So, we're 29% away from making Ethanol a paying proposition, from the sounds of it. Great, so let's push it, get some economies of scale, and then for say a 25% or even 20% premium, we can get away from dependance on foreign oil. Let's start giving our money to the USA's farmers, instead of to people in parts of the world where they want to kill us.
I'd rather see the US government subsidise ethanol production, than to have that money spent to temporarily have certain countries pretend they're our friends.
Yeah, right. Why'll you're at it, ask them where they hide the lo-jack equipment on cars and how to disable it.
Well, if it turns out it's software (other responses indicate it goes into the MBR on the hard drive, so it is), and can be defeated by something as simple as throwing away the hard drive or reformatting it to *nix, then it doesn't give any real protection. The bad guys aren't stupid, they're dishonest. They'll toss (or maybe even use *nix to reformat) the hard drive, install the system, and be back up and running. Net effect is that this gives only minimal protection.
Don't get me wrong, I'm OK with them selling it; if criminals think that laptops might rat them out if they steal them, they won't steal as many laptops. So, by that uncertainty, my laptop is less likely to be stolen. So, while I wouldn't bother with this for my own systems (windows-specific limitations aside), I don't have any problem with them selling it to people who feel it's good enough for what they want.
TFA is remarkably lacking in technical details, so I looked at LoJack's site, which doesn't mention a thing about this. So - is this a hardware solution, or a program that gets installed into an existing OS? If the latter, well, how useful is that? While the slashdot crowd and the laptop-stealing crowd probably don't have a whole lot of overlap, I can't see someone not just re-installing the OS to wipe the system in any case.
The spyware and firewall questions seem important as well - if this is just a "Hey, this is box XYZ and I'm at this IP address", talking to lojack's servers, well, fine, but how does the end-user know that they haven't blocked that with their firewall?
I'd love to see something technical on this, rather than some stock-tip-guy's interpretation.
So, assuming you're the mod in question, you disagree with my post. That's fine, but it doesn't make it _redundant_. Redundant means "you just posted what other people in the thread have already posted". But hey, if you want to blow your mod points on stupid calls, go right ahead, I'm (a) not hurting for karma, and (b) have the balls to say what I have to say under my own ID.
I will give your cowardly anonymous opinion all the consideration it merits.
There, that was quick. Your point might have any weight at all if you stood behind. On the off chance that you bother to read responses to your random anonymous flames, what aspect of the trademark do you feel that I'm being an idiot about? Please show examples, compare and contrast to "Coke", "Kleenex" and so on, and show me where, O wise and glorious cowardly anonymous troll, I have misunderstood the situation
I made my post when no others were visible in the thread, and I don't see any others making the same points, and you called it "redundant"? Would you care to explain your thinking please?
How the heck can anyone get away with trademarking a common word? Can I trademark the word "trademark" and send the world into a self-referential abyss?
I'm an apple user and supporter, but this is just silly. Name it that, fine, but don't try to limit other people from using it.
Google for "liberator pistol". Made of stamped steel and some very simple parts, by the Guide Lamp division of General Motors. If you can find one, it'll cost you about $2000 - $3000 US - they're that rare. I've seen one in ten years that wasn't in a museum.
As someone else said - the point wasn't to use it as a combat weapon, it was to shoot someone _with_ a combat weapon so you could take their gun and use that. 7 shots of.45 ACP were in various places inside the stamped steel body, but reloading it involved partially taking it apart.
The french/Italian "Air car" is vaporware. They have a demo unit, and plans to build a factory "real soon now" - as they have for many years. While their addressable electronics idea is interesting, it pales in importance compared to the facts that (a) you can't buy one, (b) they aren't building any, and (c) the efficiencies are horrible - which is why (a) and (b).
Other than that, it's a great idea. Damn inconvenient laws of physics. But yes, their electrical system is innovative.
Not sure why I bother submitting corrections anymore to articles in "The mysterious future", but TFA is clearly talking about hand tremor, not "hand tumors".
I was going to mod this as "troll", but I'd really really like to know what you claim your story is. Your credibility might be better if you don't hide behind a/c status, but in any case, what are you claiming happened, exactly?
They haven't completely duplicated the service of TiVo yet but they have charged a heck of a lot less.
My Tivo was 100 bucks. I've got 70 gig of disk in there, some ram, and so on. If Tivo dies, the hardware is worth all of that, easily. And Tivo service adds 5 bucks a month to my satellite bill. 5 bucks. I can't see how "a heck of a lot less" can possibly enter the equation when we're talking 12 cents a day to start with.
My sister has a PVR on her cable TV - it's OK, but it misses the critical features that make Tivo useful to me. I don't have to know or care when (or if) something I'll like is on, it records it for me, and there's always somethign to watch. I haven't watched live TV for anything but (rarely) news in years.
As far as holding off to see if Tivo dies - you can't use an IDE drive or two? I assure you, if they do die, within days there will be sites dedicated to turning a Tivo into a standalone computer, probably others with free guide feeds, and so on.
If you want one, don't wait, buy it. Worst case (for Tivo) would suck, but it wouldn't be all that bad for you with the box.
Most of Microsoft's static web content is served by Akamai, ever since the DDOS that pointed to windowsupdate.com. It was pretty entertaining to ask Netcraft what Microsoft was running and have it report (truthfully) that their web content was coming from Linux boxes.
Of course, all this sort of obscures the greater issue: why should the federal government withhold funds for stem-cell research at all?
And, that's a good and valid question. Strangely enough, I agree with them not funding it, but I disagree with the reason for doing so. Kind of like when a Senator votes against something you don't like, but for a different reason than you don't like it.
The good news is, like any other research, if there's enough potential in it producing useful results, there are state and private monies available for it. If this research can't attract that money either, then maybe there's a reason for that, that doesn't involve politics. I don't know. California is (going to be?) paying for research, for instance. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not.
My point never has been "we shouldn't pay for this", though, my point is "there's not a ban on stem cell research, and I resent lying politicians claiming there is". That's all.
And while I agree there's no legal ban on embryonic stem cell research, the current state of federal funding policy makes it impossible for research to continue without risking funding for unrelated projects.
Yes, if you work on certain projects, you are expected to keep track of what gets used for it. Just like, oh, pretty much anything else in the business world. You don't work on Client A's stuff on Client B's dime, why should labwork be any different?
By the way, can you show me something official showing that all 22 lines are contaminated? I just spent more than a little time at google trying to find a number one way or the other and found nothing other than 70 original lines and 22 active.
I have to say that Replay's in-show navigation beats the hell out of TiVo's because of the JUMP button.
OK, I guess. Seems like a non-feature to me, because I tend to watch TV shows in, you know, a linear fashion. Start at the beginning, skip the commercials, watch to the end (or delete if it's garbage). I can't think of the last time, for instance, I wanted to go to a particular timestamp in a program and just watch a part of it. I suppose if I did, and wanted to go 1 hour and 20 minutes in, I'd FFF-fwd until I got there. But, I can't imagine anything that I'd use that for, unless it was "Hey, check out what happened in the halftime show" or something.
TiVo, on the other hand, doesn't even have a "skip 30 seconds button" -- just a hack that must be re-entered every time the unit loses power (such as in a power outage).
Yes, it's a whole 7-keys you have to press. How often do you lose power at your house?
...no lnoger back up to the beginning of a program...
Wrong again. You can still get to those ticks by going into ff/rew and then hitting that same button. Even if hitting two keys bothers you, you can ff/rew at 1 second per minute if you want.
For some reason, I see a lot of ReplayTV enthusiasts badmouth Tivo, about things which aren't true. While I can see arguing about feature differences that actually exist, making things up about Tivo to say how bad it is, says alot about your point of view.
So since a specific, small set of experiments have had problems, you've decided the set of "all potential current and future stem cell researchers" is filled with nothing but incompetents?
No, I'm saying that if someone has already shown they can't keep their sample clean, we shouldn't give them yet more money to screw up again. Give grant money to the people who are getting somewhere in their research, not screwing up the line they've been given to work on.
Or, are you saying we should, you know, reward failure? (why am I bothering responding to an AC in the first place?)
Two minutes with Google could have set you straight.
I understand the techniques involved. You can't tell me that they can't differentiate between a polluted sample and a non-polluted one. Like I said, disagree with the government not wanting to pay to start new lines, that's fine, but don't pretend there's a ban on embrionic stem cell research, because there is no ban. I'm convinced that Kerry lost votes because people who know that didn't like him lying and talking about it as if it existed. I'm also a bit annoyed that Bush let him get away with it during the debates, but that's a different issue.
This argument had a lot more validity before it was reported that all the "approved" stem cell lines were contaminated.
So, sloppy research methods (contaminating a sample? Come on, this is junior high stuff guys.) Why should someone get _more_ federal funding when they've shown they're not capable of not polluting their own research? Sorry, but if anything, the fact that they screwed that up says they deserve _less_ federal funding, not more.
I'd like to mention at this point that the "ban on stem-cell research" that so many people get worked up about, doesn't exist. There is nothing saying "don't do that" (it's being done). There is nothing saying "don't start any new embryonic stem cell lines for research" (anyone who wants to, can). There is nothing saying "The federal government (US) won't pay for embrionic stem cell research" (they do). What the US government won't pay for is for any additional embrionic stem cell lines to be created for research.
While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.
To American slashdotters : this is what you get when you have 45 million uninsured Americans, and yet your nation votes against a candidate that promised universal health coverage in favor of another who chose to limit stem-cell research on religious grounds.
For the record, yes, Kerry promised "universal health coverage", but as a senator he voted against it. It was easy to find him saying something you agree with, because he took both sides of so many issues trying to gain votes from people who weren't paying attention to how his words and deeds don't agree with each other. He supported the war in Iraq until the polls showed that Dean was getting better support, because he opposed it. Presto-chango, now he opposes the war in Iraq, and his numbers went up.
So...just because he says he supports something, doesn't mean he wouldn't change his mind if the wind switched direction. I know the "flip-flop" thing is seen as somewhat cliche', but it's got basis in reality.
Slashdot Mirror
So, we're 29% away from making Ethanol a paying proposition, from the sounds of it. Great, so let's push it, get some economies of scale, and then for say a 25% or even 20% premium, we can get away from dependance on foreign oil. Let's start giving our money to the USA's farmers, instead of to people in parts of the world where they want to kill us.
I'd rather see the US government subsidise ethanol production, than to have that money spent to temporarily have certain countries pretend they're our friends.
Yeah, right. Why'll you're at it, ask them where they hide the lo-jack equipment on cars and how to disable it.
Well, if it turns out it's software (other responses indicate it goes into the MBR on the hard drive, so it is), and can be defeated by something as simple as throwing away the hard drive or reformatting it to *nix, then it doesn't give any real protection. The bad guys aren't stupid, they're dishonest. They'll toss (or maybe even use *nix to reformat) the hard drive, install the system, and be back up and running. Net effect is that this gives only minimal protection.
Don't get me wrong, I'm OK with them selling it; if criminals think that laptops might rat them out if they steal them, they won't steal as many laptops. So, by that uncertainty, my laptop is less likely to be stolen. So, while I wouldn't bother with this for my own systems (windows-specific limitations aside), I don't have any problem with them selling it to people who feel it's good enough for what they want.
TFA is remarkably lacking in technical details, so I looked at LoJack's site, which doesn't mention a thing about this. So - is this a hardware solution, or a program that gets installed into an existing OS? If the latter, well, how useful is that? While the slashdot crowd and the laptop-stealing crowd probably don't have a whole lot of overlap, I can't see someone not just re-installing the OS to wipe the system in any case.
The spyware and firewall questions seem important as well - if this is just a "Hey, this is box XYZ and I'm at this IP address", talking to lojack's servers, well, fine, but how does the end-user know that they haven't blocked that with their firewall?
I'd love to see something technical on this, rather than some stock-tip-guy's interpretation.
(posting anonymously)
Don't look now, halo8, but you forgot to click the "post anonymously" button...
So, assuming you're the mod in question, you disagree with my post. That's fine, but it doesn't make it _redundant_. Redundant means "you just posted what other people in the thread have already posted". But hey, if you want to blow your mod points on stupid calls, go right ahead, I'm (a) not hurting for karma, and (b) have the balls to say what I have to say under my own ID.
I will give your cowardly anonymous opinion all the consideration it merits.
There, that was quick. Your point might have any weight at all if you stood behind. On the off chance that you bother to read responses to your random anonymous flames, what aspect of the trademark do you feel that I'm being an idiot about? Please show examples, compare and contrast to "Coke", "Kleenex" and so on, and show me where, O wise and glorious cowardly anonymous troll, I have misunderstood the situation
Or just go away, that'd be fine too.
I made my post when no others were visible in the thread, and I don't see any others making the same points, and you called it "redundant"? Would you care to explain your thinking please?
How the heck can anyone get away with trademarking a common word? Can I trademark the word "trademark" and send the world into a self-referential abyss?
I'm an apple user and supporter, but this is just silly. Name it that, fine, but don't try to limit other people from using it.
what?! Care to explain or cite?
.45 ACP were in various places inside the stamped steel body, but reloading it involved partially taking it apart.
Google for "liberator pistol". Made of stamped steel and some very simple parts, by the Guide Lamp division of General Motors. If you can find one, it'll cost you about $2000 - $3000 US - they're that rare. I've seen one in ten years that wasn't in a museum.
As someone else said - the point wasn't to use it as a combat weapon, it was to shoot someone _with_ a combat weapon so you could take their gun and use that. 7 shots of
http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/liber.htm has a bit of a write-up on it.
The french/Italian "Air car" is vaporware. They have a demo unit, and plans to build a factory "real soon now" - as they have for many years. While their addressable electronics idea is interesting, it pales in importance compared to the facts that (a) you can't buy one, (b) they aren't building any, and (c) the efficiencies are horrible - which is why (a) and (b).
Other than that, it's a great idea. Damn inconvenient laws of physics. But yes, their electrical system is innovative.
This isn't flamebait, mods, this is insightful, informative, and interesting. The guy is right on.
Now, no one fixes anything, they swap some suspect crap around and chunk the suspect.
If you think he's being offensive, apparently you're the board-swapping monkey type that he's talking about.
Not sure why I bother submitting corrections anymore to articles in "The mysterious future", but TFA is clearly talking about hand tremor, not "hand tumors".
Maybe, just maybe, the Mac owners understand something that you don't, A/C.
I was going to mod this as "troll", but I'd really really like to know what you claim your story is. Your credibility might be better if you don't hide behind a/c status, but in any case, what are you claiming happened, exactly?
They haven't completely duplicated the service of TiVo yet but they have charged a heck of a lot less.
My Tivo was 100 bucks. I've got 70 gig of disk in there, some ram, and so on. If Tivo dies, the hardware is worth all of that, easily. And Tivo service adds 5 bucks a month to my satellite bill. 5 bucks. I can't see how "a heck of a lot less" can possibly enter the equation when we're talking 12 cents a day to start with.
My sister has a PVR on her cable TV - it's OK, but it misses the critical features that make Tivo useful to me. I don't have to know or care when (or if) something I'll like is on, it records it for me, and there's always somethign to watch. I haven't watched live TV for anything but (rarely) news in years.
As far as holding off to see if Tivo dies - you can't use an IDE drive or two? I assure you, if they do die, within days there will be sites dedicated to turning a Tivo into a standalone computer, probably others with free guide feeds, and so on.
If you want one, don't wait, buy it. Worst case (for Tivo) would suck, but it wouldn't be all that bad for you with the box.
Most of Microsoft's static web content is served by Akamai, ever since the DDOS that pointed to windowsupdate.com. It was pretty entertaining to ask Netcraft what Microsoft was running and have it report (truthfully) that their web content was coming from Linux boxes.
Of course, all this sort of obscures the greater issue: why should the federal government withhold funds for stem-cell research at all?
And, that's a good and valid question. Strangely enough, I agree with them not funding it, but I disagree with the reason for doing so. Kind of like when a Senator votes against something you don't like, but for a different reason than you don't like it.
The good news is, like any other research, if there's enough potential in it producing useful results, there are state and private monies available for it. If this research can't attract that money either, then maybe there's a reason for that, that doesn't involve politics. I don't know. California is (going to be?) paying for research, for instance. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not.
My point never has been "we shouldn't pay for this", though, my point is "there's not a ban on stem cell research, and I resent lying politicians claiming there is". That's all.
And while I agree there's no legal ban on embryonic stem cell research, the current state of federal funding policy makes it impossible for research to continue without risking funding for unrelated projects.
Yes, if you work on certain projects, you are expected to keep track of what gets used for it. Just like, oh, pretty much anything else in the business world. You don't work on Client A's stuff on Client B's dime, why should labwork be any different?
By the way, can you show me something official showing that all 22 lines are contaminated? I just spent more than a little time at google trying to find a number one way or the other and found nothing other than 70 original lines and 22 active.
I have to say that Replay's in-show navigation beats the hell out of TiVo's because of the JUMP button.
OK, I guess. Seems like a non-feature to me, because I tend to watch TV shows in, you know, a linear fashion. Start at the beginning, skip the commercials, watch to the end (or delete if it's garbage). I can't think of the last time, for instance, I wanted to go to a particular timestamp in a program and just watch a part of it. I suppose if I did, and wanted to go 1 hour and 20 minutes in, I'd FFF-fwd until I got there. But, I can't imagine anything that I'd use that for, unless it was "Hey, check out what happened in the halftime show" or something.
TiVo, on the other hand, doesn't even have a "skip 30 seconds button" -- just a hack that must be re-entered every time the unit loses power (such as in a power outage).
...no lnoger back up to the beginning of a program...
Yes, it's a whole 7-keys you have to press. How often do you lose power at your house?
Wrong again. You can still get to those ticks by going into ff/rew and then hitting that same button. Even if hitting two keys bothers you, you can ff/rew at 1 second per minute if you want.
For some reason, I see a lot of ReplayTV enthusiasts badmouth Tivo, about things which aren't true. While I can see arguing about feature differences that actually exist, making things up about Tivo to say how bad it is, says alot about your point of view.
So since a specific, small set of experiments have had problems, you've decided the set of "all potential current and future stem cell researchers" is filled with nothing but incompetents?
No, I'm saying that if someone has already shown they can't keep their sample clean, we shouldn't give them yet more money to screw up again. Give grant money to the people who are getting somewhere in their research, not screwing up the line they've been given to work on.
Or, are you saying we should, you know, reward failure? (why am I bothering responding to an AC in the first place?)
Two minutes with Google could have set you straight.
I understand the techniques involved. You can't tell me that they can't differentiate between a polluted sample and a non-polluted one. Like I said, disagree with the government not wanting to pay to start new lines, that's fine, but don't pretend there's a ban on embrionic stem cell research, because there is no ban. I'm convinced that Kerry lost votes because people who know that didn't like him lying and talking about it as if it existed. I'm also a bit annoyed that Bush let him get away with it during the debates, but that's a different issue.
This argument had a lot more validity before it was reported that all the "approved" stem cell lines were contaminated.
So, sloppy research methods (contaminating a sample? Come on, this is junior high stuff guys.) Why should someone get _more_ federal funding when they've shown they're not capable of not polluting their own research? Sorry, but if anything, the fact that they screwed that up says they deserve _less_ federal funding, not more.
I'd like to mention at this point that the "ban on stem-cell research" that so many people get worked up about, doesn't exist. There is nothing saying "don't do that" (it's being done). There is nothing saying "don't start any new embryonic stem cell lines for research" (anyone who wants to, can). There is nothing saying "The federal government (US) won't pay for embrionic stem cell research" (they do). What the US government won't pay for is for any additional embrionic stem cell lines to be created for research.
While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.
To American slashdotters : this is what you get when you have 45 million uninsured Americans, and yet your nation votes against a candidate that promised universal health coverage in favor of another who chose to limit stem-cell research on religious grounds.
For the record, yes, Kerry promised "universal health coverage", but as a senator he voted against it. It was easy to find him saying something you agree with, because he took both sides of so many issues trying to gain votes from people who weren't paying attention to how his words and deeds don't agree with each other. He supported the war in Iraq until the polls showed that Dean was getting better support, because he opposed it. Presto-chango, now he opposes the war in Iraq, and his numbers went up.
So...just because he says he supports something, doesn't mean he wouldn't change his mind if the wind switched direction. I know the "flip-flop" thing is seen as somewhat cliche', but it's got basis in reality.