Here's a question: Does this cure and/or prevent just the addiction? Or does it kill off the high you get? If it's the former, I'd say that heroine use would skyrocket because there would be no repercussions. If it's the latter and the effects are permanent, should this be required by law just like MMR vaccines?
Seriously? Seriously?!?! Why is this necessary? I really don't get texting. It's such a backward form of communication. Star Trek never used texting. Space: 1999 had video chatting. I personally refuse to text and don't have a texting plan on my phone. If I need to talk to someone, I'll make a regular phone call. It's more efficient for getting a straight answer and you'll have a much better idea of the emotional component to communication.
All RF transmitters spit out harmonics. My guess is that Lightsquared's hardware spits out huge amounts of harmonics that stomp all over GPS frequencies and they're freaking out for a bunch of possible reasons. 1) They probably went ahead and built a sh*tload of devices before they got FCC approval and now all of that will have to be scrapped, 2) It's going to cost a bunch of money to redesign the hardware correctly, 3) the redesigned hardware is going to cost a hell of a lot more to mass produce so their potential market will shrink significantly.
Another possible reason speaks to rhombic's comment and that is that the effective range of their hardware is going to be severely limited if they are required to meet FCC requirements thus making the product far less attractive than cellphone-based internet.
There are also political skeletons in this case a la Solyndra but that's a separate issue.
What I'm wondering is why some company hasn't acquired the rights-of-way that Metricom owned back when they were offering wireless internet access before the cellphone companies got involved. If you used a self-healing mesh networking system a put transceivers on traffic lights and street light poles, you could have a potentially nice setup.
IMHO, this is what keeps embedded Linux from gaining universal acceptance. Some applications don't care about boot times. Some don't care because you don't boot them regularly. But a two-second boot time and a power-loss tolerant file system are needed for any Linux appliance that runs off batteries.
How long does this thing take to boot? The fastest boot time I've seen on a Linux system is 6 seconds. That's if you include USB which seems to suck up 2/3 of the boot time.
You can take search criteria to extremes as in the examples you mention. But for fairly basic things like age range, education level, religious inclinations, political leanings, you'd think you could find a lot of matches.
I read just the other day that supposedly men add 2 inches to their actual height in online profiles. Okay, well, if you're attempting to be honest yet women assume you're lying, that's a recipe for a GIGO system.
I read somewhere that the Columbia disaster would have never happened had NASA stuck to the original design of the fuel tank. Originally it was white but the orange foam was added later because NASA quit using CFCs to refrigerate the propellant. The theory concludes that NASA caved to the environmentalist movement resulting in the death of the Columbia crew.
"I'm sorry, my responses are limited. You must ask the right questions." This study doesn't query what the divorce rate is for couples who met via an online dating service. Year after year, more of my friends who met their spouses via traditional methods are getting divorced. If the rate is significantly lower for online-dating couples, then I say this is a good thing.
Now, as to my own story, I tried eHarmony (aka eDischord) a few years back. After enduring the lengthy questionnaire, I started the search. I was living in L.A. at the time so you might think that it's a target-rich environment. I punched in my usual desired criteria. No matches within a 10-mile radius. Widened to 25 miles. No matches. 50-mile radius. No matches. (50 miles in L.A. is a long-distance relationship, btw). 100-mile radius. No matches. Entire U.S. No matches. At that point, I started to turn off criteria. I pretty much had to turn off every search criteria before it came up with anything. Result: A hairdresser in Fresno. *facepalm* Seriously, Dr. Neil Clark Warren? Seriously? I'm an engineer in L.A. who owns his own business. What could I possibly have in common with a hairdresser in Fresno?
Well, since the unit wasn't sent back until 2029, I figure we have a few years left to invent it. Then again, Skynet should have been active since 1997 so something has messed with that timeline.
Quite true. That's one of the things that sucks about the current crop of electric cars. IMHO, if you want to really sell an electric car, it must have the following features:
1) 300-500 mile range. 2) Be able to carry four adults with all their luggage for that range. 3) Recharge time of less than 5 minutes. 4) Not look like a total dorkmobile. Other than the Tesla roadster, every design looks like something a communist country would come up with. Bleah. 5) Here's the real challenge: Be able to charge the thing in the middle of stinking nowhere. Don't force me to to live in a major city where a specialized charging station happens to have been installed. IMHO, that's a big unintended consequence to forcing people to buy electric cars. No more rural living.
Perhaps but an average human forearm can curl 50 lbs. A motor that can do that might draw about 70 amps. Sure, lithium packs can deliver that kind of current but the capacity isn't there to be able to do this very long. A Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 has a power cell that lasts 120 years.
All of this science-fiction turned reality is only as good as the power source. Jet packs, Aliens-style power loaders, autonomous humanoid robots, exoskeletons, electric cars. All useless without the über battery and we humans have been failing on that for decades.
1) GPS manufacturers are not a direct competitor to a wireless networking company. If Verizon or AT&T were complaining they might have a case. 2) GPS was there first. 3) Clearly the Lightsquared hardware is spitting out a harmonic which could be fixed but would probably make the devices much more expensive to produce. 4) Lightsquared has been trying this case in the court of public opinion by running full page newspaper ads instead of dealing with the technology issues. 5) Lightsquared has been making huge political donations and receiving government grant funding which makes the whole thing stink like old fish.
There is no unionization of technical talent. IMHO, they figured out early on that they could make a boatload of money without some middlemen A) telling them that they're being treated like crap and B) if they only paid them money they would have a better standard of living.
That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers out there who would dearly love a residual payment every time a piece of software they wrote was used just like Hollywood and music industry talent gets. Of course, that goes against the early hacker ethic which was to take fascist/totalitarian control of computing hardware away from the high priests in lab coats and give it to the masses.
The user-interface sucks moose balls. Let's take DirecTV as an example. Surfing is tedious at best and I almost never attempt it because it takes so damn long for the system to lock into the next channel and display an image. Then there's the channel guide. There are over a hundred channels but I only regularly watch maybe a dozen of them. Why do I have to be bothered with the other crap that's on there? At last count, there were about 36 shopping channels, which is frightening in and of itself. I want to block all of these from ever showing up in the guide and not just grey them out. I want a really condensed guide for selected channels. Now, if you extend this to internet-based content, why not allow for creating a custom channel/guide entry that shows me what's on Hulu or something?
From a technical point of view, the user-experience blows chunks. Here is where Apple can kick ass. When they apply their genius to a TV, that could be really excellent.
As far as content goes, the only way to get better content and more of it is to do away with residuals. Non-reality-TV shows are expensive to produce and license because of residuals. Sure, nice work if you can get it but broadcasters can't afford it. There would also be an added benefit to getting rid of royalties and that is you'd dramatically reduce the number of filthy-stinking-rich, full-of-themselves, self-righteous, ignoramus actors/producers/writers/directors.
Add to this the ongoing attempts to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine which is really only a bullsh*t euphemism for "We on the left can't survive in a free market society therefore we're going to pass a law that is essentially redistribution of wealth in the form of forcing broadcasters to run shows that failed miserably (aka Air America)."
It makes you wonder if NPR could survive without tax dollars. Quite frankly, I think they'd gain more support if they could prove that they can. So here's a modest proposal: NPR should put aside the tax dollars it gets and if they don't run short at the end of the year, give it back.
What I want to know is what Hagan's real motivation is for this move. Whatever they SAY is their motivation is a flat-out lie. So let's think about what would happen if this passes. Given: You're an IT person and you can no longer be paid overtime. Can your employer force you to work past 40 hours? Technically, no, but you'd risk not getting raises or promotions if you punched out on the stroke of 5pm. Then again, your employer could do that whether or not they were paying you extra. Politicians, especially Democrats, rarely are looking out for employers interests. Couple that with hidden agendas and the goal might be to force *cough* excuse me *cough* encourage employers to higher more workers. After all, the work must be done by someone. The net effect if that happens will be more payroll taxes into government coffers and more health insurance dollars being paid into the pool plus the added political benefit of being able to say "Unemployment is dropping. I made that happen. Vote for me."
But beyond this, does the change say that you can't be paid anything past 40 hours or just that you can't be paid time-and-a-half?
This is nothing new. Disney has been doing this for decades. In fact, the rest of the world could take a lesson or two from Disney's playbook. Notice that Disney designs its rides such that the line (queue) is constantly in motion. By contrast, Six Flags and other theme parks, you have to wait while the people on the ride are off. We should take this a step further and design aircraft with a removable passenger compartment akin to the 747 air freighter. The nose would open up and the incoming passenger module would slide out to be replaced by another outgoing module. This has the advantage of eliminating the one door bottleneck.
How about this: "Humans are capable of location-based reminders (some of us, anyway) so would that constitute prior art?" And why wouldn't this also be considered "obvious" and not "novel"?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a question: Does this cure and/or prevent just the addiction? Or does it kill off the high you get? If it's the former, I'd say that heroine use would skyrocket because there would be no repercussions. If it's the latter and the effects are permanent, should this be required by law just like MMR vaccines?
Seriously? Seriously?!?! Why is this necessary? I really don't get texting. It's such a backward form of communication. Star Trek never used texting. Space: 1999 had video chatting. I personally refuse to text and don't have a texting plan on my phone. If I need to talk to someone, I'll make a regular phone call. It's more efficient for getting a straight answer and you'll have a much better idea of the emotional component to communication.
All RF transmitters spit out harmonics. My guess is that Lightsquared's hardware spits out huge amounts of harmonics that stomp all over GPS frequencies and they're freaking out for a bunch of possible reasons. 1) They probably went ahead and built a sh*tload of devices before they got FCC approval and now all of that will have to be scrapped, 2) It's going to cost a bunch of money to redesign the hardware correctly, 3) the redesigned hardware is going to cost a hell of a lot more to mass produce so their potential market will shrink significantly.
Another possible reason speaks to rhombic's comment and that is that the effective range of their hardware is going to be severely limited if they are required to meet FCC requirements thus making the product far less attractive than cellphone-based internet.
There are also political skeletons in this case a la Solyndra but that's a separate issue.
What I'm wondering is why some company hasn't acquired the rights-of-way that Metricom owned back when they were offering wireless internet access before the cellphone companies got involved. If you used a self-healing mesh networking system a put transceivers on traffic lights and street light poles, you could have a potentially nice setup.
Wake me when Apple puts back Rosetta and gets rid of sandboxing.
IMHO, this is what keeps embedded Linux from gaining universal acceptance. Some applications don't care about boot times. Some don't care because you don't boot them regularly. But a two-second boot time and a power-loss tolerant file system are needed for any Linux appliance that runs off batteries.
How long does this thing take to boot? The fastest boot time I've seen on a Linux system is 6 seconds. That's if you include USB which seems to suck up 2/3 of the boot time.
You can take search criteria to extremes as in the examples you mention. But for fairly basic things like age range, education level, religious inclinations, political leanings, you'd think you could find a lot of matches.
I read just the other day that supposedly men add 2 inches to their actual height in online profiles. Okay, well, if you're attempting to be honest yet women assume you're lying, that's a recipe for a GIGO system.
I read somewhere that the Columbia disaster would have never happened had NASA stuck to the original design of the fuel tank. Originally it was white but the orange foam was added later because NASA quit using CFCs to refrigerate the propellant. The theory concludes that NASA caved to the environmentalist movement resulting in the death of the Columbia crew.
"I'm sorry, my responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
This study doesn't query what the divorce rate is for couples who met via an online dating service. Year after year, more of my friends who met their spouses via traditional methods are getting divorced. If the rate is significantly lower for online-dating couples, then I say this is a good thing.
Now, as to my own story, I tried eHarmony (aka eDischord) a few years back. After enduring the lengthy questionnaire, I started the search. I was living in L.A. at the time so you might think that it's a target-rich environment. I punched in my usual desired criteria. No matches within a 10-mile radius. Widened to 25 miles. No matches. 50-mile radius. No matches. (50 miles in L.A. is a long-distance relationship, btw). 100-mile radius. No matches. Entire U.S. No matches. At that point, I started to turn off criteria. I pretty much had to turn off every search criteria before it came up with anything. Result: A hairdresser in Fresno. *facepalm* Seriously, Dr. Neil Clark Warren? Seriously? I'm an engineer in L.A. who owns his own business. What could I possibly have in common with a hairdresser in Fresno?
Well, since the unit wasn't sent back until 2029, I figure we have a few years left to invent it. Then again, Skynet should have been active since 1997 so something has messed with that timeline.
Quite true. That's one of the things that sucks about the current crop of electric cars. IMHO, if you want to really sell an electric car, it must have the following features:
1) 300-500 mile range.
2) Be able to carry four adults with all their luggage for that range.
3) Recharge time of less than 5 minutes.
4) Not look like a total dorkmobile. Other than the Tesla roadster, every design looks like something a communist country would come up with. Bleah.
5) Here's the real challenge: Be able to charge the thing in the middle of stinking nowhere. Don't force me to to live in a major city where a specialized charging station happens to have been installed. IMHO, that's a big unintended consequence to forcing people to buy electric cars. No more rural living.
Perhaps but an average human forearm can curl 50 lbs. A motor that can do that might draw about 70 amps. Sure, lithium packs can deliver that kind of current but the capacity isn't there to be able to do this very long. A Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 has a power cell that lasts 120 years.
Couldn't resist.
And then there's Occupy wherever. Wake me when they start looking like those lovely Ukrainian ladies protesting at Davos...topless.
All of this science-fiction turned reality is only as good as the power source. Jet packs, Aliens-style power loaders, autonomous humanoid robots, exoskeletons, electric cars. All useless without the über battery and we humans have been failing on that for decades.
1) GPS manufacturers are not a direct competitor to a wireless networking company. If Verizon or AT&T were complaining they might have a case.
2) GPS was there first.
3) Clearly the Lightsquared hardware is spitting out a harmonic which could be fixed but would probably make the devices much more expensive to produce.
4) Lightsquared has been trying this case in the court of public opinion by running full page newspaper ads instead of dealing with the technology issues.
5) Lightsquared has been making huge political donations and receiving government grant funding which makes the whole thing stink like old fish.
http://www.supercub.org/forum/showthread.php?41793-Air-France-447
About a third of the way down the thread is a comment by Dick Rutan.
There is no unionization of technical talent. IMHO, they figured out early on that they could make a boatload of money without some middlemen A) telling them that they're being treated like crap and B) if they only paid them money they would have a better standard of living.
That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers out there who would dearly love a residual payment every time a piece of software they wrote was used just like Hollywood and music industry talent gets. Of course, that goes against the early hacker ethic which was to take fascist/totalitarian control of computing hardware away from the high priests in lab coats and give it to the masses.
A la Cities In Flight. Cool!!
The user-interface sucks moose balls. Let's take DirecTV as an example. Surfing is tedious at best and I almost never attempt it because it takes so damn long for the system to lock into the next channel and display an image. Then there's the channel guide. There are over a hundred channels but I only regularly watch maybe a dozen of them. Why do I have to be bothered with the other crap that's on there? At last count, there were about 36 shopping channels, which is frightening in and of itself. I want to block all of these from ever showing up in the guide and not just grey them out. I want a really condensed guide for selected channels. Now, if you extend this to internet-based content, why not allow for creating a custom channel/guide entry that shows me what's on Hulu or something?
From a technical point of view, the user-experience blows chunks. Here is where Apple can kick ass. When they apply their genius to a TV, that could be really excellent.
As far as content goes, the only way to get better content and more of it is to do away with residuals. Non-reality-TV shows are expensive to produce and license because of residuals. Sure, nice work if you can get it but broadcasters can't afford it. There would also be an added benefit to getting rid of royalties and that is you'd dramatically reduce the number of filthy-stinking-rich, full-of-themselves, self-righteous, ignoramus actors/producers/writers/directors.
Add to this the ongoing attempts to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine which is really only a bullsh*t euphemism for "We on the left can't survive in a free market society therefore we're going to pass a law that is essentially redistribution of wealth in the form of forcing broadcasters to run shows that failed miserably (aka Air America)."
It makes you wonder if NPR could survive without tax dollars. Quite frankly, I think they'd gain more support if they could prove that they can. So here's a modest proposal: NPR should put aside the tax dollars it gets and if they don't run short at the end of the year, give it back.
What I want to know is what Hagan's real motivation is for this move. Whatever they SAY is their motivation is a flat-out lie. So let's think about what would happen if this passes. Given: You're an IT person and you can no longer be paid overtime. Can your employer force you to work past 40 hours? Technically, no, but you'd risk not getting raises or promotions if you punched out on the stroke of 5pm. Then again, your employer could do that whether or not they were paying you extra. Politicians, especially Democrats, rarely are looking out for employers interests. Couple that with hidden agendas and the goal might be to force *cough* excuse me *cough* encourage employers to higher more workers. After all, the work must be done by someone. The net effect if that happens will be more payroll taxes into government coffers and more health insurance dollars being paid into the pool plus the added political benefit of being able to say "Unemployment is dropping. I made that happen. Vote for me."
But beyond this, does the change say that you can't be paid anything past 40 hours or just that you can't be paid time-and-a-half?
Ya know, I don't see any Occupy protestors bitching about how they don't have a submarine. Get with the program people!
This is nothing new. Disney has been doing this for decades. In fact, the rest of the world could take a lesson or two from Disney's playbook. Notice that Disney designs its rides such that the line (queue) is constantly in motion. By contrast, Six Flags and other theme parks, you have to wait while the people on the ride are off. We should take this a step further and design aircraft with a removable passenger compartment akin to the 747 air freighter. The nose would open up and the incoming passenger module would slide out to be replaced by another outgoing module. This has the advantage of eliminating the one door bottleneck.
By EU logic then, many current automobile commercials should be banned if they show a car zooming around in anything but bumper-to-bumper traffic.
How about this: "Humans are capable of location-based reminders (some of us, anyway) so would that constitute prior art?" And why wouldn't this also be considered "obvious" and not "novel"?