Here is what YOU'RE missing: What if I want, or need, to drive further than the available battery power will take me?
There is no battery back available that will take a car 600 miles at Interstate speed. Your Tesla Roadster will die about halfway through, the Leaf will be done around the 100 mile mark, a Chevy Volt will just keep plugging along on it's ICE and I can stop just about anywhere and refill that puppy.
Here's another scenario: Power is out at my house for several hours overnight. Now how do I get to work? On a "pure" EV you're screwed. With a Volt, or a Prius, away I go.
I must have missed the incriminating emails. Can you link me to them? All I saw when I read them was a bunch of crap that had nothing to do with FOIA requests.
I agree with you! There is nothing wrong with serious Sci-Fi and I enjoy it myself.
My issue is specifically with the Star Gate series. It was never serious it was never dark and gritty it was always light hearted and fun Sci-Fi. The kind of stuff you can watch with your wife and kids on "Sci-Fi Friday".
With SG:U they changed the direction of the entire Star Gate franchise. It went from light hearted and irreverent to taking itself entire too seriously.
Serious Sci-Fi is good but the SyFy channel twisted up a show with *15* season of history and *three* movies in order to have something more BSG-like. It was stupid and it's just about killed the SG franchise. If they wanted more BSG they should have ordered that and left Star Gate alone.
Now the BSG prequel has essentially failed and the sole SG show is on the verge of being cancelled.
Way to go SyFy channel, you've managed to kill not one but TWO excellent Sci-Fi shows!
A dark gritty Sci-Fi show is great if your a Sci-Fi nerd who want's a dark and gritty Sci-Fi show. The millions of viewers who stuck with SG through SG1 into SG:A did so at least partially because the show was FUN. It was funny, sometimes irreverent, and on the whole didn't take itself very seriously.
When SG:A ended and SG:U started my wife who is not a Sci-Fi nerd, but who had been with the SG universe since the theater released movie(!), stopped watching after one episode.
The fun was gone and SG:U became another dark and angry Sci-Fi show.
tl;dr They made SG:U into a BSTG clone and killed it losing millions of viewers and probably destroying the franchise.
"And while it is still open, you can bet that the things happening there are not the same things that were happening while W was signing the signing statements."
Oh? How do you know this to be to true? Have you been there or are you relying on the promise of a man who has already broken a promise to close the place?
So you're entire argument, as I understand it, is that Congress and the President are afraid to do it.
Public outrage didn't seem to stop them when the issue was health care, bailouts, warrant-less wiretraps, the Patriot Act,or any of a host of other issues.
Obama even made a campaign promise out of closing GITMO and there wasn't rioting in the streets.
Based on this I find your reasoning to lack merit.:-D
Also, you keep hammering on "the right" and Bush when, as I pointed out earlier, the Democratic Party is in charge of ALL the political branches of Government and has been for almost two years.
Take off your left vs. right blinders and actually SEE the situation.
Congratulations darkmeridian, you've just made an "ends justifies the means" argument FOR extra-ordinary rendition, possible torture, and state secrets. Is that really what you intended?
In my opinion GITMO should be closed and all prisoners should be tried either by Military Tribunal or in the civilian courts. This is how a modern and upstanding society would handle the problem.
"Not to mention the cost of maintaining GITMO for however long it is before the Republicans acknowledge that we have to accept at least a few detainees if we want to be rid of the rest."
Really? This is all the Republicans fault?
Even though we've had a Democrat President since January 20th, 2009 who could end GITMO with the stroke of a pen? (I might remind you also that he campaigned with the promise to do so.)
Even though the Democratic Party took over Congress in November of 2006 and could have ended it's ludicrous existence at any time?
So let me get this straight, even though the Democratic party has had total control of the United States Government, including the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, for almost two years this is somehow a REPUBLICAN issue?
You need to stop shilling for a party and start thinking for yourself. GITMO is an abomination and should be gotten rid of but to blame its continued existence solely on the Republican party is delusional.
Bots? BOTS? That's your answer, practice against BOTS?
Once I know the basics of a map I can SLAUGHTER bots by the score. I can seriously mow down entire armies of the stupid things...and yet I'm still getting teabagged by half the 14 year olds on the planet 30 seconds after I join a server.
If I put my mind to it, and am willing to spend the hours of precious free time practicing and getting teabagged, I will eventually reach a skill level that allows me to consistently kill 85% of players but practicing against Bots is useless for anything but learning the map.
I am not the original poster and I'm not necessarily arguing against you but there are some points that you should consider.
First, not all Scientists work for a University. Many of them are employed by corporations, either public or private. You didn't "follow the money" in this case.
Second, Scientists working for a University can be directly influenced in ways besides grant money. You didn't "follow the money" for this case either.
Third, it is a fact that historically scientists have banded together to push a political agenda. Research the history of the saying "Scientists on tap, not on top." for a good start.
I'll admit I'm slightly confused by the "post-normal science" phrase. It seems that poster is arguing that p.n.s. is being more heavily used in science as it revolves around public policy. I'd guess that they're referring to G.C.C. and if my assumptions are correct I'd have to agree with them. It seems that p.n.s. IS being heavily used in the G.C.C. debate, it's just not being talked about as such.
I do not see Scientists as a cabal intent on warping public policy to satisfy their scientific reasonings, but to claim that Scientists all work for Universities, are beyond direct influence, and have never worked together to push a public policy agenda is disingenuous.
Jokes revolving around someone else's stupidity are much funnier when your capitalization and spelling are correct, your use of punctuation appropriate, and your syntax isn't mangled. You'll need to try harder in order to troll better.
As a sysadmin for a public libary this statement really gets my hackles up "Public libraries and schools already filter websites; this will take that sort of censorship to an entirely new level".
I can't speak for schools but I can tell you that most, if not all, libraries are very concerned with the idea of censorship and fight it at every opportunity. Does my public access web system filter websites? Yes, after years and years of abuse by patrons I finally had to give in and do it. When streaming sex videos began to account for 70% of my total bandwidth usage something had to be done.
First I tried just filtering the obvious sites, porntube, redtube, etc but people quickly found "off-brand" sites and they found them faster than I could block them. Realizing I was trapping myself into the classic blacklist problem I then setup streaming rules, not allowing streaming media to consume more than a certain percent of my total bandwidth. This didn't work because when the librarians have training classes it's possible for 40+ people to be lighting up youtube for a legitimate reason and with the streaming media consumption rules it didn't work very well.
I gave in and categorically blocked pornography, not on a moral basis but on a technical one. I fought valiantly for years putting in hundreds of hours of work to keep from doing it but in the end I was overwhelmed by peoples desire to look at naked pictures of other people.
So right now if you're an adult and use our public access system porn is the only thing that's blocked. We keep NO logs on where you, individually, visit and all system (server, firewall, etc) logs are flushed every 24 hours.
When you start spinning a wild yarn about how eviiiiiil libraries are censoring your activities I smell it for the bullshit it is. IF we do it it's usually because we are pushed to it and then we implement it in the least obtrusive way possible.
If you're curious I fought the same battle with P2P traffic. I don't care if you want to download a pirated copy of IronMan 2, I really don't. What I do care about is when you and 10 of your buddies all come over to do it and you're using so much bandwidth that other users can't get on to check their email. Then you hang around the library all day doing it for weeks on end.Guess what? P2P is now throttled to hell and back because dimwits don't understand the concept of "below the radar". When the usage rules can no longer keep up then P2P will be banned too.
Yet it will do almost nothing to stop the behavior you list.
Print to PDF and copy to jump drive or email it offsite and print it somewhere else. Take the printout to the fax machine and copy it there. Print to fax and send it an offsite number. I can think of a dozen ways around this and so will anyone else who wants the information.
That's available now, but only for 8 to 12 hours per 24 hour period. Something about the planetary rotation disrupts the lighting system on a regular basis. There are also non-trivial issues with good system performance during so called "weather" events.
You posted the most sensational portion of the article and the most suspect. It's an unnamed "customer service rep" whose providing that information.
On the other hand there's the REST of the article that you chose not to post. Gee, I wonder why...
"First, she flatly denied that a customer service rep can be fired for suggesting a data block. "We train our representatives to solve our customers' problems. If a customer calls and indicates to a representative that a data block would solve his or her problem, the representatives can and should suggest a data block, and we train them to do that."
Well, that's good. But she went on to say: "Many customers request data blocks to prevent children from downloading applications, music, etc., that could significantly affect their bills. We have been training and encouraging the representatives to step customers through the services that will be affected by data blocks to make sure customers really want a total block, or if they would be better served by going to My Verizon (the online free account portal) and customizing their usage themselves by removing features they don't need. We haven't helped the customer if we put a data block on their phone only to have them call back because they didn't realize it would stop them from downloading a ringtone, for example."
How you got modded to +4 based on an unsourced and unproveable rumour is beyond me.
"I'm generally not very sympathetic to big oil companies, but those poor bastards are going to be swamped with lawsuits for the next decade. But, on the upside, I bet they'll damn sure be properly maintaining those blowout preventers from now on."
This is how the feedback cycle is SUPPOSED to work!
You do something dumb, like f up your blowout preventer, cause a bunch of damage and get sued into near oblivion.
This is the "Law of Natural Consequences" as applied to corporations. This feedback cycle should continue and be ENCOURAGED. This is the only way that corporations feel pain and learn, just like small children.
The kindle edition is $12.99, price set by publisher. The paperback edition is $9.99, price set by publisher.
That's right the publisher, in this case Penguin, has decided that the digital version should be MORE expensive than the the dead tree version. This is becoming more common as time goes on. I put the blame for this squarely on Apple and the iPad. If you don't know why then go look it up.
Mmmm. The following in regards to your 3rd paragraph:
If you're an Android user on Verizon you need to root in order to get the "Mobile HotSpot" and "WiFi tethering" features. These are features that were stripped from the OS by Verizon and you have to root in order to add them back. I'm sure I could find other cases, but that one will suffice.
It's not just the OS maker and the handset maker exerting influence over your device, it's also the connection provider.
If you're curious my Moto Droid is rooted, mostly because I wanted those two features.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is what YOU'RE missing: What if I want, or need, to drive further than the available battery power will take me?
There is no battery back available that will take a car 600 miles at Interstate speed. Your Tesla Roadster will die about halfway through, the Leaf will be done around the 100 mile mark, a Chevy Volt will just keep plugging along on it's ICE and I can stop just about anywhere and refill that puppy.
Here's another scenario: Power is out at my house for several hours overnight. Now how do I get to work? On a "pure" EV you're screwed. With a Volt, or a Prius, away I go.
Practicality, usefulness, and robustness FTW!!!
I must have missed the incriminating emails. Can you link me to them? All I saw when I read them was a bunch of crap that had nothing to do with FOIA requests.
I agree with you! There is nothing wrong with serious Sci-Fi and I enjoy it myself.
My issue is specifically with the Star Gate series. It was never serious it was never dark and gritty it was always light hearted and fun Sci-Fi. The kind of stuff you can watch with your wife and kids on "Sci-Fi Friday".
With SG:U they changed the direction of the entire Star Gate franchise. It went from light hearted and irreverent to taking itself entire too seriously.
Serious Sci-Fi is good but the SyFy channel twisted up a show with *15* season of history and *three* movies in order to have something more BSG-like. It was stupid and it's just about killed the SG franchise. If they wanted more BSG they should have ordered that and left Star Gate alone.
Now the BSG prequel has essentially failed and the sole SG show is on the verge of being cancelled.
Way to go SyFy channel, you've managed to kill not one but TWO excellent Sci-Fi shows!
What's killing SG:U is the lack of fun!
A dark gritty Sci-Fi show is great if your a Sci-Fi nerd who want's a dark and gritty Sci-Fi show. The millions of viewers who stuck with SG through SG1 into SG:A did so at least partially because the show was FUN. It was funny, sometimes irreverent, and on the whole didn't take itself very seriously.
When SG:A ended and SG:U started my wife who is not a Sci-Fi nerd, but who had been with the SG universe since the theater released movie(!), stopped watching after one episode.
The fun was gone and SG:U became another dark and angry Sci-Fi show.
tl;dr They made SG:U into a BSTG clone and killed it losing millions of viewers and probably destroying the franchise.
No, there are at least THREE motivators.
Money, power, and recognition.
I need to stop replying on this thread. It's obvious that most people don't want to listen, regardless of their party affiliation.
I'm sorry that you think that those evil Republicans filibustered the closing of GITMO.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/20/close-guantanamo-funding-senate-obama
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234679032521923.html
Please enlighten me as to the meaning of this:
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/177/close-the-guantanamo-bay-detention-center/
I know, those evil Republican websites and their LIES.
How about this?
President Obama - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32ePb4X6JNQ
Candidate Obama - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7h12a_obama-promises-to-close-guantanamo_news
So please explain how I am a "Total Idiot". There is President Obama AND Candidate Obama promising to close GITMO.
It's still open.
So answer the question, how do you know that anything has changed at GITMO?
"And while it is still open, you can bet that the things happening there are not the same things that were happening while W was signing the signing statements."
Oh? How do you know this to be to true? Have you been there or are you relying on the promise of a man who has already broken a promise to close the place?
So you're entire argument, as I understand it, is that Congress and the President are afraid to do it.
Public outrage didn't seem to stop them when the issue was health care, bailouts, warrant-less wiretraps, the Patriot Act,or any of a host of other issues.
Obama even made a campaign promise out of closing GITMO and there wasn't rioting in the streets.
Based on this I find your reasoning to lack merit. :-D
Also, you keep hammering on "the right" and Bush when, as I pointed out earlier, the Democratic Party is in charge of ALL the political branches of Government and has been for almost two years.
Take off your left vs. right blinders and actually SEE the situation.
Congratulations darkmeridian, you've just made an "ends justifies the means" argument FOR extra-ordinary rendition, possible torture, and state secrets. Is that really what you intended?
In my opinion GITMO should be closed and all prisoners should be tried either by Military Tribunal or in the civilian courts. This is how a modern and upstanding society would handle the problem.
What's going on now is shameful and should end.
"Not to mention the cost of maintaining GITMO for however long it is before the Republicans acknowledge that we have to accept at least a few detainees if we want to be rid of the rest."
Really? This is all the Republicans fault?
Even though we've had a Democrat President since January 20th, 2009 who could end GITMO with the stroke of a pen? (I might remind you also that he campaigned with the promise to do so.)
Even though the Democratic Party took over Congress in November of 2006 and could have ended it's ludicrous existence at any time?
So let me get this straight, even though the Democratic party has had total control of the United States Government, including the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, for almost two years this is somehow a REPUBLICAN issue?
You need to stop shilling for a party and start thinking for yourself. GITMO is an abomination and should be gotten rid of but to blame its continued existence solely on the Republican party is delusional.
This sounds an awful lot like a "swamp gas and reflections from Saturn" explanation.
Bots? BOTS? That's your answer, practice against BOTS?
Once I know the basics of a map I can SLAUGHTER bots by the score. I can seriously mow down entire armies of the stupid things...and yet I'm still getting teabagged by half the 14 year olds on the planet 30 seconds after I join a server.
If I put my mind to it, and am willing to spend the hours of precious free time practicing and getting teabagged, I will eventually reach a skill level that allows me to consistently kill 85% of players but practicing against Bots is useless for anything but learning the map.
You've just described how the Internet was SUPPOSED to work and further how it COULD work if we migrate to IPv6!
I am not the original poster and I'm not necessarily arguing against you but there are some points that you should consider.
First, not all Scientists work for a University. Many of them are employed by corporations, either public or private. You didn't "follow the money" in this case.
Second, Scientists working for a University can be directly influenced in ways besides grant money. You didn't "follow the money" for this case either.
Third, it is a fact that historically scientists have banded together to push a political agenda. Research the history of the saying "Scientists on tap, not on top." for a good start.
I'll admit I'm slightly confused by the "post-normal science" phrase. It seems that poster is arguing that p.n.s. is being more heavily used in science as it revolves around public policy. I'd guess that they're referring to G.C.C. and if my assumptions are correct I'd have to agree with them. It seems that p.n.s. IS being heavily used in the G.C.C. debate, it's just not being talked about as such.
I do not see Scientists as a cabal intent on warping public policy to satisfy their scientific reasonings, but to claim that Scientists all work for Universities, are beyond direct influence, and have never worked together to push a public policy agenda is disingenuous.
Jokes revolving around someone else's stupidity are much funnier when your capitalization and spelling are correct, your use of punctuation appropriate, and your syntax isn't mangled. You'll need to try harder in order to troll better.
Order troops posted on the Mexico border? Uhhh, no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
Sorry, but censorship is bad. To cheer it on is even worse.
As a sysadmin for a public libary this statement really gets my hackles up "Public libraries and schools already filter websites; this will take that sort of censorship to an entirely new level".
I can't speak for schools but I can tell you that most, if not all, libraries are very concerned with the idea of censorship and fight it at every opportunity. Does my public access web system filter websites? Yes, after years and years of abuse by patrons I finally had to give in and do it. When streaming sex videos began to account for 70% of my total bandwidth usage something had to be done.
First I tried just filtering the obvious sites, porntube, redtube, etc but people quickly found "off-brand" sites and they found them faster than I could block them. Realizing I was trapping myself into the classic blacklist problem I then setup streaming rules, not allowing streaming media to consume more than a certain percent of my total bandwidth. This didn't work because when the librarians have training classes it's possible for 40+ people to be lighting up youtube for a legitimate reason and with the streaming media consumption rules it didn't work very well.
I gave in and categorically blocked pornography, not on a moral basis but on a technical one. I fought valiantly for years putting in hundreds of hours of work to keep from doing it but in the end I was overwhelmed by peoples desire to look at naked pictures of other people.
So right now if you're an adult and use our public access system porn is the only thing that's blocked. We keep NO logs on where you, individually, visit and all system (server, firewall, etc) logs are flushed every 24 hours.
When you start spinning a wild yarn about how eviiiiiil libraries are censoring your activities I smell it for the bullshit it is. IF we do it it's usually because we are pushed to it and then we implement it in the least obtrusive way possible.
If you're curious I fought the same battle with P2P traffic. I don't care if you want to download a pirated copy of IronMan 2, I really don't. What I do care about is when you and 10 of your buddies all come over to do it and you're using so much bandwidth that other users can't get on to check their email. Then you hang around the library all day doing it for weeks on end.Guess what? P2P is now throttled to hell and back because dimwits don't understand the concept of "below the radar". When the usage rules can no longer keep up then P2P will be banned too.
Yet it will do almost nothing to stop the behavior you list.
Print to PDF and copy to jump drive or email it offsite and print it somewhere else. Take the printout to the fax machine and copy it there. Print to fax and send it an offsite number. I can think of a dozen ways around this and so will anyone else who wants the information.
That's available now, but only for 8 to 12 hours per 24 hour period. Something about the planetary rotation disrupts the lighting system on a regular basis. There are also non-trivial issues with good system performance during so called "weather" events.
You posted the most sensational portion of the article and the most suspect. It's an unnamed "customer service rep" whose providing that information.
On the other hand there's the REST of the article that you chose not to post. Gee, I wonder why...
"First, she flatly denied that a customer service rep can be fired for suggesting a data block. "We train our representatives to solve our customers' problems. If a customer calls and indicates to a representative that a data block would solve his or her problem, the representatives can and should suggest a data block, and we train them to do that."
Well, that's good. But she went on to say: "Many customers request data blocks to prevent children from downloading applications, music, etc., that could significantly affect their bills. We have been training and encouraging the representatives to step customers through the services that will be affected by data blocks to make sure customers really want a total block, or if they would be better served by going to My Verizon (the online free account portal) and customizing their usage themselves by removing features they don't need. We haven't helped the customer if we put a data block on their phone only to have them call back because they didn't realize it would stop them from downloading a ringtone, for example."
How you got modded to +4 based on an unsourced and unproveable rumour is beyond me.
"I'm generally not very sympathetic to big oil companies, but those poor bastards are going to be swamped with lawsuits for the next decade. But, on the upside, I bet they'll damn sure be properly maintaining those blowout preventers from now on."
This is how the feedback cycle is SUPPOSED to work!
You do something dumb, like f up your blowout preventer, cause a bunch of damage and get sued into near oblivion.
This is the "Law of Natural Consequences" as applied to corporations. This feedback cycle should continue and be ENCOURAGED. This is the only way that corporations feel pain and learn, just like small children.
Digital copies of books are cheaper than physical ones? The truth of that is declining every day.
Here, look at this:
http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Novel-Dresden-Files-ebook/dp/B0030DHPAW/ref=pd_sim_kinc_7?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
The kindle edition is $12.99, price set by publisher.
The paperback edition is $9.99, price set by publisher.
That's right the publisher, in this case Penguin, has decided that the digital version should be MORE expensive than the the dead tree version. This is becoming more common as time goes on. I put the blame for this squarely on Apple and the iPad. If you don't know why then go look it up.
Mmmm. The following in regards to your 3rd paragraph:
If you're an Android user on Verizon you need to root in order to get the "Mobile HotSpot" and "WiFi tethering" features. These are features that were stripped from the OS by Verizon and you have to root in order to add them back. I'm sure I could find other cases, but that one will suffice.
It's not just the OS maker and the handset maker exerting influence over your device, it's also the connection provider.
If you're curious my Moto Droid is rooted, mostly because I wanted those two features.