Great, so he's "saving fuel" by having all those batteries in there... NOT.
Batteries ARE NO DIFFERENT than petroleum: they're stored chemical potential energy, which is released when you react it.
In the case of petroleum, when you react - burn - it, its byproducts are just gone as vapor and you have to fill up the tank with more of the stuff to keep driving. In the case of batteries, when you react them they can be "recharged" by using energy from another source to reverse the chemical reaction and "reset" the potential stored energy. However, the energy required to recharge them is MORE than you get back out when you react them again, and that energy has to come from SOMEWHERE. That somewhere is an electrical generation plant burning fossil fuel to create electricity!
In short, he's in fact using MORE fuel now with those batteries to drive his car the same distance, rather than less, because recharging batteries takes more energy than it returns and that energy is coming from even more fossil fuels being burned elsewhere. The only difference is that he's not burning it all directly himself now, and so foolishly thinks he's doing productive.
Both the Bush Administration and the Washington Post are using fear as a tool to manipulate people to serve their own ends. Bush and his horse-whispering handlers do it to control citizens, keep their focus away from their mismanagement of everything else, and let them pursue visions of Evangelical Empire without anyone even noticing. The Post does it for a much simpler reason: keeping the readership on the edge of their seats and "entertained" and subscription fees flowing in.
Aren't you sick of having these power-mongers with their legions of staff head-shrinkers having a tug-of-war over your emotions, each one battling for control of the right to push your buttons and make you dance like a marionette to whatever tune they throw on the turntable? Stop thinking with your amygdala and limbic brain, put a firewall around it, and remind these master manipulators that people go to Hell for a lot less sinful behavior than what they're doing.
What the submitter concluded - the Symphony - simply doesn't follow at all from his original question, and Zonk and seemingly everyone else missed that. His original implied question had to do with DESKTOP operating systems, not dedicated appliances where the "operating system" is not only invisible to the user but moot to boot. The submitter didn't even answer his own question.
Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to what company signs TractorJector's paycheck?
Everybody knows that the only way to keep kids away from porn is to neuter them to begin with. No gonads, no hormones = no interest in porn, eh? As a beneficial side-effect, it will help to control the population explosion.
On a less serious note, maybe the right approach is for parents, when their child reaches the dangerous age and they've taught them about the birds and the birds, to then rent the nastiest most exploitive porn video they can find and watch it TOGETHER with their child, and narrate and discuss what's wrong with it. Then rent the least nasty porn film they can find, or perhaps just a mainstream R or NC-17 film that depicts sex in a positive way, watch that together with their child, and contrast the two.
Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, but that doesn't seem to stop the misguided grandchildren of the misguided idiot legislators who tried it then from trying it again now, does it? Communication and education are the only way to "combat" porn. No children armed with the right knowledge and values need to be shielded from porn, because they can shield themselves.
He is in the movie, but here's another point to consider: he's SIXTY. He was a mature man when he played a character in Barney Miller in the Seventies. I'm older than most Slashdotters, and he's almost old enough to be *my* father, and he's definitely old enough to be the father of virtually everyone else from the original cast. If he doesn't have a huge action-packed role in this movie, maybe it's because he's just not physically up to - or up for - that sort of thing any more. If you recall, his role in the series didn't really place many physical demands on him, not like on his much younger cast members. I doubt if he needs the money.
"...discovered a flaw in TCP/IP that could allow attackers to reset connections last year...."
Wow, a TCP/IP flaw that had existed for all that time but only allowed the exploit to work in 2004? It's a good thing that was so clearly described, because otherwise I might have become quite confused.
It's not: it's science fantasy. The script is awash with mystical references that make me wanna puke. They might as well have reanimated C.S. Lewis and put him to work in a darkened back room writing script for it, and I don't care for the result any more than I did Lewis' books when I was a kid.
Network TV will probably never have anything resembling SF ever again, but if this is the flagship that the Sci Fi Channel has to offer, I'll do without television altogether, thank-you-very-much.
Something smells funny here... and it ain't the hydrogen. This Na-Si powder sounds like it must be pretty energy-intensive to make, so exactly what's the point? Expending all that energy just to create a stored chemical energy source, from which combusting it one gets back only a fraction of the input energy used to create that stored potential energy in the first place?
What's the financial value for HP to research and produce inkjet printers with embedded printheads? Are they going to do it simply because it's the right thing to do, out of the goodness of their hearts? Yeah, right. Some of us old farts still recall when printheads were always integral to the printers and decoupled from the ink source, before HP and others perverted the process more than a decade ago, and changed the way that printers and ink was sold forever. Since that time, the printers have become dirt-cheap, while a mere two ink-and-head cartridges may cost you as much or more than the entire printer itself.
I'd expect to see this wondrous new printhead tech coupled with at least a 20% increase in the cost of the ink supplies. As we all know, the stuff is already more expensive per ounce than most fine perfumes. The last time HP "revolutionized" the printing process, we've all been getting screwed in the pocketbooks ever since; bend over and prepare to be screwed again. You might as well stay in that position this time.
First poster apparently thought he was being insightful by cancelling his subscription after reading of this fiasco, but then that must make me downright clairvoyant... because I never had one.
I don't get it: how is Morse-coding on a cellphone gonna be any better - and less hard on one's thumb(s) - than thumb-typing now? Will they actually produce new cellphones with a traditional Morse-code contact lever? Can I still put the thing in my shirt pocket? And how can I tap out Morse code on a small object that isn't firmly anchored, like in some cradle sitting on a table?
...idea to ring the Earth with a giant carbon-nanotube-wire orbital coil, connected to solar stations or whatever, to act as a primary transformer coil to power *everything*, those nutty proposals make that one seem suddenly feasible!
Now please excuse me while I go write my business plan in crayon on the bathroom mirror and then figure out how I too can get PAID for my science fantasies....
I bought my first copy of Windows 2000 on the first official day of release of Windows XP, and I've never regretted the choice. I did it entirely in protest of several issues, one specific to Windows XP: the activation system.
I will never buy Windows XP; I may never buy another Windows OS period. That was part of my intention at the time, but I haven't lived up to that stipulation. I had hoped to be free from Windows at least, if not Win32 software, by now, but alas I'm not. Part of that's laziness, but Windows yet still dominates software with respect to diversity and number of choices. It also still dominates diversity with respect to hardware choices as well, but that may change, too.
I will feel less hypocritical when the day comes that I can make the transition and thumb my nose at you-know-who without guilt or a sense of loss.
"Ted The Titan", an A. titanum grown by University of California at Davis, bloomed just a couple weeks ago. The UCD greenhouses were needed for coursework purposes, so they loaned "him" to the Conservatory of Flowers at the Golden Gate State Park in San Francisco. It only bloomed for a short two days or so. UCD seems to have one ready to bloom just about every year around May (they have a collection of them).
One has to wonder... if they were dishonest enough to fudge research data, what was their motivation to give an honest response to this survey? Were they perhaps paid under the table to participate? Were those selected to participate conveniently all lapsed Catholics with guilty consciences?
Howzabout we just ring the entire earth in LEO with an enormous superconducting coil, juice it up with a burst from a nuclear blast in orbit or a big solar array, and then replace all those nicad batteries with AA-sized coils instead? And you can wrap a coil around yourself to keep you warm at night.
I've had the original Braun electric toothbrush model for many years. Even though it contains a NiCad battery, the battery is recharged by a "RFID" coil in the base of the toothbrush: when the toothbrush is set on the base unit, the coil in the toothrush comes into proximity with a primary coil in the base, effectively forming a transformer and energizing the secondary coil and thus recharging the battery. Never mind that I've had to disassemble, de-solder, and replace the damned battery twice! >:-/
The description of this mouse sounds more like it relies on a similar de-coupled transformer than RFID. Not *everything* that lacks a cord/wires is RFID, for gosh sake! The author will probably watch the new War of The Worlds and then begin seeing aliens everywhere he looks, too.
Mr. Dvorak says, "Normal people do not like being associated with fanatics and lunatics." I wonder... has he made as close an inspection of our current Federal administration and Republican Party as he has of O'Gara and this fracas?
Actually he's half right: people despise fanatics and lunatics, IF THOSE FANATICS ARE THEIR PEERS. However, the dynamic is completely different, IF THEY'RE THE LEADERSHIP. Then people are more than okay with it, they're out there waving flags and banners and buying bumper stickers and sending the fanatics big fat personal checks.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, so he's "saving fuel" by having all those batteries in there... NOT.
Batteries ARE NO DIFFERENT than petroleum: they're stored chemical potential energy, which is released when you react it.
In the case of petroleum, when you react - burn - it, its byproducts are just gone as vapor and you have to fill up the tank with more of the stuff to keep driving. In the case of batteries, when you react them they can be "recharged" by using energy from another source to reverse the chemical reaction and "reset" the potential stored energy. However, the energy required to recharge them is MORE than you get back out when you react them again, and that energy has to come from SOMEWHERE. That somewhere is an electrical generation plant burning fossil fuel to create electricity!
In short, he's in fact using MORE fuel now with those batteries to drive his car the same distance, rather than less, because recharging batteries takes more energy than it returns and that energy is coming from even more fossil fuels being burned elsewhere. The only difference is that he's not burning it all directly himself now, and so foolishly thinks he's doing productive.
What a short-sighted idiot.
Both the Bush Administration and the Washington Post are using fear as a tool to manipulate people to serve their own ends. Bush and his horse-whispering handlers do it to control citizens, keep their focus away from their mismanagement of everything else, and let them pursue visions of Evangelical Empire without anyone even noticing. The Post does it for a much simpler reason: keeping the readership on the edge of their seats and "entertained" and subscription fees flowing in.
Aren't you sick of having these power-mongers with their legions of staff head-shrinkers having a tug-of-war over your emotions, each one battling for control of the right to push your buttons and make you dance like a marionette to whatever tune they throw on the turntable? Stop thinking with your amygdala and limbic brain, put a firewall around it, and remind these master manipulators that people go to Hell for a lot less sinful behavior than what they're doing.
What the submitter concluded - the Symphony - simply doesn't follow at all from his original question, and Zonk and seemingly everyone else missed that. His original implied question had to do with DESKTOP operating systems, not dedicated appliances where the "operating system" is not only invisible to the user but moot to boot. The submitter didn't even answer his own question.
Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to what company signs TractorJector's paycheck?
Everybody knows that the only way to keep kids away from porn is to neuter them to begin with. No gonads, no hormones = no interest in porn, eh? As a beneficial side-effect, it will help to control the population explosion.
On a less serious note, maybe the right approach is for parents, when their child reaches the dangerous age and they've taught them about the birds and the birds, to then rent the nastiest most exploitive porn video they can find and watch it TOGETHER with their child, and narrate and discuss what's wrong with it. Then rent the least nasty porn film they can find, or perhaps just a mainstream R or NC-17 film that depicts sex in a positive way, watch that together with their child, and contrast the two.
Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, but that doesn't seem to stop the misguided grandchildren of the misguided idiot legislators who tried it then from trying it again now, does it? Communication and education are the only way to "combat" porn. No children armed with the right knowledge and values need to be shielded from porn, because they can shield themselves.
He is in the movie, but here's another point to consider: he's SIXTY. He was a mature man when he played a character in Barney Miller in the Seventies. I'm older than most Slashdotters, and he's almost old enough to be *my* father, and he's definitely old enough to be the father of virtually everyone else from the original cast. If he doesn't have a huge action-packed role in this movie, maybe it's because he's just not physically up to - or up for - that sort of thing any more. If you recall, his role in the series didn't really place many physical demands on him, not like on his much younger cast members. I doubt if he needs the money.
"...discovered a flaw in TCP/IP that could allow attackers to reset connections last year...."
Wow, a TCP/IP flaw that had existed for all that time but only allowed the exploit to work in 2004? It's a good thing that was so clearly described, because otherwise I might have become quite confused.
... I surely do miss a lot of interesting stuff!
If the rioters wear metal-mesh "catchers masks" and the boys stuff their testicles into tomato-paste cans, they should be fine.
It's not: it's science fantasy. The script is awash with mystical references that make me wanna puke. They might as well have reanimated C.S. Lewis and put him to work in a darkened back room writing script for it, and I don't care for the result any more than I did Lewis' books when I was a kid.
Network TV will probably never have anything resembling SF ever again, but if this is the flagship that the Sci Fi Channel has to offer, I'll do without television altogether, thank-you-very-much.
Something smells funny here... and it ain't the hydrogen. This Na-Si powder sounds like it must be pretty energy-intensive to make, so exactly what's the point? Expending all that energy just to create a stored chemical energy source, from which combusting it one gets back only a fraction of the input energy used to create that stored potential energy in the first place?
Yep, that sure sounds sustainable to me.
What's the financial value for HP to research and produce inkjet printers with embedded printheads? Are they going to do it simply because it's the right thing to do, out of the goodness of their hearts? Yeah, right. Some of us old farts still recall when printheads were always integral to the printers and decoupled from the ink source, before HP and others perverted the process more than a decade ago, and changed the way that printers and ink was sold forever. Since that time, the printers have become dirt-cheap, while a mere two ink-and-head cartridges may cost you as much or more than the entire printer itself.
I'd expect to see this wondrous new printhead tech coupled with at least a 20% increase in the cost of the ink supplies. As we all know, the stuff is already more expensive per ounce than most fine perfumes. The last time HP "revolutionized" the printing process, we've all been getting screwed in the pocketbooks ever since; bend over and prepare to be screwed again. You might as well stay in that position this time.
I never had a subscription in the first place, so I guess that makes me clairvoyant?
First poster apparently thought he was being insightful by cancelling his subscription after reading of this fiasco, but then that must make me downright clairvoyant... because I never had one.
I don't get it: how is Morse-coding on a cellphone gonna be any better - and less hard on one's thumb(s) - than thumb-typing now? Will they actually produce new cellphones with a traditional Morse-code contact lever? Can I still put the thing in my shirt pocket? And how can I tap out Morse code on a small object that isn't firmly anchored, like in some cradle sitting on a table?
Somebody isn't thinking this through....
...idea to ring the Earth with a giant carbon-nanotube-wire orbital coil, connected to solar stations or whatever, to act as a primary transformer coil to power *everything*, those nutty proposals make that one seem suddenly feasible!
Now please excuse me while I go write my business plan in crayon on the bathroom mirror and then figure out how I too can get PAID for my science fantasies....
... and my membership is also in spite of twice-confirmed ADD traits that keep me from "reaching my potential".
This study should be returned to the cow pasture from whence its "data" was collected.
I bought my first copy of Windows 2000 on the first official day of release of Windows XP, and I've never regretted the choice. I did it entirely in protest of several issues, one specific to Windows XP: the activation system.
I will never buy Windows XP; I may never buy another Windows OS period. That was part of my intention at the time, but I haven't lived up to that stipulation. I had hoped to be free from Windows at least, if not Win32 software, by now, but alas I'm not. Part of that's laziness, but Windows yet still dominates software with respect to diversity and number of choices. It also still dominates diversity with respect to hardware choices as well, but that may change, too.
I will feel less hypocritical when the day comes that I can make the transition and thumb my nose at you-know-who without guilt or a sense of loss.
... he was trying to touch-type. He should have used two fingers.
"Ted The Titan", an A. titanum grown by University of California at Davis, bloomed just a couple weeks ago. The UCD greenhouses were needed for coursework purposes, so they loaned "him" to the Conservatory of Flowers at the Golden Gate State Park in San Francisco. It only bloomed for a short two days or so. UCD seems to have one ready to bloom just about every year around May (they have a collection of them).
One has to wonder... if they were dishonest enough to fudge research data, what was their motivation to give an honest response to this survey? Were they perhaps paid under the table to participate? Were those selected to participate conveniently all lapsed Catholics with guilty consciences?
Howzabout we just ring the entire earth in LEO with an enormous superconducting coil, juice it up with a burst from a nuclear blast in orbit or a big solar array, and then replace all those nicad batteries with AA-sized coils instead? And you can wrap a coil around yourself to keep you warm at night.
I've had the original Braun electric toothbrush model for many years. Even though it contains a NiCad battery, the battery is recharged by a "RFID" coil in the base of the toothbrush: when the toothbrush is set on the base unit, the coil in the toothrush comes into proximity with a primary coil in the base, effectively forming a transformer and energizing the secondary coil and thus recharging the battery. Never mind that I've had to disassemble, de-solder, and replace the damned battery twice! >:-/
The description of this mouse sounds more like it relies on a similar de-coupled transformer than RFID. Not *everything* that lacks a cord/wires is RFID, for gosh sake! The author will probably watch the new War of The Worlds and then begin seeing aliens everywhere he looks, too.
... because even discount store Big Lots is selling Roombas for next to nothing.
A computer crash would be so much more entertaining if it were traced to a pinhole leak in a liquid-sodium-cooled video card.
Mr. Dvorak says, "Normal people do not like being associated with fanatics and lunatics." I wonder... has he made as close an inspection of our current Federal administration and Republican Party as he has of O'Gara and this fracas?
Actually he's half right: people despise fanatics and lunatics, IF THOSE FANATICS ARE THEIR PEERS. However, the dynamic is completely different, IF THEY'RE THE LEADERSHIP. Then people are more than okay with it, they're out there waving flags and banners and buying bumper stickers and sending the fanatics big fat personal checks.