I have a Palm Pre with WebOS, the revolutionary linux based open operating system.
You DO know that we have a REAL Homebrew community, with new apps being released every day that Palm has NO control over, right? As of this writing the homebrew app count is at 197 apps and growing. (Including My Tether, which I am using to connect to the internet with via my Pre and write this post.)
Dump your iShackle. Free your Phone with the Palm Pre.
I think the flying cars issue you bring up doesn't so much illustrate an aversion to change as much as it shows that certain concepts (traffic management via restricted traveling areas) are both efficacious and necessary for a functioning society.
In other words, if there were no restrictions on where you could fly in your flying car, mid-air collisions would be frequent and devastating. Thus the concept of "air lanes" for flying car traffic. Unless you trust your average office drone, McDonald's fry-cook teenager or factory worker to be able to easily parse the "3d" concept of flying a car. Personally I don't, and am rather glad the "promise" of the flying car never really came to fruition in the manner expected in the 1950's.
However, none of that has much to do with DRM, or DPP, or whatever crap the labels are trying now. Other than, much like the flying car, it's an idea with much allure (for them), but little practical use.
The general user base was NOT included in the discussion about the Awful Bar during development. Now, the only way to communicate with the Devs is through the incredibly obtuse and confusing bugzilla system by bugging a problem. After FF 3.x was released, ANY "bug" of the Awful Bar has been immediately and rudely closed as "not a problem, will not be fixed".
So basically, the FF Devs created the Awful Bar in a vacuum, and have refused to listen to any criticism in the only communication channel available to the public.
That sounds VERY much like "Shut up and live with it" to me.
You can't disable it - thats the debacle. A lot of people don't like it, but the Firefox devs have essentially told us to shut up and live with it.
Pretty much.
Although at least you can disable some of the more annoying aspects of it via Tools - Options in 3.5.x. Basically, I jumped from 2.20.x to 3.5.x after getting frustrated with 3.0.x and deciding to stick with the 2.20.x version for a good long while.
While I don't think we will ever get the proper revert to the 2.x style URL bar that SHOULD happen, as long as we can easily disable the crap parts of the Awful Bar without having to dig in about:config I'm satisfied.
Google Chrome is generally faster, but seems to use more memory than either other browser at start up. However, the performance difference between the browsers is negligible.
Personally, speed isn't everything. The reason I've stuck with Firefox, even through the Awful Bar debacle of 3.0.x, is the functionality it offers via it's add on system. Opera and Chrome simply do not offer this. Until they do, I don't have a good enough reason to switch.
You were doing fine until you veered into haterland by including Christianity "and the like".
History is replete with examples of people converted to Christianity simply by reading the Bible on their own without outside influence. (simply Google "Converts to Christianity" You will find many converted simply by gaining access to a Bible written in their language.)
Judaism and Islam have similar examples.
Scientology has none. This is one of the hallmarks of a true cult; They win no converts outside of their brainwashing, and their "scriptures" are nonsense to anyone outside the group.
While some atheists might describe some mainstream religious texts as "nonsense", the vast majority of people, regardless of their belief, would not.
Stop being a hater miffo.swe. You are free to believe or not as you wish. But don't go lumping the major religions in with cults like Scientology
Maybe the "PT Barnum Awards". They could be given out in televised public ceremonies and the "winner" plastered all over the internet for the amusement of the less-stupid
Wasn't that sort of the notion of trust networks that Cory Doctorow talks about?... Of course, such a system probably wouldn't work in practice, and would be as badly exploited in real life as it would in EVE. There's entire networks of people (cough, Goonfleet) dedicated to griefing and breaking the system.
Naturally it doesn't work in real life. Hell, it didn't even work in that godawful tinfoil hat leftist's wet dream novel he wrote. (Yes, I read it, no it wasn't any good.) All you need is someone with enough positive or negative incentive and the entire network breaks down. One weak link breaks the chain, as it were.
Honestly, this is why most conspiracy theories are bunk. Not because the basic premise of the theories are necessarily bad, but because they require a closed trust network so impossibly vast as to be laughable. Most trust networks require some kind of outside force to hold them together, such as the force of law. Even then, the network can be broken by a single individual just sociopathic enough to believe they can get away with it.
EVEbank didn't even have the force of law behind it. It's no surprise that it's trust network was so easily broken.
Ethanol's hydroxyl proton is very weakly acidic. The pH of 100% ethanol is 7.33, compared to 7.00 for pure water.
However, when compared against Gasoline it is still considered "acidic" since The compounds that make up gasoline do not dissociate into ions to any significant extent, and thus do not contribute to corrosion.
Also, ethanol produced in Industrial processes is very rarely pure, often containing manufacturing and processing leftovers such as phosphoric and sulfuric acid. Keep in mind that as Ethanol is an organic fuel, long term storage (as is necessary in fuel production and distribution networks) can and does become problematic as Ethanol oxidizes into acetic acid.
These acids are a problem because the vast majority of fuel storage systems currently in use are largely aluminum and steel. (truck tanks, storage containers, pipelines) Conversion for pure Ethanol use requires a costly lining process with a petrochemical-based liner (Plastic) which then makes the container unfit for gasoline and diesel storage.
So it's not just a matter of making the fuel and dropping it into the existing system. An entire new sideline storage system is required. Very expensive, and as it requires petrochemical products to make it functional, is not nearly as "green" as some would have you believe.
Gasoline is far and above more energy dense than Ethanol. Ethanol runs between 23.4 MJ/kg (That's Mega-Joules per kilogram) and 26.8 MJ/kg depending on how you measure it. Gasoline at 87 octane is 44.4 MJ/kg. So they aren't even close. Which, of course, means that you will need to burn almost twice the amount of Ethanol to get the same "oomph" as Gasoline. In other words, it is significantly less efficient to run Ethanol than it is to run Gasoline in an IC Engine. Advances in Engine technology are improving this, but it is doubtful that Ethanol will ever reach the utility and efficiency of gasoline. Sadly, it is simply an inferior fuel.
My personal hope in the bio-fuels department is bio-diesel. It is easier to produce, lasts longer, and has nearly equivalent energy density to petro-diesel. Beyond that, the diesel engine is less polluting, more efficient, longer lasting, and more powerful than it's gasoline counterpart. I suspect the market for these is opening up, but the price point for diesel engines needs to come down to equal or nearly equal to gasoline for diesel use to really take off. We shall see what happens with that.
Or a method similar to the one used with corn based ethanol manufacturing could be set up. The farmers sell the watermelons to the factory, the factory pulps and processes the melons, making bio-fuel, and the waste pulp is then resold very cheaply to anyone who wants it.
Not only does this method generate more capital, it's less resource intensive and more efficient as it doesn't require farmers to set up "juicing" factories on their property. So the farmers just keep doing what they are doing now, and the Ethanol makers just keep doing what they are doing now, everybody makes money, and more Ethanol is made.
Now, if we could just solve that pesky "Ethanol is acidic, difficult to store and transport, and less efficient as a motor fuel than fossil fuels" problem.
Perhaps we can't "seed" a more complex organ such as a kidney, (Although I thought that eyes were pretty damn complex organs, what with the lenses and rods and cones and such.) but perhaps through study we can come to understand the more complex interactions of genomes that creates a kidney or a liver and one day grow replacement parts without the ghoulish proposition of cloned complete human "parts farms".
Of course, we all know that most of the research is going to end up in the breast augmentation and hair replacement fields anyway, so I guess we needn't worry too much.
A way of thinking of this is that the more gradual reduction in flow "width" allows more opportunities to find an optimal place to merge, rather than being forced to merge at the end.
Bingo.
It's interesting how crowd and group movement dynamics can often mimic fluid dynamics. (in limited situations, of course.)
Actually though, if you give it a bit of thought, the result is not as counter-intuitive as you might think.
Basically, rather than having a flat wall with an exit that everyone bottlenecks up at, the pole acts as a "funnel wall" forcing people to line up earlier and more quickly. The same principle has been in use for hundreds of years with cattle and sheep. The "cattle gate" as we now call it, acts to slowly funnel stock animals into a single file line where they can be sheared, branded, loaded onto trucks, etc.
It just goes to show you that mammalian group behaviors are more universal than we might like to think.
He was a black man in America, so he is generally forgotten - subject for another discussion.
Was that really necessary? Why the insistence on bringing up imaginary racism where there is none? George Washington Carver's contributions to American agriculture and agricultural science are regularly taught in American schools. I know I learned about him in 10th grade History class (a good 22 years ago!) while covering the Reconstruction period.
Carver is widely regarded as one of the great (and possibly the greatest of his time) American intellectuals. He is not forgotten at all, and his legacy of scientific discovery lives on to this day. George Washington Carver Day is still celebrated on January 5th, the day of his death.
Your word is all we have to go on, and reading the paranoid, strawman-bashing, slogan-ridden rant in your sig really diminishes the value of that. If you think everyone who doesn't kneel at the alter of the Invisible Hand is a dirty evil Socialist and will crush your freedom. Please.
Actually, I just read through the essay linked at his sig and found it to be measured, intelligent, and well researched with multiple links to sources and extensive explanation and footnoting.
Indeed, I wish that more people would put as much thought and care into their opinions as FourthAge has.
Of course, if you are a proponent of some of the ideologies that he opposes, which, based on your statement it would seem you are, you do yourself no favors by indulging in ad-hominem attacks. It merely shows that you have no substantive argument to make in support of your own ideology and must resort to attacking the messenger to try and silence him. Sad, really.
At any rate, I have "Friended" FourthAge as he is a Slashdot contributor well worth following. I would recommend him to any reader here.
The problem is though, that the primary reason many of these countries are still economically and technologically backward, is because they are politically backward.
Most of them are still either Dictatorships, Military Juntas, Communist "people's state" povertyholes, or are in the midst of some kind of civil war.
All the used computers in the world won't help if the people don't have the freedom and capitalistic opportunity to leverage them.
It's not just population density, it's also the raw land mass you have to cover.
Finland has a low density, but it's also a tiny country in comparison to the US.
More raw land mass to cover = WAY more towers needed to reach the existing population.
Remember too that population density numbers can be deceiving, as often they merely compare the total landmass to the total population. they don't take into account figures such as livable land, arable land, and population distribution.
For example: Finland has a low overall population density, but due to it's smaller size, and the high percentage of it's landmass that is taken up by non-oceanic waterways, Glaciation, and mountains, the actual PERCENTAGE of landmass available to live on is significantly smaller than the total landmass. Thus, the population is mostly crammed into Finland's few cities, with a small rural population.
The US, on the other hand, has a much larger landmass to start out with, and the percentage of "unlivable" areas (IE: Areas not suitable to support a significant population) is VERY small in comparison to it's total landmass. (The heart of the Rockies, Death Valley, the deep everglades, and that's about it.) The amount of livable and arable land in the US is very very very high, thus the true population density is actually much lower. Thus higher costs.
Then you sounded retarded for nothing as your post is WAY down the list.;)
But yes, always great to see free FPS oriented stuff for the PC platform.
Too bad it's on Steam(ing pile of shit). Oh well, I'm sure I'll be able to pirate it in short order, just like the rest of my Valve collection.
Was marked "Troll" for making a humorous response to this post:
I love valve, they are making something free for the PC users! Woo! I sound so retarded, but i just want first post:P
Perhaps because I expressed a dislike for Steam(ing pile of shit)? Maybe. I guess the mods still haven't figured out that "troll" != "disagree".
Either way, I am still glad to see a free game come out for the PC, and I'll still pirate it as I still refuse to install Steam(ing pile of shit) on my PC. If you guys want to pollute your systems with that kind of DRM, feel free. but until it comes DRM free, I'll continue to pirate. (And yes, if it was available free of DRM, I would even PAY for this "free" expansion. I reward honesty with honesty.)
Slashdot Mirror
No problem.
I have no set-top boxes.
I own no consoles.
I have a Palm Pre with WebOS, the revolutionary linux based open operating system.
You DO know that we have a REAL Homebrew community, with new apps being released every day that Palm has NO control over, right? As of this writing the homebrew app count is at 197 apps and growing. (Including My Tether, which I am using to connect to the internet with via my Pre and write this post.)
Dump your iShackle. Free your Phone with the Palm Pre.
I think the flying cars issue you bring up doesn't so much illustrate an aversion to change as much as it shows that certain concepts (traffic management via restricted traveling areas) are both efficacious and necessary for a functioning society.
In other words, if there were no restrictions on where you could fly in your flying car, mid-air collisions would be frequent and devastating. Thus the concept of "air lanes" for flying car traffic. Unless you trust your average office drone, McDonald's fry-cook teenager or factory worker to be able to easily parse the "3d" concept of flying a car. Personally I don't, and am rather glad the "promise" of the flying car never really came to fruition in the manner expected in the 1950's.
However, none of that has much to do with DRM, or DPP, or whatever crap the labels are trying now. Other than, much like the flying car, it's an idea with much allure (for them), but little practical use.
Yes, they have.
The general user base was NOT included in the discussion about the Awful Bar during development. Now, the only way to communicate with the Devs is through the incredibly obtuse and confusing bugzilla system by bugging a problem. After FF 3.x was released, ANY "bug" of the Awful Bar has been immediately and rudely closed as "not a problem, will not be fixed".
So basically, the FF Devs created the Awful Bar in a vacuum, and have refused to listen to any criticism in the only communication channel available to the public.
That sounds VERY much like "Shut up and live with it" to me.
Why the heck was my comment marked "Offtopic"? It's EXACTLY on topic, it's a SUMMARY OF THE FREAKING ARTICLE!
Sounds like I got a FF Dev's panties in a bunch with my follow-up comment. Can somebody mod my comment http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1360227&cid=29339165 up please? That was an unfair and inaccurate mod.
Pretty much.
Although at least you can disable some of the more annoying aspects of it via Tools - Options in 3.5.x. Basically, I jumped from 2.20.x to 3.5.x after getting frustrated with 3.0.x and deciding to stick with the 2.20.x version for a good long while.
While I don't think we will ever get the proper revert to the 2.x style URL bar that SHOULD happen, as long as we can easily disable the crap parts of the Awful Bar without having to dig in about:config I'm satisfied.
Google Chrome is generally faster, but seems to use more memory than either other browser at start up. However, the performance difference between the browsers is negligible.
Personally, speed isn't everything. The reason I've stuck with Firefox, even through the Awful Bar debacle of 3.0.x, is the functionality it offers via it's add on system. Opera and Chrome simply do not offer this. Until they do, I don't have a good enough reason to switch.
You were doing fine until you veered into haterland by including Christianity "and the like".
History is replete with examples of people converted to Christianity simply by reading the Bible on their own without outside influence.
(simply Google "Converts to Christianity" You will find many converted simply by gaining access to a Bible written in their language.)
Judaism and Islam have similar examples.
Scientology has none. This is one of the hallmarks of a true cult; They win no converts outside of their brainwashing, and their "scriptures" are nonsense to anyone outside the group.
While some atheists might describe some mainstream religious texts as "nonsense", the vast majority of people, regardless of their belief, would not.
Stop being a hater miffo.swe. You are free to believe or not as you wish. But don't go lumping the major religions in with cults like Scientology
I LIKE IT!
Ok, who's gonna set up the website?
Naturally it doesn't work in real life. Hell, it didn't even work in that godawful tinfoil hat leftist's wet dream novel he wrote. (Yes, I read it, no it wasn't any good.) All you need is someone with enough positive or negative incentive and the entire network breaks down. One weak link breaks the chain, as it were.
Honestly, this is why most conspiracy theories are bunk. Not because the basic premise of the theories are necessarily bad, but because they require a closed trust network so impossibly vast as to be laughable. Most trust networks require some kind of outside force to hold them together, such as the force of law. Even then, the network can be broken by a single individual just sociopathic enough to believe they can get away with it.
EVEbank didn't even have the force of law behind it. It's no surprise that it's trust network was so easily broken.
Ethanol's hydroxyl proton is very weakly acidic. The pH of 100% ethanol is 7.33, compared to 7.00 for pure water.
However, when compared against Gasoline it is still considered "acidic" since The compounds that make up gasoline do not dissociate into ions
to any significant extent, and thus do not contribute to corrosion.
Also, ethanol produced in Industrial processes is very rarely pure, often containing manufacturing and processing leftovers such as phosphoric and sulfuric acid. Keep in mind that as Ethanol is an organic fuel, long term storage (as is necessary in fuel production and distribution networks) can and does become problematic as Ethanol oxidizes into acetic acid.
These acids are a problem because the vast majority of fuel storage systems currently in use are largely aluminum and steel. (truck tanks, storage containers, pipelines) Conversion for pure Ethanol use requires a costly lining process with a petrochemical-based liner (Plastic) which then makes the container unfit for gasoline and diesel storage.
So it's not just a matter of making the fuel and dropping it into the existing system. An entire new sideline storage system is required. Very expensive, and as it requires petrochemical products to make it functional, is not nearly as "green" as some would have you believe.
Gasoline is far and above more energy dense than Ethanol. Ethanol runs between 23.4 MJ/kg (That's Mega-Joules per kilogram) and 26.8 MJ/kg depending on how you measure it. Gasoline at 87 octane is 44.4 MJ/kg. So they aren't even close. Which, of course, means that you will need to burn almost twice the amount of Ethanol to get the same "oomph" as Gasoline. In other words, it is significantly less efficient to run Ethanol than it is to run Gasoline in an IC Engine. Advances in Engine technology are improving this, but it is doubtful that Ethanol will ever reach the utility and efficiency of gasoline. Sadly, it is simply an inferior fuel.
My personal hope in the bio-fuels department is bio-diesel. It is easier to produce, lasts longer, and has nearly equivalent energy density to petro-diesel. Beyond that, the diesel engine is less polluting, more efficient, longer lasting, and more powerful than it's gasoline counterpart. I suspect the market for these is opening up, but the price point for diesel engines needs to come down to equal or nearly equal to gasoline for diesel use to really take off. We shall see what happens with that.
Or a method similar to the one used with corn based ethanol manufacturing could be set up. The farmers sell the watermelons to the factory, the factory pulps and processes the melons, making bio-fuel, and the waste pulp is then resold very cheaply to anyone who wants it.
Not only does this method generate more capital, it's less resource intensive and more efficient as it doesn't require farmers to set up "juicing" factories on their property. So the farmers just keep doing what they are doing now, and the Ethanol makers just keep doing what they are doing now, everybody makes money, and more Ethanol is made.
Now, if we could just solve that pesky "Ethanol is acidic, difficult to store and transport, and less efficient as a motor fuel than fossil fuels" problem.
1. Maybe you don't want your wife....
Obviously, this scenario doesn't apply to Slashdot readers.
Heh, Speak for yourself. ;)
Ironically, pretty much just candy. Thankfully, not MUCH candy.
Perhaps we can't "seed" a more complex organ such as a kidney, (Although I thought that eyes were pretty damn complex organs, what with the lenses and rods and cones and such.) but perhaps through study we can come to understand the more complex interactions of genomes that creates a kidney or a liver and one day grow replacement parts without the ghoulish proposition of cloned complete human "parts farms".
Of course, we all know that most of the research is going to end up in the breast augmentation and hair replacement fields anyway, so I guess we needn't worry too much.
Bingo.
It's interesting how crowd and group movement dynamics can often mimic fluid dynamics. (in limited situations, of course.)
Actually though, if you give it a bit of thought, the result is not as counter-intuitive as you might think.
Basically, rather than having a flat wall with an exit that everyone bottlenecks up at, the pole acts as a "funnel wall" forcing people to line up earlier and more quickly. The same principle has been in use for hundreds of years with cattle and sheep. The "cattle gate" as we now call it, acts to slowly funnel stock animals into a single file line where they can be sheared, branded, loaded onto trucks, etc.
It just goes to show you that mammalian group behaviors are more universal than we might like to think.
Was that really necessary? Why the insistence on bringing up imaginary racism where there is none? George Washington Carver's contributions to American agriculture and agricultural science are regularly taught in American schools. I know I learned about him in 10th grade History class (a good 22 years ago!) while covering the Reconstruction period.
Carver is widely regarded as one of the great (and possibly the greatest of his time) American intellectuals. He is not forgotten at all, and his legacy of scientific discovery lives on to this day. George Washington Carver Day is still celebrated on January 5th, the day of his death.
Actually, I just read through the essay linked at his sig and found it to be measured, intelligent, and well researched with multiple links to sources and extensive explanation and footnoting.
Indeed, I wish that more people would put as much thought and care into their opinions as FourthAge has.
Of course, if you are a proponent of some of the ideologies that he opposes, which, based on your statement it would seem you are, you do yourself no favors by indulging in ad-hominem attacks. It merely shows that you have no substantive argument to make in support of your own ideology and must resort to attacking the messenger to try and silence him. Sad, really.
At any rate, I have "Friended" FourthAge as he is a Slashdot contributor well worth following. I would recommend him to any reader here.
Actually, his name reminds me of THIS.
The problem is though, that the primary reason many of these countries are still economically and technologically backward, is because they are politically backward.
Most of them are still either Dictatorships, Military Juntas, Communist "people's state" povertyholes, or are in the midst of some kind of civil war.
All the used computers in the world won't help if the people don't have the freedom and capitalistic opportunity to leverage them.
Under the Number Portability Act they shouldn't be doing that as far as I'm aware. The Act unlinked phone numbers from locales and from providers.
Check with your lawyer, but someone may be pulling a fast one here.
New Mexico - 121,593 square miles
Arizona - 114,006 square miles
The US is a BIIIIIIIIIG country compared to European countries. That's lot's of empty highway miles to ensure cell service to.
It's not just population density, it's also the raw land mass you have to cover.
Finland has a low density, but it's also a tiny country in comparison to the US.
More raw land mass to cover = WAY more towers needed to reach the existing population.
Remember too that population density numbers can be deceiving, as often they merely compare the total landmass to the total population. they don't take into account figures such as livable land, arable land, and population distribution.
For example: Finland has a low overall population density, but due to it's smaller size, and the high percentage of it's landmass that is taken up by non-oceanic waterways, Glaciation, and mountains, the actual PERCENTAGE of landmass available to live on is significantly smaller than the total landmass. Thus, the population is mostly crammed into Finland's few cities, with a small rural population.
The US, on the other hand, has a much larger landmass to start out with, and the percentage of "unlivable" areas (IE: Areas not suitable to support a significant population) is VERY small in comparison to it's total landmass. (The heart of the Rockies, Death Valley, the deep everglades, and that's about it.) The amount of livable and arable land in the US is very very very high, thus the true population density is actually much lower. Thus higher costs.
Not to mention hurricanes.
Oh, and isn't Finland's square KM something close to Kentucky's?
Yeah, not really comparable.
OK, now I have to figure out why my post above:
Was marked "Troll" for making a humorous response to this post:
Perhaps because I expressed a dislike for Steam(ing pile of shit)? Maybe. I guess the mods still haven't figured out that "troll" != "disagree".
Either way, I am still glad to see a free game come out for the PC, and I'll still pirate it as I still refuse to install Steam(ing pile of shit) on my PC. If you guys want to pollute your systems with that kind of DRM, feel free. but until it comes DRM free, I'll continue to pirate. (And yes, if it was available free of DRM, I would even PAY for this "free" expansion. I reward honesty with honesty.)