The simplicity is a virtue. Really, Paint.NET is wonderful entry-level software. It's what Microsoft Paint / Paintbrush should have been, if not in Windows XP then at least by the time Vista came out: A quick way to load up a picture, draw some squares, plop on some text, and save it in another file format. Or to let your 7-year-old doodle around with to make pictures.... with a user interface that feels fresh, and easy to use - not some old clunk-bucket dragged along from Windows 2.
If Microsoft made a real, modern, user-friendly desktop operating system, they'd bundle Paint.NET with Windows. Heck, if Linux made a real, modern, user-friendly desktop operating system, they'd bundle a Paint.NET equivalent with Linux. (I guess that leaves us with... Apple? I don't have a mac; do they have an equivalent? Sad commentary on the state of desktop operating systems.)
Making X-rays (and terahertzes) currently requires expensive power-hungry inefficient particle accelerators. These advances might lead to cheaper X-ray machines (and terahertz radiation machines, whatever you use that for) which just require a disposable/replaceable tape cartridges. This has implications for medicine and science, particularly in developing countries.
Even if they don't want to open them up, you can imagine that they'd rather not be utterly dependent on Adobe Flash to deliver their YouTube content. Owning VP7 (and VP8/VP9/VP1234567 and whatnot) can't hurt.
The sad thing is, I don't think they're even a gulag for political prisoners -- if they were, the beatings and such would at least make a modicum of sense (a perverted one, but sense nonetheless)... it seems they're doing this for their own valued citizens. Fun, hmm?
If you read the site, you'd see one of the tricks they have up their sleeve to deal with the radioactivity problem: they surround the actual fusion process with a working fluid of molten lead (and lithium) which not only transmits the shockwave from the pistons, but also absorbs neutrons. If the reactor does well, they shouldn't have to change the fuel at all.
They're not going to stabilize the plasma at all, if I understand this right (IANANP). It's a pulse fusion model: put your hydrogen in the middle, surround with a working fluid that they refer to as "liquid metal" (made of lead + lithium), fire off pistons to make a pressure wave in the liquid metal and make a burst of fusion in the middle, generating heat. This makes the molten lead even hotter, and it's circulated through a heat exchanger. The cool part, I thought, was that the lead also absorbs radiation so the casing and equipment doesn't fall apart after a few months because the neutron flux made it brittle. That's a neat trick.
The middle and upper classes, especially on the coasts, have diets dominated by fresh vegetables and seafood, and usually can afford the time and energy to go to the gym, etc.
There's correlation with a confounding factor to account for here, as well: self-motivated, ambitious people tend to do well for themselves in life and achieve an upper-middle-class lifestyle; they're also fairly likely to spend time working out, in a gym or otherwise. The personality is the root cause.
The idea is that you have a site, and that site has an unsigned certificate or something. But that's okay... you know you can trust it. So you get the certificate and save it. Later, a man-in-the-middle attack replaces the unsigned certificate with a different one! You don't have the certificate, so you see the scary screen (again) and go "dude... certificate changed... I'm being attacked! omg."
(That's the idea. In reality, you just skip by that screen and bemoan the annoyance.)
According to the abstract, the bacteria presently only solved the problem for a 3-node directed graph. Maybe someday it will be "faster than anything made from silicon", but... not right now.
Hey, that's not entirely true! Water shortages in the US are also caused by people farming on the prairies and pumping out the aquifers. Water shortages in the Third World typically aren't half so much water-shortages as potable water shortages.
The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stone. The Oil Age might end when we start to run low on oil, but that doesn't mean we won't have plenty of alternatives.
The economic argument for all sorts of magic coming from having oil traded in USD is weak. A barrel of oil is worth whatever the next buyer things a barrel of oil is worth, a dollar is worth whatever the next guy who gets it thinks it's worth. These things are both fungible, they're both pretty liquid. There's a vibrant currency exchange market. If people think the dollar or the barrel-o-crude is not worth what it used to be, the prices are perfectly capable of shifting to match. Look at the last big recession and oil crisis of the 1980s. Look at 2008, for crying out loud. The US dollar may wax and wane, the US economy may shrink 10% in a bad year, but oil dropped from over $100 a barrel to something like $30.
As for the money supply, the Federal Reserve is pretty capable of generating as much or as little of our little fiat currency as they feel like. The national debt (and the price at which people are willing to buy it worldwide) is what's going to be weighing on the US and its economy over the next several decades, much more than any medium-of-exchange games. The government and the private sector compete for loans: when there's more debt, it's more expensive for private firms to borrow and that hurts economic growth - because look! Treasury bonds! They're nice and safe. Why would you invest in a risky old Business in/this/ economy?
Feudalism, when you have a bunch of rich nobles with armies who own most of the land where the peasants grow their food, is not particularly conducive to the egalitarianism of democratic government, or a variety of things like that which modern society views as quite nice; furthermore, the excesses of feudalism and serfdom and such are not too pretty.
Slashdot Mirror
It's "green". Duh.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Also, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The simplicity is a virtue. Really, Paint.NET is wonderful entry-level software. It's what Microsoft Paint / Paintbrush should have been, if not in Windows XP then at least by the time Vista came out: A quick way to load up a picture, draw some squares, plop on some text, and save it in another file format. Or to let your 7-year-old doodle around with to make pictures.... with a user interface that feels fresh, and easy to use - not some old clunk-bucket dragged along from Windows 2.
If Microsoft made a real, modern, user-friendly desktop operating system, they'd bundle Paint.NET with Windows. Heck, if Linux made a real, modern, user-friendly desktop operating system, they'd bundle a Paint.NET equivalent with Linux. (I guess that leaves us with... Apple? I don't have a mac; do they have an equivalent? Sad commentary on the state of desktop operating systems.)
Making X-rays (and terahertzes) currently requires expensive power-hungry inefficient particle accelerators. These advances might lead to cheaper X-ray machines (and terahertz radiation machines, whatever you use that for) which just require a disposable/replaceable tape cartridges. This has implications for medicine and science, particularly in developing countries.
Even if they don't want to open them up, you can imagine that they'd rather not be utterly dependent on Adobe Flash to deliver their YouTube content. Owning VP7 (and VP8/VP9/VP1234567 and whatnot) can't hurt.
The sad thing is, I don't think they're even a gulag for political prisoners -- if they were, the beatings and such would at least make a modicum of sense (a perverted one, but sense nonetheless)... it seems they're doing this for their own valued citizens. Fun, hmm?
And world peace. And a pony. And the year of Linux on the desktop.
Do you get to bet on some arbitrary player winning or losing, or just on yourself-winning?
If you read the site, you'd see one of the tricks they have up their sleeve to deal with the radioactivity problem: they surround the actual fusion process with a working fluid of molten lead (and lithium) which not only transmits the shockwave from the pistons, but also absorbs neutrons. If the reactor does well, they shouldn't have to change the fuel at all.
They're not going to stabilize the plasma at all, if I understand this right (IANANP). It's a pulse fusion model: put your hydrogen in the middle, surround with a working fluid that they refer to as "liquid metal" (made of lead + lithium), fire off pistons to make a pressure wave in the liquid metal and make a burst of fusion in the middle, generating heat. This makes the molten lead even hotter, and it's circulated through a heat exchanger. The cool part, I thought, was that the lead also absorbs radiation so the casing and equipment doesn't fall apart after a few months because the neutron flux made it brittle. That's a neat trick.
So.... Angband?
Some of us have to use Lotus Notes, you insensitive clod!!!
yeah.... *snif* it's pretty terrible...
There's correlation with a confounding factor to account for here, as well: self-motivated, ambitious people tend to do well for themselves in life and achieve an upper-middle-class lifestyle; they're also fairly likely to spend time working out, in a gym or otherwise. The personality is the root cause.
I think libraries, cereal boxes and cell-phone-readers alike are going to be more interested in QR codes.
(That's the idea. In reality, you just skip by that screen and bemoan the annoyance.)
According to the abstract, the bacteria presently only solved the problem for a 3-node directed graph. Maybe someday it will be "faster than anything made from silicon", but... not right now.
The cake is a lie.
Microsoft-hating is a disease that you catch from doing business with Microsoft.
Content-transfer-encoding: chocolate-chunked
That's actually bad news: Anybody can invent a cryptosystem he cannot break himself. Except Bruce Schneier.
Don't attack the encryption: attack how it's used!
So you're saying that he's not attacking the encryption, he's attacking how it's used? Sounds like... pretty bog-standard procedure, really. :)
Hey, that's not entirely true! Water shortages in the US are also caused by people farming on the prairies and pumping out the aquifers. Water shortages in the Third World typically aren't half so much water-shortages as potable water shortages.
The economic argument for all sorts of magic coming from having oil traded in USD is weak. A barrel of oil is worth whatever the next buyer things a barrel of oil is worth, a dollar is worth whatever the next guy who gets it thinks it's worth. These things are both fungible, they're both pretty liquid. There's a vibrant currency exchange market. If people think the dollar or the barrel-o-crude is not worth what it used to be, the prices are perfectly capable of shifting to match. Look at the last big recession and oil crisis of the 1980s. Look at 2008, for crying out loud. The US dollar may wax and wane, the US economy may shrink 10% in a bad year, but oil dropped from over $100 a barrel to something like $30.
As for the money supply, the Federal Reserve is pretty capable of generating as much or as little of our little fiat currency as they feel like. The national debt (and the price at which people are willing to buy it worldwide) is what's going to be weighing on the US and its economy over the next several decades, much more than any medium-of-exchange games. The government and the private sector compete for loans: when there's more debt, it's more expensive for private firms to borrow and that hurts economic growth - because look! Treasury bonds! They're nice and safe. Why would you invest in a risky old Business in /this/ economy?
Feudalism, when you have a bunch of rich nobles with armies who own most of the land where the peasants grow their food, is not particularly conducive to the egalitarianism of democratic government, or a variety of things like that which modern society views as quite nice; furthermore, the excesses of feudalism and serfdom and such are not too pretty.