement like that taken. Height and weight? Self-reported by me for my driver's license and passport. Never divulged blood type, and hair and eye color were also self-reported. Even may race was. Too bad I didn't use my last passport renewal (done in person) to see what I could have gotten away with:-)
That's not to say the tin-foil crowd won't claim my optometrist gave my eye exam details to a goon-in-a-suit, but that's not likely. I'm not claiming HIPPA will 'protect' any 'rights' I have in that regard, I just think it's a narrow population that will be in the system. Well, at least for now... who knows what the next few years will bring...
An iris scan, which detects unique patterns in a person's eyes, can reduce to seconds the time it takes to identify a suspect in custody.
Why is it so important to reduce the amount of time to seconds to identify a suspect? At this point, when you're taking a picture of a suspect's eye, the person is either freely cooperating or has been beaten down and is cuffed and forced to cooperate. And the cops already had a good idea of who they were after (at least in some, but admittedly not all) cases.
Before this is seen as solving a problem I think we need to know how long it takes to identify a suspect now, and what happens in the time allegedly saved with the old system and new one?
Finally, this will only work if you're already in the system, right? So it will only reduce time on those folks that have already been caught, had their picture taken, and are then caught again by a cop with this application in a jurisdiction where the cop can access the data?
I don't understand why I should be wary of this technology in and of itself. It's no different than a fingerprint scanner or a handful of other biometric scanners -- and most of them have the option to enter a password or swipe a card in lieu of scanning your eyes -- they have to. Not everyone has eyes. Or hands.
If that were the case why didn't the folks who are implementing the iris scanner just stick with fingerprints or the possible card?
I think there's a difference here, though I'm not sure what the implications of it are. A national ID card may look like a state-issued driver's license but the implication is different. I agree that fearing the technology is silly, but what isn't silly is fearing why a government is interested in making that kind of investment.
What would be really cool is if the phone could tell us what others' moods are. You could hold the phone and scan the people in a bar, the TSA security actors at an airport, and so on.
I still play text adventures/interactive fiction - but I remember getting a kick out of the box art on early Infocom games - the box my Zork came in had numerous pictures of a guy wielding a sword and carrying the famous brass lantern!
Titanic, anyone? What happens when one of their zero-fatality cars is hit by a petrol-carrying tanker trunk and the whole thing bursts into flames? Is it still a zero-fatality car if anyone dies in that crash? If not their notion of survivability will probably have a significant chunk of fine print towards the bottom of the page...
Gur evtug bs gur crbcyr gb or frpher va gurve crefbaf, ubhfrf, cncref, naq rssrpgf, ntnvafg haernfbanoyr frnepurf naq frvmherf, funyy abg or ivbyngrq, naq ab Jneenagf funyy vffhr, ohg hcba cebonoyr pnhfr, fhccbegrq ol Bngu be nssvezngvba, naq cnegvphyneyl qrfpevovat gur cynpr gb or frnepurq, naq gur crefbaf be guvatf gb or frvmrq.
(For our snooping friends:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If climate change is real and man-made, the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time.
I guess I can understand the need to identify a cause for global warming - if we can arrest anthropogenic sources of change then it follows we can perhaps slow or stop climate changes induced by people.
If much of the change is related to us burning fossil fuels I think we're basically screwed. Fossil fuels accounts for about 85% of the United States's energy use (see EIA Renewable Energy). With a number that high can anyone imagine a social policy change or technological advance that would reduce the amount of CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere? The US can't pass a bill to save it's postal service - what chance is there in something like the Manhatten Project or Apollo project were science and business collaborate to create something historic and game changing?
A 1930 Model A Ford owner reports getting 20 miles per gallon, for christ's sake. Today the Ford Explorer gets 20 - 28 miles per gallon. In almost 100 years we basically have the same thing in a more deadly model getting roughly the same mileage? Nah ... if that's the best we can do it's time to stock up on dry ice and sun screen.
That's a red herring, but one possible answer is immediately obvious: because Ecuardor is offering him freedom whereas Sweden and the US are less than forthcoming about his prospects.
Free also means a lot of different things. But as a measure of incarceration the U.S. has 730 people incerated per 100,000; wheras Ecuador has 86. That's a sizable difference - List of countries by incarceration rate.
Well, haven't all the iOS devices had that? It's a USB cable that plugs into a USB port. The only time that nails me is when I
But I have only the iPhone, so perhaps the issue of multiple devices and cables doesn't haunt me.
The don't require anyone to buy anything else. The box comes with a USB charging cable and why do you need a dock? It can sync wirelessly now.It would be nice if they included the travelling charger in the box, but anyone who reads the description will know that's not included.
If people rush out and spend half again as much on accessories that's their choice. A +10 Shirt of Protection from Marketing is the only thing that will save them.
While you are correct in citing the examples you did about Ecuador, many of those same organizations have slammed the UK and US for their abuses of power against journalists, protestors and dissidents. If you were an Ecuadoran citizen and read this about the United States or this about the UK you'd probably feel safer staying put.
How much power would they need available to counteract the total failure of the electric grid in their area? In the case of this type of storm you can't rely upon basic services being up: like water, electricity, and without power mobile or land line communication. So that means the only way to have a redudant power source would be to handle all electricity needs on-site for x number of hours. That seems a little extreme, at least in this case?
LMAO. Average by what measure? Because the average pilot at that time flew all the way around world, meaning she is not average because she didn't make it?
predicting white collar crime on Wall Street. Cops the world over do this already - it's why you don't see cops cruising suburbs but you do see them on those streets where you can spend $50 and get high and laid in 20 minutes. I'd love to see them police Wall Street this way, though. That would change instantly change my opinion on minimum sentencing :-)
This is good news for Nebraska. The western side of the state is very sparsely populated, and getting more so as kids leave small towns for the city. More than half the state's population live in the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln. Getting development and jobs out there will help keep small town life alive for longer.
The troubling part is that western Nebraska is over the Ogallala aquifer that supplies water to much of the plains states. I shudder to think what would happen if it got contaminated with rare-earths.
I wonder how long those small towns will remain small if there is a new resource extraction industry that pops up? Seems to me that often means a new six-lane road filled with chain fast food joints, unfortunately.
Fellow Aspie here. Here's what childhood sounds like to somebody unknowingly living in the uncanny valley (or at least my childhood):
"You're such a freak!" "Nobody likes you." "I bet you don't have any friends." "Ew, get away from me."
IIRC correctly I heard those exact things when a First Edition D&D Dungeon Master's Guide fell out of my locker in high school. I spent nearly all of U.S. History, Political Science and English classes designing dungeons for my friend's bemusement. We had desks that had a shelf under them. I could balance the DMG on that and my knees to reference the tables needed when building encounters.
You know, if Aspberger's syndrome had been defined when Erving Goffman was writing I think our understanding of the interaction you describe would be very different. I did my Master's Thesis on people with multiple disabilities that had at least one disability 'negatively' impacting 'normal' face-to-face interaction. It was informed heavily by symbolic interactionism.
What I saw was that any disability could be 'overcome' in a face-to-face interaction in a public setting (a public bus, buying something at the store, ordering food in a restaurant, and so on) as long as the person with the disability could have that split-second response to verbal and non-verbal queues. For example, a paraplegic who could verbally communicate such that you wouldn't know he had a disability by just listening to him had much smoother interactions than someone who had cerebral palsy and had a more halted manner of speech.
When you mentioned that short delay before returning a smile it brought back quite a few memories of my time spent with folks who had physical disabilities that prevented them from having that split-second response to a question. It's amazing how little can disrupt social interactions - using the word 'fuck' in the wrong setting can be just as disruptive as someone who stutters.
Goffman's book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a very accessible book on this topic and considered a classic of American sociology and a groundbreaking work in the symbolic interactionism tradition.
From the Wikipedia article:
That describes my reaction to watching politicians.
I had a Ninetendo 3DS for about two months before I realized I couldn't handle the 3D effects. I literally went from feeling buzzed to headache in about 45 minutes.
But the real world is 3D - perhaps the difference is the implementation of trickery, which is why 3D often seems more 'fake' to me than a 2D film.
That's just it - I can't remember ever having an exchange with a county, city, state or federal agency where I had a measurement like that taken. Height and weight? Self-reported by me for my driver's license and passport. Never divulged blood type, and hair and eye color were also self-reported. Even may race was. Too bad I didn't use my last passport renewal (done in person) to see what I could have gotten away with :-)
That's not to say the tin-foil crowd won't claim my optometrist gave my eye exam details to a goon-in-a-suit, but that's not likely. I'm not claiming HIPPA will 'protect' any 'rights' I have in that regard, I just think it's a narrow population that will be in the system. Well, at least for now ... who knows what the next few years will bring ...
Why is it so important to reduce the amount of time to seconds to identify a suspect? At this point, when you're taking a picture of a suspect's eye, the person is either freely cooperating or has been beaten down and is cuffed and forced to cooperate. And the cops already had a good idea of who they were after (at least in some, but admittedly not all) cases.
Before this is seen as solving a problem I think we need to know how long it takes to identify a suspect now, and what happens in the time allegedly saved with the old system and new one?
Finally, this will only work if you're already in the system, right? So it will only reduce time on those folks that have already been caught, had their picture taken, and are then caught again by a cop with this application in a jurisdiction where the cop can access the data?
If that were the case why didn't the folks who are implementing the iris scanner just stick with fingerprints or the possible card?
I think there's a difference here, though I'm not sure what the implications of it are. A national ID card may look like a state-issued driver's license but the implication is different. I agree that fearing the technology is silly, but what isn't silly is fearing why a government is interested in making that kind of investment.
eom
What would be really cool is if the phone could tell us what others' moods are. You could hold the phone and scan the people in a bar, the TSA security actors at an airport, and so on.
Maybe Terry Jones ought to buy up all copies of the Koran instead of burning them!
"Resort ATTACKS Men With Virtual Girlfriends".
As George Carlin said, "Eat well, stay fit, and die anyway."
I still play text adventures/interactive fiction - but I remember getting a kick out of the box art on early Infocom games - the box my Zork came in had numerous pictures of a guy wielding a sword and carrying the famous brass lantern!
eom
Titanic, anyone? What happens when one of their zero-fatality cars is hit by a petrol-carrying tanker trunk and the whole thing bursts into flames? Is it still a zero-fatality car if anyone dies in that crash? If not their notion of survivability will probably have a significant chunk of fine print towards the bottom of the page ...
Gur evtug bs gur crbcyr gb or frpher va gurve crefbaf, ubhfrf, cncref, naq rssrpgf, ntnvafg haernfbanoyr frnepurf naq frvmherf, funyy abg or ivbyngrq, naq ab Jneenagf funyy vffhr, ohg hcba cebonoyr pnhfr, fhccbegrq ol Bngu be nssvezngvba, naq cnegvphyneyl qrfpevovat gur cynpr gb or frnepurq, naq gur crefbaf be guvatf gb or frvmrq. (For our snooping friends :-)