Note to self.. remember not to use Vim's method on priceless, one off books that are irreplaceable.
You, uh, might have missed the rest of the post:
For those of us brought up that its sacrilegious to damage a book, realize that many books were printed on acid paper; yellowing, decaying, brittle, and will soon be dust regardless of what you do, so may as well preserve the content and properly recycle the pulp.
I own DEC technical manuals from the 70s that are going in the trash within a decade at most. A decade ago, painfully yellowed. Today, turn a page and it snaps off. Thankfully, someone else did the bandsaw and scanner thing some time ago, so I can still read a.PDF of the same manual.
That would be a "library". A dynamically linked library, I suppose, since multiple people can borrow/read the same book.
11) If I read something on a LCD, my eyes hurt. And, I refuse to see an optometrist, instead the world has to bend their display technology to my will, ADA style.
12) If I compare, side by side, an expensive ebook reader with a cheap one, the expensive one always subjectively seems to look better. Surprisingly, works for audiophile stuff too. I'm waiting for an ebook reader with those "clean crisp vacuum tube... pages" and conveniently I have a stack of old CRT monitors that will sell for big gold to future discerning bibliophiles. Either that or I can finally unload my stash of green CD-markers.
13) I have a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, where a light photon continues to have an energy, but now it has an internal state that knows if it was reflected or transmitted, and the eyes also have a quantum mechanical sensor that can discern the two internal states, and that eye sensor interprets transmitted photons as a pain sense. Where as the reflected photons are interpreted in the eye as an opiate stimulator. Hence reflected screens/paper is perfection and transmitted light from backlighted displays is equivalent to waterboarding.
14) And last but not least, I only read books while taking a shower in a bathtub, in full direct sunlight, and until an ebook reader can handle that environment I will not buy it. Unless Apple makes it. Well, just kidding about that last part, I think?
Cut the spine of the book off with a bandsaw with a metal cutting blade (finer pitch teeth than typical wood blade)
Run thru sheet feeder scanner twice, once for each side.
A bit of scripting hackery later, one fresh PDF! Or.djvu, or whatever.
For those of us brought up that its sacrilegious to damage a book, realize that many books were printed on acid paper; yellowing, decaying, brittle, and will soon be dust regardless of what you do, so may as well preserve the content and properly recycle the pulp.
The bandsaw trick also works on magazines, you know, the things we used to read before websites.
A neural network to emulate a CCTV security guard operator. Because you know that's what they look at all day, instead of catching terrorists or whatever it is they're supposed to do.
What I find interesting about this is... that consumer digicams would have enough general purpose punch to run anything much more than trivial scripts
Check the feature list of typical modern "consumer"-ish digital cams. Marketing has decided that the average moron needs to be able to filter pics to look like a faded photograph, or put the picture inside an ornate picture frame, or cover up parts of the image with heart and caption overlays like those stupid "reality-TV" dating shows. The enormous resources required for stupid marketing tricks can be re-purposed to do much more interesting things... Which probably pisses off the marketing guys. Which I like.
To a first approximation, the computing power required to store a pic is not much worse than the viewfinder display. And they don't seem to care about updating the video viewfinder continuously. So, it can't be too horrible of a computational task.
No, because current measurement of the size of the observable universe is not based on brightness but is based on redshift.
Which brings us right on back, circularly, to "Couldn't the presence of large amounts of dust mean that our universe is larger than current estimates?"
I'm just saying, dust probably comes along with a free order of hydrogen gas clouds, the spectrum of which might be redshifted at a velocity that has nothing to do with the galaxies/stars behind them.
My wild guess, to work around that problem, would be to watch redshift and light curve of supernovas in distant galaxies...
The only way that this will end is when the standard of living is equal between the two countries. Since raising the standard in Mexico is impossible because of the culture and financial system, it means that the US has to have the same standard of living as Mexico does today.
Actually its worse, since you're assuming Mexicos economy won't collapse faster than ours.
Two huge sources of income to Mexico are currently collapsing (not collapsing in the future, I'm talking about right now)
1) About half their govt budget came from selling oil... Their wells are now in permanent, fast decline. Once its all pumped out, its gone. That doesn't mean there is no production, just like the US has been in permanent oil production decline for 40 years but still produces a little oil. Higher tech means the extraction rate is higher so the decline is faster. And producers become importers at a much faster rate than total gross production decreases. Mexico is going to stop exporting oil pretty soon. Most of which, went to the USA. Ooops. So we're out of oil and they're out of cash. This won't turn out well.
2) A substantial fraction of their GNP (like a third to a fifth, depending on whom you believe) was Mexicans in the US sending money back home, via WU or cash or whatever. Probably via drug trafficking too. As the US slides into great depression 2, that money flow to Mexico dries up.
You may think that we're chasing down to them at the bottom. But they are falling faster than we are, if anything. Where we'll meet up, as you claim, is likely to be way the heck down there...
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc.
Three issues from someone with apparently a lot more life experience than yourself:
1) All the "nice workplace" laws that were passed because humans deserve a minimal level of dignity, like OSHA, FMLA, discrimination, sex harassment laws, unionization laws, are only for American citizens. Illegals are simply told to shut up or INS will dispose of them, true or not. Only a truly horrible person believes that either illegals are not human beings or that its should be a societal goal to treat human beings inhumanely.
2) Maybe not a great job to you, but with a true (U6) unemployment rate approximately 20%, theres plenty of citizens whom would like those jobs, but "citizens need not apply". My children will never be allowed to work certain jobs for racial reasons when they are teenagers. I'm not sure that limiting their options and basically rolling back the civil rights movement is a great idea. It is kind of interesting that it only took about two generations to go from "blacks need not apply" to "whites need not apply" in certain areas...
3) The Roman empire fell, when being a citizen was more of a PITA than not being a citizen... Essentially, despite the barbarian hordes, they were still better off without than with. The current situation is that we are working as hard as we can to make a permanent underclass whom will never enjoy the benefits of being a citizen, while simultaneously creating a permanent underclass of citizens whom will never be employed again because they are citizens. Encouraging lawlessness and discontent is not a good way to maintain an empire. I don't think the American Empire is a perfectly great thing, but the only thing worse than living in it, is living thru the fall of it.
They consider 1000x892 pixels high resolution? Last I checked, that was high res circa 1995..
For marketing / PR / Journalist folks that is high-enough res... it'll look OK on a HDTV, a web page, or in a 100 dpi B/W newspaper. They call it a "press" release for a reason, not a science release or a data release.
If you want 2000x1500 or whatever, I think you're asking for the science data, which is not released yet. Usually the way it works with space probes is the folks whom ran it keep the data to themselves for "awhile" before its released to the public. Usually "about a year". No idea how it works with Planck, couldn't even google it.
Since the public doesn't really care (just being honest here) I think the main purpose of early press releases is to intimidate the researchers whom aren't in the inner circle whom have actual data.
I did find a nice description of the HFI "imager" device... Its resolution is about 5 arc minutes depending on frequency, etc.
Your eyes resolution is about 1 arc minute. So, the output of the HFI would be a slightly blurry version of what your eyes see, sort of. Just drink a few beers and drop some acid and look at the stars and you'll be pretty much on your way.
I did not bother researching the other instruments on Planck. Someone with more motivation can do that and gain the karma.
When talking about things at the galaxy scale, what is considered dust? Is this actual real "dust" of the size that collects on my shelves, grains of sand sized bits, gravel, or something larger?
The phrase to google for is "cosmic dust"
You'll be displeased with the answer, it seems to be a very wide range of stuff from two molecules having a public display of affection all the way up to the low end of vaguely sand-like.
I don't really know what collects on your shelves, but "cosmic dust" is probably vaguely similar.
This sand and gravel stuff you talk about, is by definition a "meteor".
A fact is that poor people love to buy lotto tickets... using money.
Another fact is that the US is perhaps the only country in the world, where the poorer you are, the fatter you are, because of food quality issues.
Combine those two facts, and the parent post, and the GP post, and I think I see an interesting weight loss program developing... Weight loss lotto... Every pound below "obese" equals one govt sponsored lotto ticket.
My idea is probably the best "healthcare system" idea in several years... certainly better than the cruddy ideas out of DC.
Says the guy whom never got together with his drunken buddies, turned a treadmill up all the way, dropped stuff on the belt, and watched it fly thru the air and crashland. If you prop up the end, a 15 MPH treadmill can launch a pumpkin surprisingly far. Not as far as one of those "pumpkin chucking compressed air gun" things, but still plenty of fun. One empty beer can launched through space is "eh". A couple dozen, simultaneously, is much louder, visually impressive, and funny. Especially if your buddies just consumed them and we're all quite drunken.
A treadmill with a (mostly) worn out belt is still plenty of fun.
Turn the speed up from 15 to 1000 MPH, add a 1000 MPH wind machine, make sure you don't run out of beer, and you're pretty much in "high tech redneck" heaven. It would be perfection if only you could add a rocket or jet engine, oh wait, you do have one, in the "car"!
Its difficult to design a system that, WHEN ITS NEW, will fit any battery from any manufacturer without jamming in place or falling out on the road.
Whats worse is after BillyBob jumps curbs, offroads a bit, gets towed, smashes thru potholes, NOW will all batteries and slots freely interchange yet fit perfectly.
And when BillyBob bends, stretches or smooshs a battery the last 0.001 out of tolerance, and tries to exchange it, who eats the cost, BillyBob? You know he's going to blame the automated machinery for the damage.
Finally any electric problem that ever occurs will of course be blamed on someone elses battery pack. Ditto for accidents.
Something no one has ever mentioned on Slashdot, I think, is that the SAE J1772 electric car charger standard is designed for drunken morons to transfer well in excess of 15 KW, more or less continuously.
Frankly, I would not be surprised to see it become the new standard high power AC electric plug... think about it, one plug, worldwide, for very large server racks, SANs, electric clothes dryers, arc welders, big UPSes, generators, etc...
Its going to be in mass production weather we use it or not, it seems fairly idiot proof, it seems like it would be a great idea to standardize our worldwide electrical infrastructure on this new connector...
We Americans need to come up with our own, incompatible, standard for charging vehicles.
No problem dude we already have at least two incompatible charger standards.
SAE J1772 and IEC 62196
The SAE standard is supported by all the domestic manufacturers, AND THE JAPANESE whom supposedly, according to the article, want yet another standard. Probably SONY wants a battery charger with a root kit or something like that.
The IEC standard, which apparently no one wants to use, is basically the SAE on steroids with a bunch more control/DRM pins.
Over the years I've found that an amazingly accurate way to determine if the site is useless. Something like 0% false positives. If only spam detection were that accurate.
Health Care would be a lot cheaper if we didn't have to try and turn it into a short term profit generator.
Malpractice claims aside, very few people have any problem with health care providers. They are generally nice, super motivated individuals whom want to do as much as they possibly can to help you, which of course is sometimes a bit expensive, but then again, what they do is simply amazing. If reinvested insurance money bought them a cool new lifesaving toy, they're going to use it, regardless of cost, to your benefit.
On the other hand, private health insurance companies, now those guys suck, they're Satan incarnated. The devil himself is embarrassed by their low morals and ethics.
I guarantee in the "health care debate" you'll never hear it referred to as "health insurance reform", solely as "healthcare reform". This is known as the propaganda technique of transfer...
The reason for this is simple - accountability. In a marketplace that defines a natural monopoly, the mythical "invisible hand" of market economics is, de facto, not in play. Consumers can't shop for a better deal and, not being share holders, have no other influence on the provider.
Just like healthcare. Especially emergency rooms and any other critical care.
As for right of way access and easements, do you think that if we charged companies for that, they would not just pass the cost on to customers?
There are some fees already. The governments agreed upon dollar value probably has no relationship with my losses. Essentially the govt collects money and keeps it in the name of my hassles. I highly suspect the dollar value is mostly selected by corruption.
Also, companies pay the government for spectrum, they don't get it free for commercial use.
Its my spectrum the company is selling, and they're keeping the money. Slashdot car analogy is, I sell your car, and also keep all the money, and you get... nothing. Its basically an automotive "chop shop" analogy. We're rapidly nearing the point where most money to run the govt comes from loans as opposed to taxes, so the old argument about saving tax money isn't very valid anymore. Besides, if the only argument you have is "saves tax money" then the govt should get (more) involved in the drug and human trafficking industries, since those seem pretty profitable.
You do realize all those things you listed are perfectly free? As are the right to not be subject to unreasonable searches and the right not to incriminate yourself.
Nope, not perfectly free at all, none of them.
Free speech is expensive because it prevents the govt from doing whatever it wants without at least trying to persuade the population, expensive cloak and dagger stuff, or expensive bread and circuses stuff.
Equal protection under the law results in a terribly expensive legal system complete with public defenders, vs the cheap solution of the king just saying "off with his head", or the cops just executing people on a whim.
If you think military bases are built for free, and/or troops living in your house would be no cost to you, then you're right, the 3rd amendment is zero cost.
Finally, most cop movies seem to make the point that following the rules and respecting criminals rights is slow and ineffective = costs money. Of course they always call it respecting "criminals rights" never "civil rights" because cops never make the mistake of going after a non-criminal civilian, right?
It would be pretty interesting to come up with a dollar cost for each amendment.
I've heard a lot of propaganda that private ownership of firearms is a bad idea because healthcare costs are higher, criminal activity involving guns is expensive, sort of an arms race with the local ss/cops. I'm not sure I believe any of it, but supposedly, the right to own guns results in a lot of money "wasted".
Personally I think gun registration and most of the nearly infinite collection of gun laws are unconstitutional, regardless, they exist, and if we banned ownership of guns we wouldn't have to waste money on those systems.
Our ancestors, and most of the current population, are willing to pay the money none the less. So his argument still stands.
Its "a couple TVs worth of Hi Def video" aka competition for the cable providers.
Its a nice simple power of ten of a number. You can get into long tedious arguments about specially recoding feeds into H.264 at this parameter and that parameter blah blah. However, 10 Mbps is pretty borderline, and 1G is way the heck more than necessary, the convenient power of 10 in the middle happens to be 100 Mbps.
Also the folks involved are all slow moving dinosaurs. You know that bit about hit the brontosaurus tail and it takes 5 seconds for the slow nerve response to go to the brain, or whatever it was we were taught as kids? Well, when these clowns got started fast ethernet was widespread and gig-E was too new to bother considering. So with the home computing infrastructure we had, it seemed pointless to request anything above 100M. Much like it would be silly to daydream of requesting 100-Gig for home use at this instant, since there is no 100-Gig gear marketed for home use (made in china for $5, sold at best buy and walmart for $50, drool proof configuration, zero maintenance, etc)
Slashdot Mirror
Note to self .. remember not to use Vim's method on priceless, one off books that are irreplaceable.
You, uh, might have missed the rest of the post:
For those of us brought up that its sacrilegious to damage a book, realize that many books were printed on acid paper; yellowing, decaying, brittle, and will soon be dust regardless of what you do, so may as well preserve the content and properly recycle the pulp.
I own DEC technical manuals from the 70s that are going in the trash within a decade at most. A decade ago, painfully yellowed. Today, turn a page and it snaps off. Thankfully, someone else did the bandsaw and scanner thing some time ago, so I can still read a .PDF of the same manual.
2) Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
That would be a "library". A dynamically linked library, I suppose, since multiple people can borrow/read the same book.
11) If I read something on a LCD, my eyes hurt. And, I refuse to see an optometrist, instead the world has to bend their display technology to my will, ADA style.
12) If I compare, side by side, an expensive ebook reader with a cheap one, the expensive one always subjectively seems to look better. Surprisingly, works for audiophile stuff too. I'm waiting for an ebook reader with those "clean crisp vacuum tube ... pages" and conveniently I have a stack of old CRT monitors that will sell for big gold to future discerning bibliophiles. Either that or I can finally unload my stash of green CD-markers.
13) I have a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, where a light photon continues to have an energy, but now it has an internal state that knows if it was reflected or transmitted, and the eyes also have a quantum mechanical sensor that can discern the two internal states, and that eye sensor interprets transmitted photons as a pain sense. Where as the reflected photons are interpreted in the eye as an opiate stimulator. Hence reflected screens/paper is perfection and transmitted light from backlighted displays is equivalent to waterboarding.
14) And last but not least, I only read books while taking a shower in a bathtub, in full direct sunlight, and until an ebook reader can handle that environment I will not buy it. Unless Apple makes it. Well, just kidding about that last part, I think?
Faster method:
Cut the spine of the book off with a bandsaw with a metal cutting blade (finer pitch teeth than typical wood blade)
Run thru sheet feeder scanner twice, once for each side.
A bit of scripting hackery later, one fresh PDF! Or .djvu, or whatever.
For those of us brought up that its sacrilegious to damage a book, realize that many books were printed on acid paper; yellowing, decaying, brittle, and will soon be dust regardless of what you do, so may as well preserve the content and properly recycle the pulp.
The bandsaw trick also works on magazines, you know, the things we used to read before websites.
A neural network to emulate a CCTV security guard operator.
Because you know that's what they look at all day, instead of catching terrorists or whatever it is they're supposed to do.
What I find interesting about this is ... that consumer digicams would have enough general purpose punch to run anything much more than trivial scripts
Check the feature list of typical modern "consumer"-ish digital cams. Marketing has decided that the average moron needs to be able to filter pics to look like a faded photograph, or put the picture inside an ornate picture frame, or cover up parts of the image with heart and caption overlays like those stupid "reality-TV" dating shows. The enormous resources required for stupid marketing tricks can be re-purposed to do much more interesting things... Which probably pisses off the marketing guys. Which I like.
To a first approximation, the computing power required to store a pic is not much worse than the viewfinder display. And they don't seem to care about updating the video viewfinder continuously. So, it can't be too horrible of a computational task.
No, because current measurement of the size of the observable universe is not based on brightness but is based on redshift.
Which brings us right on back, circularly, to "Couldn't the presence of large amounts of dust mean that our universe is larger than current estimates?"
I'm just saying, dust probably comes along with a free order of hydrogen gas clouds, the spectrum of which might be redshifted at a velocity that has nothing to do with the galaxies/stars behind them.
My wild guess, to work around that problem, would be to watch redshift and light curve of supernovas in distant galaxies...
Substitute "naked women" for 3D, see how many slashdotters still agree with you.
If you like "X" you'll like a movie with "X" even if "X" has nothing to do with completely unrelated topic "Y"
Slow news day at slashdot, I guess.
The only way that this will end is when the standard of living is equal between the two countries. Since raising the standard in Mexico is impossible because of the culture and financial system, it means that the US has to have the same standard of living as Mexico does today.
Actually its worse, since you're assuming Mexicos economy won't collapse faster than ours.
Two huge sources of income to Mexico are currently collapsing (not collapsing in the future, I'm talking about right now)
1) About half their govt budget came from selling oil... Their wells are now in permanent, fast decline. Once its all pumped out, its gone. That doesn't mean there is no production, just like the US has been in permanent oil production decline for 40 years but still produces a little oil. Higher tech means the extraction rate is higher so the decline is faster. And producers become importers at a much faster rate than total gross production decreases. Mexico is going to stop exporting oil pretty soon. Most of which, went to the USA. Ooops. So we're out of oil and they're out of cash. This won't turn out well.
2) A substantial fraction of their GNP (like a third to a fifth, depending on whom you believe) was Mexicans in the US sending money back home, via WU or cash or whatever. Probably via drug trafficking too. As the US slides into great depression 2, that money flow to Mexico dries up.
You may think that we're chasing down to them at the bottom. But they are falling faster than we are, if anything. Where we'll meet up, as you claim, is likely to be way the heck down there...
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc.
Three issues from someone with apparently a lot more life experience than yourself:
1) All the "nice workplace" laws that were passed because humans deserve a minimal level of dignity, like OSHA, FMLA, discrimination, sex harassment laws, unionization laws, are only for American citizens. Illegals are simply told to shut up or INS will dispose of them, true or not. Only a truly horrible person believes that either illegals are not human beings or that its should be a societal goal to treat human beings inhumanely.
2) Maybe not a great job to you, but with a true (U6) unemployment rate approximately 20%, theres plenty of citizens whom would like those jobs, but "citizens need not apply". My children will never be allowed to work certain jobs for racial reasons when they are teenagers. I'm not sure that limiting their options and basically rolling back the civil rights movement is a great idea. It is kind of interesting that it only took about two generations to go from "blacks need not apply" to "whites need not apply" in certain areas...
3) The Roman empire fell, when being a citizen was more of a PITA than not being a citizen... Essentially, despite the barbarian hordes, they were still better off without than with. The current situation is that we are working as hard as we can to make a permanent underclass whom will never enjoy the benefits of being a citizen, while simultaneously creating a permanent underclass of citizens whom will never be employed again because they are citizens. Encouraging lawlessness and discontent is not a good way to maintain an empire. I don't think the American Empire is a perfectly great thing, but the only thing worse than living in it, is living thru the fall of it.
They consider 1000x892 pixels high resolution? Last I checked, that was high res circa 1995..
For marketing / PR / Journalist folks that is high-enough res... it'll look OK on a HDTV, a web page, or in a 100 dpi B/W newspaper. They call it a "press" release for a reason, not a science release or a data release.
If you want 2000x1500 or whatever, I think you're asking for the science data, which is not released yet. Usually the way it works with space probes is the folks whom ran it keep the data to themselves for "awhile" before its released to the public. Usually "about a year". No idea how it works with Planck, couldn't even google it.
Since the public doesn't really care (just being honest here) I think the main purpose of early press releases is to intimidate the researchers whom aren't in the inner circle whom have actual data.
I did find a nice description of the HFI "imager" device... Its resolution is about 5 arc minutes depending on frequency, etc.
Your eyes resolution is about 1 arc minute. So, the output of the HFI would be a slightly blurry version of what your eyes see, sort of. Just drink a few beers and drop some acid and look at the stars and you'll be pretty much on your way.
I did not bother researching the other instruments on Planck. Someone with more motivation can do that and gain the karma.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0308/0308075.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity
When talking about things at the galaxy scale, what is considered dust? Is this actual real "dust" of the size that collects on my shelves, grains of sand sized bits, gravel, or something larger?
The phrase to google for is "cosmic dust"
You'll be displeased with the answer, it seems to be a very wide range of stuff from two molecules having a public display of affection all the way up to the low end of vaguely sand-like.
I don't really know what collects on your shelves, but "cosmic dust" is probably vaguely similar.
This sand and gravel stuff you talk about, is by definition a "meteor".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_dust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor
A modern PDP-8 isn't so heavy anymore. Well, I soldered mine together perhaps 5 years ago.
http://www.sparetimegizmos.com/Hardware/SBC6120-2.htm
I mostly run OS-8 on mine, just for run.
A fact is that poor people love to buy lotto tickets ... using money.
Another fact is that the US is perhaps the only country in the world, where the poorer you are, the fatter you are, because of food quality issues.
Combine those two facts, and the parent post, and the GP post, and I think I see an interesting weight loss program developing... Weight loss lotto... Every pound below "obese" equals one govt sponsored lotto ticket.
My idea is probably the best "healthcare system" idea in several years... certainly better than the cruddy ideas out of DC.
AND IT WOULDN'T BE AS COOL!
Says the guy whom never got together with his drunken buddies, turned a treadmill up all the way, dropped stuff on the belt, and watched it fly thru the air and crashland. If you prop up the end, a 15 MPH treadmill can launch a pumpkin surprisingly far. Not as far as one of those "pumpkin chucking compressed air gun" things, but still plenty of fun. One empty beer can launched through space is "eh". A couple dozen, simultaneously, is much louder, visually impressive, and funny. Especially if your buddies just consumed them and we're all quite drunken.
A treadmill with a (mostly) worn out belt is still plenty of fun.
Turn the speed up from 15 to 1000 MPH, add a 1000 MPH wind machine, make sure you don't run out of beer, and you're pretty much in "high tech redneck" heaven. It would be perfection if only you could add a rocket or jet engine, oh wait, you do have one, in the "car"!
You forgot dealing with tolerances.
Its difficult to design a system that, WHEN ITS NEW, will fit any battery from any manufacturer without jamming in place or falling out on the road.
Whats worse is after BillyBob jumps curbs, offroads a bit, gets towed, smashes thru potholes, NOW will all batteries and slots freely interchange yet fit perfectly.
And when BillyBob bends, stretches or smooshs a battery the last 0.001 out of tolerance, and tries to exchange it, who eats the cost, BillyBob? You know he's going to blame the automated machinery for the damage.
Finally any electric problem that ever occurs will of course be blamed on someone elses battery pack. Ditto for accidents.
Something no one has ever mentioned on Slashdot, I think, is that the SAE J1772 electric car charger standard is designed for drunken morons to transfer well in excess of 15 KW, more or less continuously.
Frankly, I would not be surprised to see it become the new standard high power AC electric plug... think about it, one plug, worldwide, for very large server racks, SANs, electric clothes dryers, arc welders, big UPSes, generators, etc...
Its going to be in mass production weather we use it or not, it seems fairly idiot proof, it seems like it would be a great idea to standardize our worldwide electrical infrastructure on this new connector...
We Americans need to come up with our own, incompatible, standard for charging vehicles.
No problem dude we already have at least two incompatible charger standards.
SAE J1772 and IEC 62196
The SAE standard is supported by all the domestic manufacturers, AND THE JAPANESE whom supposedly, according to the article, want yet another standard. Probably SONY wants a battery charger with a root kit or something like that.
The IEC standard, which apparently no one wants to use, is basically the SAE on steroids with a bunch more control/DRM pins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
Once they are gone, thats it.
Where do they go? The landfill? In which case the landfill becomes a "high yield rare earth mine"
Or the sea.
but there are many sites that simply don't work.
Over the years I've found that an amazingly accurate way to determine if the site is useless. Something like 0% false positives. If only spam detection were that accurate.
Health Care would be a lot cheaper if we didn't have to try and turn it into a short term profit generator.
Malpractice claims aside, very few people have any problem with health care providers. They are generally nice, super motivated individuals whom want to do as much as they possibly can to help you, which of course is sometimes a bit expensive, but then again, what they do is simply amazing. If reinvested insurance money bought them a cool new lifesaving toy, they're going to use it, regardless of cost, to your benefit.
On the other hand, private health insurance companies, now those guys suck, they're Satan incarnated. The devil himself is embarrassed by their low morals and ethics.
I guarantee in the "health care debate" you'll never hear it referred to as "health insurance reform", solely as "healthcare reform". This is known as the propaganda technique of transfer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#Transfer
The reason for this is simple - accountability. In a marketplace that defines a natural monopoly, the mythical "invisible hand" of market economics is, de facto, not in play. Consumers can't shop for a better deal and, not being share holders, have no other influence on the provider.
Just like healthcare. Especially emergency rooms and any other critical care.
I don't see any reason to kill off broadcast, free TV as some companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple want to do.
Who donates to the re-election campaigns, you or your list of companies?
Hmmm. Commodore64_love is happy, vs cold hard cash. I wonder how this is going to turn out?
As for right of way access and easements, do you think that if we charged companies for that, they would not just pass the cost on to customers?
There are some fees already. The governments agreed upon dollar value probably has no relationship with my losses. Essentially the govt collects money and keeps it in the name of my hassles. I highly suspect the dollar value is mostly selected by corruption.
Also, companies pay the government for spectrum, they don't get it free for commercial use.
Its my spectrum the company is selling, and they're keeping the money. Slashdot car analogy is, I sell your car, and also keep all the money, and you get ... nothing. Its basically an automotive "chop shop" analogy. We're rapidly nearing the point where most money to run the govt comes from loans as opposed to taxes, so the old argument about saving tax money isn't very valid anymore. Besides, if the only argument you have is "saves tax money" then the govt should get (more) involved in the drug and human trafficking industries, since those seem pretty profitable.
You do realize all those things you listed are perfectly free? As are the right to not be subject to unreasonable searches and the right not to incriminate yourself.
Nope, not perfectly free at all, none of them.
Free speech is expensive because it prevents the govt from doing whatever it wants without at least trying to persuade the population, expensive cloak and dagger stuff, or expensive bread and circuses stuff.
Equal protection under the law results in a terribly expensive legal system complete with public defenders, vs the cheap solution of the king just saying "off with his head", or the cops just executing people on a whim.
If you think military bases are built for free, and/or troops living in your house would be no cost to you, then you're right, the 3rd amendment is zero cost.
Finally, most cop movies seem to make the point that following the rules and respecting criminals rights is slow and ineffective = costs money. Of course they always call it respecting "criminals rights" never "civil rights" because cops never make the mistake of going after a non-criminal civilian, right?
It would be pretty interesting to come up with a dollar cost for each amendment.
I've heard a lot of propaganda that private ownership of firearms is a bad idea because healthcare costs are higher, criminal activity involving guns is expensive, sort of an arms race with the local ss/cops. I'm not sure I believe any of it, but supposedly, the right to own guns results in a lot of money "wasted".
Personally I think gun registration and most of the nearly infinite collection of gun laws are unconstitutional, regardless, they exist, and if we banned ownership of guns we wouldn't have to waste money on those systems.
Our ancestors, and most of the current population, are willing to pay the money none the less. So his argument still stands.
What's so special about 100Mbps?
Its "a couple TVs worth of Hi Def video" aka competition for the cable providers.
Its a nice simple power of ten of a number. You can get into long tedious arguments about specially recoding feeds into H.264 at this parameter and that parameter blah blah. However, 10 Mbps is pretty borderline, and 1G is way the heck more than necessary, the convenient power of 10 in the middle happens to be 100 Mbps.
Also the folks involved are all slow moving dinosaurs. You know that bit about hit the brontosaurus tail and it takes 5 seconds for the slow nerve response to go to the brain, or whatever it was we were taught as kids? Well, when these clowns got started fast ethernet was widespread and gig-E was too new to bother considering. So with the home computing infrastructure we had, it seemed pointless to request anything above 100M. Much like it would be silly to daydream of requesting 100-Gig for home use at this instant, since there is no 100-Gig gear marketed for home use (made in china for $5, sold at best buy and walmart for $50, drool proof configuration, zero maintenance, etc)