Don't use Facebook... or any social networking site. If you're going to post on a site like Slashdot, consistently fake a few personal details and simply never share others.
Don't use GMail, Hotmail, or any other such system. (I run my own mail server, which is probably not reasonable for most people... but there's also probably a market out there for a small appliance with a domain registration + DNS package that gives you your mail server without too much user effort).
I have friends 'IRL', which is where they belong. If I only ever catch up with you by reading your Facebook page... we're not friends anymore anyway.
You're still going to leave a trail through your credit or debit card, plus whatever government database you're in that is shared in any way, but you can significantly limit the data gathered on you.
Unfortunately, that's less true every day. Every photo you're in is subject to facial recognition and even if it's not location tagged... location recognition probably isn't far behind (I don't like being photographed and every year I let my kids' school know they're not authorized to publish their names or pictures except in the hardcopy yearbooks). Every text post you're mentioned in can be used to build a shadow profile of you. Other people are giving up your personal information for you whether you want them to or not. And, of course... your phone company is pimping you out to data miners like you're a $2 alley-dwelling crack whore.
>Fruit juice and meditation can't do shit about cancer and only hipster morons think so
Eh. I mean, I think they're morons - especially when they're 'cleansing' or having coffee enemas - but except for the sugar, fruit juice is fairly healthy to drink and meditation can reduce stress.
I can see both reducing cancer rates, though I wouldn't swear to any particular percentage (or even any at all) without seeing a credible study first.
It's far less likely that an average citizen of the USA will find the KGB using data against them than their own government. As long as the Russians don't have an interest in you for intelligence gathering, you're going to be ignored and the data will go in a big Russian bit bucket.
Now, anything the NSA gathers on you? That's held to use against you. You're in their backyard and as long as computer processing power keeps increasing, they will keep increasing their data collection and mining operations so they know as much about you as possible, which - whether they ever use that data or not - has a 'chilling effect' on you as a citizen.
Unfortunately, if you're running Windows... you've already lost because Microsoft collects most of what can be collected AND has the keys to your OS for anything more that might be wanted, and the NSA can get whatever they want out of Microsoft whenever they want.
Give me a regular bike where the (ducted / screened) blades fold down for flight when needed, controlled by wire so a computer can keep it level and steady and at a constant altitude so all the rider generally has to worry about is speed and direction.
If I read the article correctly, this compound can only trigger cell death in a cell already primed to die - the problem with cancer cells being they get primed but resist reception of the final 'go' signal. It really shouldn't kill any cells that aren't going to off themselves shortly anyway.
>assume you're a government funding such an expensive endeavor - why wouldn't you design the transmitter to be capable of focusing the beam more tightly, and being a powerful weapon as well?
Because there's no way to use it in a military fashion that is worth the effort. You're not going to melt a tank with it, microwaves are fairly easy to shield against.
> Seize control of the satellite, disable the self-aiming, and boil your selected target. The self-aiming is a feedback-assisted targeting system, not some sort of physical lock.
Says you. It's possible to make it a physical lock so that hacking the software of the satellite is pointless unless you already control the ground you want to cook.
>Similarly, I'm certain that no hackers would ever be able to seize control of the satellite control systems,
I'm willing to live next to a rectenna farm based on the idea that no terrorist group or foreign government will be able to both hack the satellite AND corrupt the ground power supply system.
Besides... as per Wikipedia, they don't make very good death rays anyway:
"Contrary to appearances of SBSP in popular novels and video games, most designs propose beam energy densities that are not harmful if human beings were to be inadvertently exposed, such as if a transmitting satellite's beam were to wander off-course. But the vast size of the receiving antennas that would be necessary would still require large blocks of land near the end users to be procured and dedicated to this purpose."
On the other hand, if you power the microwave beam controls with a maser beamed up from the rectenna farm into a highly directional receptor, you have a situation where you'd have to both corrupt the satellite control software AND provide power from within a limited geographical area on the surface.
If you set up the basic feedback system for your microwave beam in software only, you get what you deserve.
>If the Internet were required for "word of mouth" the phrase wouldn't be "word of mouth"!
The difference is the threshold for communicating is much lower now, especially to large numbers of people.
An average movie simply wouldn't have been much of a topic of conversation for most people, whereas now we're all crawling over social media looking for trivia to gnaw on. Maybe my immediate circle doesn't care what I have to say, but my words - however unimportant - now reach a much larger audience increasing the chance that somebody who might care will see them.
Word of mouth was for movies worthy of taking up time in a one-on-one conversation. Like Star Wars.
There's two kinds of critique, though... technical and the very simple 'What type of person will like this, and how much?"
It's not a bad idea for a professional critic to understand how films are made, why, and how that's different from the past. It is a bad idea for a professional critic to think that's more important than telling me whether I am likely to actually enjoy the movie.
You use self-aiming rectenna farms. Since the satellite requires a signal back from the receiver to operate, it can't be deliberately mis-aimed unless someone with the ability to modify an orbiting satellite wants it to... which means a government.
First, no government would let its own satellite get modified by another entity. Second, any government microwaving a few square kilometers of the Earth would get about the same response as if they'd launched a nuke.
It's really not any more dangerous than multiple other things we have going on today.
Back 'then', when I was a kid, you saw the ad and decided if you wanted to see the movie. There was no Internet for public discussion, so if the movie wasn't awesome there was no word of mouth (good or bad).
That's how I got fooled into seeing Project X, a decent drama about military animal testing. What it wasn't was the hilarious comedy with the star of Ferris Bueller in it that it was marketed as.
When you see movie industry types bitching about reviews these days, they're not complaining about the substance of the reviews, but their ability to stop you from being fooled into going to a movie you wouldn't go to if you were adequately informed.
The energy has to come from somewhere, it's not free. The carbon cycle is a potential storage mechanism, not a power generator.
I remain a dreamer - I like space-based solar beaming power to Earth, because it requires less land and is impervious to cloud cover and axial tilt, and somewhat less affected by day/night cycles.
> The tech industry should get away from this notion that every child should learn to code.
I would be happy with the education industry getting on board with the idea that all children should be taught how to break down a job into steps and organize them into logical units in a logical order. Now THAT is a useful and fairly general life skill.
You joke, but I imagine if we ever filtered enough CO2 out of the global atmosphere to return to where we believe it should be, we throttle back sequestration and then use the atmosphere as a short-term carbon sink - burn something (hopefully something fairly clean-burning), capture the carbon later and turn it back into fuel again.
There's already software out there that will take a camera input and apply another person's facial features to the feed, in real time. And other software directors are using to 'correct' takes by altering an actor's expression digitally.
Realistic artificial porn is not too far off, and at some point you'll be able to submit your desired parameters and have your computer locally generate whatever you desire, instantly.
It'll probably take longer to replace actors, because porn generally doesn't require much in the way of speech or complex facial or body language.
I would go so far as to say ANY object probably has rings if there isn't anything to disrupt them (where anything can include 'sufficiently long periods of time').
If you think about it, stars are like galactic rings, the Kuiper belt and asteroid belt are rings around the Sun... it's no surprise to me that something that forms from particle collisions has some leftovers spinning around it.
So much excitement over building a maglev train in a depressurized tube, with all the difficulties that entails, and so many claims that it's going to be more cost effective to implement than traditional rail.
I get the excitement, I don't buy the claims. Right of way issues are similar, safety issues are greater.
If you want something revolutionary, just build an elevated half-pipe and run high-speed 3-person pods on non-standard powered rails, and add computerization for per-pod routing, dynamic formation of trains for slip-stream effect, etc.
A fraction of the cost, a fraction of the safety issues, and you can do it now without any revolutionary engineering or tech. So it won't be as fast... if it's easier, less expensive, and more reliable, few will care.
A human can handle things like, "Upon reaching the entrance to that rural property, follow the gravel until it looks like a better idea to be on the dirt path, and maybe park on the grass next to that other car".
People are already talking about self-driving cars without any operator controls, and I just don't see that happening without a general AI, because there's so much knowledge and abstract understanding of the world required to operate a car in unusual circumstances.
Or, for those of us in snowy climates, to operate a car when the road isn't visible and you have to make judgement calls on where the pavement most likely is based on whatever cues you can find.
Or how to cooperatively route through or around construction without being so polite you sit there forever while all the pushy drivers jam in front of you.
I doubt I'll still be alive before there's a car that doesn't need a human to operate it a significant amount of the time. I would very much like to be able to put my car on 'autopilot' while on a long highway drive in good conditions and take a nap without fear of dying in my sleep, and I think that's achievable.
>if you are going to reinvigorate an old franchise - and to successfully play on nostalgia to sell it - you will have to respect the original.
I've never understood why you wouldn't. When you don't, you're essentially starting a new franchise, while simultaneously limiting your creative scope AND pissing off the previous incarnation's fans.
Either make something new (which can often mean nothing more than a new title and switching the character names if you're not particularly inspired), or make something that fits with what's gone before.
If you respect the past, you have a chance of keeping the old fan base in addition to whoever is newly exposed to your production.
Slashdot Mirror
>so was Microsoft hanging onto zero-days for other companies?
Microsoft sells more than just an OS.
Don't use Facebook... or any social networking site. If you're going to post on a site like Slashdot, consistently fake a few personal details and simply never share others.
Don't use GMail, Hotmail, or any other such system. (I run my own mail server, which is probably not reasonable for most people... but there's also probably a market out there for a small appliance with a domain registration + DNS package that gives you your mail server without too much user effort).
I have friends 'IRL', which is where they belong. If I only ever catch up with you by reading your Facebook page... we're not friends anymore anyway.
You're still going to leave a trail through your credit or debit card, plus whatever government database you're in that is shared in any way, but you can significantly limit the data gathered on you.
Unfortunately, that's less true every day. Every photo you're in is subject to facial recognition and even if it's not location tagged... location recognition probably isn't far behind (I don't like being photographed and every year I let my kids' school know they're not authorized to publish their names or pictures except in the hardcopy yearbooks). Every text post you're mentioned in can be used to build a shadow profile of you. Other people are giving up your personal information for you whether you want them to or not. And, of course... your phone company is pimping you out to data miners like you're a $2 alley-dwelling crack whore.
>Fruit juice and meditation can't do shit about cancer and only hipster morons think so
Eh. I mean, I think they're morons - especially when they're 'cleansing' or having coffee enemas - but except for the sugar, fruit juice is fairly healthy to drink and meditation can reduce stress.
I can see both reducing cancer rates, though I wouldn't swear to any particular percentage (or even any at all) without seeing a credible study first.
It's far less likely that an average citizen of the USA will find the KGB using data against them than their own government. As long as the Russians don't have an interest in you for intelligence gathering, you're going to be ignored and the data will go in a big Russian bit bucket.
Now, anything the NSA gathers on you? That's held to use against you. You're in their backyard and as long as computer processing power keeps increasing, they will keep increasing their data collection and mining operations so they know as much about you as possible, which - whether they ever use that data or not - has a 'chilling effect' on you as a citizen.
Unfortunately, if you're running Windows... you've already lost because Microsoft collects most of what can be collected AND has the keys to your OS for anything more that might be wanted, and the NSA can get whatever they want out of Microsoft whenever they want.
>Should just be careful what they download and what links they click on.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to accidentally drink polonium tea after posting an insult to Putin on social media...
Give me a regular bike where the (ducted / screened) blades fold down for flight when needed, controlled by wire so a computer can keep it level and steady and at a constant altitude so all the rider generally has to worry about is speed and direction.
That thing, as is, is a stupid waste of money.
If I read the article correctly, this compound can only trigger cell death in a cell already primed to die - the problem with cancer cells being they get primed but resist reception of the final 'go' signal. It really shouldn't kill any cells that aren't going to off themselves shortly anyway.
Then again, IANA oncology researcher.
>assume you're a government funding such an expensive endeavor - why wouldn't you design the transmitter to be capable of focusing the beam more tightly, and being a powerful weapon as well?
Because there's no way to use it in a military fashion that is worth the effort. You're not going to melt a tank with it, microwaves are fairly easy to shield against.
> Seize control of the satellite, disable the self-aiming, and boil your selected target. The self-aiming is a feedback-assisted targeting system, not some sort of physical lock.
Says you. It's possible to make it a physical lock so that hacking the software of the satellite is pointless unless you already control the ground you want to cook.
>Similarly, I'm certain that no hackers would ever be able to seize control of the satellite control systems,
I'm willing to live next to a rectenna farm based on the idea that no terrorist group or foreign government will be able to both hack the satellite AND corrupt the ground power supply system.
Besides... as per Wikipedia, they don't make very good death rays anyway:
"Contrary to appearances of SBSP in popular novels and video games, most designs propose beam energy densities that are not harmful if human beings were to be inadvertently exposed, such as if a transmitting satellite's beam were to wander off-course. But the vast size of the receiving antennas that would be necessary would still require large blocks of land near the end users to be procured and dedicated to this purpose."
On the other hand, if you power the microwave beam controls with a maser beamed up from the rectenna farm into a highly directional receptor, you have a situation where you'd have to both corrupt the satellite control software AND provide power from within a limited geographical area on the surface.
If you set up the basic feedback system for your microwave beam in software only, you get what you deserve.
> The actual frequencies used were likely above and perhaps even below what regular audio recording would pick up
I'd bet on ultrasound. A nice way to deliver damaging energy to a human ear without that ear detecting it.
At 120db it causes hearing damage.
>If the Internet were required for "word of mouth" the phrase wouldn't be "word of mouth"!
The difference is the threshold for communicating is much lower now, especially to large numbers of people.
An average movie simply wouldn't have been much of a topic of conversation for most people, whereas now we're all crawling over social media looking for trivia to gnaw on. Maybe my immediate circle doesn't care what I have to say, but my words - however unimportant - now reach a much larger audience increasing the chance that somebody who might care will see them.
Word of mouth was for movies worthy of taking up time in a one-on-one conversation. Like Star Wars.
There's two kinds of critique, though... technical and the very simple 'What type of person will like this, and how much?"
It's not a bad idea for a professional critic to understand how films are made, why, and how that's different from the past. It is a bad idea for a professional critic to think that's more important than telling me whether I am likely to actually enjoy the movie.
You use self-aiming rectenna farms. Since the satellite requires a signal back from the receiver to operate, it can't be deliberately mis-aimed unless someone with the ability to modify an orbiting satellite wants it to... which means a government.
First, no government would let its own satellite get modified by another entity. Second, any government microwaving a few square kilometers of the Earth would get about the same response as if they'd launched a nuke.
It's really not any more dangerous than multiple other things we have going on today.
Back 'then', when I was a kid, you saw the ad and decided if you wanted to see the movie. There was no Internet for public discussion, so if the movie wasn't awesome there was no word of mouth (good or bad).
That's how I got fooled into seeing Project X, a decent drama about military animal testing. What it wasn't was the hilarious comedy with the star of Ferris Bueller in it that it was marketed as.
When you see movie industry types bitching about reviews these days, they're not complaining about the substance of the reviews, but their ability to stop you from being fooled into going to a movie you wouldn't go to if you were adequately informed.
Two words: Fuck them.
The energy has to come from somewhere, it's not free. The carbon cycle is a potential storage mechanism, not a power generator.
I remain a dreamer - I like space-based solar beaming power to Earth, because it requires less land and is impervious to cloud cover and axial tilt, and somewhat less affected by day/night cycles.
> The tech industry should get away from this notion that every child should learn to code.
I would be happy with the education industry getting on board with the idea that all children should be taught how to break down a job into steps and organize them into logical units in a logical order. Now THAT is a useful and fairly general life skill.
Coding, not so much.
You joke, but I imagine if we ever filtered enough CO2 out of the global atmosphere to return to where we believe it should be, we throttle back sequestration and then use the atmosphere as a short-term carbon sink - burn something (hopefully something fairly clean-burning), capture the carbon later and turn it back into fuel again.
My post didn't take a cent of public money, so I don't really see why you needed to get your panties in a wad.
There's already software out there that will take a camera input and apply another person's facial features to the feed, in real time. And other software directors are using to 'correct' takes by altering an actor's expression digitally.
Realistic artificial porn is not too far off, and at some point you'll be able to submit your desired parameters and have your computer locally generate whatever you desire, instantly.
It'll probably take longer to replace actors, because porn generally doesn't require much in the way of speech or complex facial or body language.
I would go so far as to say ANY object probably has rings if there isn't anything to disrupt them (where anything can include 'sufficiently long periods of time').
If you think about it, stars are like galactic rings, the Kuiper belt and asteroid belt are rings around the Sun... it's no surprise to me that something that forms from particle collisions has some leftovers spinning around it.
So much excitement over building a maglev train in a depressurized tube, with all the difficulties that entails, and so many claims that it's going to be more cost effective to implement than traditional rail.
I get the excitement, I don't buy the claims. Right of way issues are similar, safety issues are greater.
If you want something revolutionary, just build an elevated half-pipe and run high-speed 3-person pods on non-standard powered rails, and add computerization for per-pod routing, dynamic formation of trains for slip-stream effect, etc.
A fraction of the cost, a fraction of the safety issues, and you can do it now without any revolutionary engineering or tech. So it won't be as fast... if it's easier, less expensive, and more reliable, few will care.
A human can handle things like, "Upon reaching the entrance to that rural property, follow the gravel until it looks like a better idea to be on the dirt path, and maybe park on the grass next to that other car".
People are already talking about self-driving cars without any operator controls, and I just don't see that happening without a general AI, because there's so much knowledge and abstract understanding of the world required to operate a car in unusual circumstances.
Or, for those of us in snowy climates, to operate a car when the road isn't visible and you have to make judgement calls on where the pavement most likely is based on whatever cues you can find.
Or how to cooperatively route through or around construction without being so polite you sit there forever while all the pushy drivers jam in front of you.
I doubt I'll still be alive before there's a car that doesn't need a human to operate it a significant amount of the time. I would very much like to be able to put my car on 'autopilot' while on a long highway drive in good conditions and take a nap without fear of dying in my sleep, and I think that's achievable.
Allowing that bundling to be ubiquitous was a really bad thing for consumer choice.
Negative options are evil.
>if you are going to reinvigorate an old franchise - and to successfully play on nostalgia to sell it - you will have to respect the original.
I've never understood why you wouldn't. When you don't, you're essentially starting a new franchise, while simultaneously limiting your creative scope AND pissing off the previous incarnation's fans.
Either make something new (which can often mean nothing more than a new title and switching the character names if you're not particularly inspired), or make something that fits with what's gone before.
If you respect the past, you have a chance of keeping the old fan base in addition to whoever is newly exposed to your production.