The technology "needed"? Funny, there's this odd history book that seems to think that humans lived in Africa for a while before Europeans arrived. I'm not sure, but I hear that in this mysterious time before time, they even didn't have cellphones or the Internet!
What is needed is an end to things like this. Until the first world nations stop raping third world nations and supporting tinpot dictators just for the sake of guaranteeing access to their resources, human misery will continue wholesale.
The MIT people may not be the people who design the abusive foreign policy of the US that has resulted in the current state of world affairs, but they need to realize that anything that they come up with will be undermined while the US foreign policy has, as a stated goal, the maintenance of US hegemony over all other nations. While this goal still exists, any attempt by poorer nations to develop themselves will be viewed as a shifting balance of power away from the US rather than the reality, which is a net benefit to humankind.
This goal, and everyone responsible for its creation, development and ongoing application, must be purged from the US political fabric. Given that there is effectively no difference between democrats and republicans, that means a wholly new party and probably an entire system revision.
Until this happens, a million groups of smart people will not be able to do anything about poverty, disease and misery in the third world.
This is the result of a US democratic system that is totally broken. The "democracy" of the US has led to a fatal assault on the liberty that was protected by the US constitution, a population suffering under the yoke of unprecedented plutocratic oppression and a world in ruins due to the deliberate kindling of external instability and hatred in the name of "national security" and "economic interests".
The irony is that the US says that it wants to bring freedom and democracy to the middle east and elsewhere, yet they have neither themselves.
No, just because you hate Microsoft does not mean that they could return a better profit then the Yahoo board. If track record is anything to go by, then, from a business point of view, getting in a MSFT appointed board is the best thing they can do.
Hating Microsoft does not *make* Microsoft a bad business proposition. Let's try to make a token effort to separate MS hatery from investment analysis.
Not much of that left, even if leftists wanted US taxpayers' dollars (which they don't, you're just trolling or have no concept of geopolitics, I cant decide which it is) they won't be getting any as they are being spent to exhaustion in Iraq. So take comfort that your dollars are being wasted responsibly.
It's an open platform, so hopefully support will come from the community. As long as the hardware works, I'm sure we (the Open Source community) will be able to collectively work it all out. After all, we reverse engineered DRM, emulated Windows and support non-documented protocols like CIFS/SMB and MSN.
You clean your laptop until it looks cosmetically clean. The number of microbes that can survive any length of time outside your body is so few as to be ignorable.
If you think you need to disinfect your laptop then you also need to disinfect your car, bed, sofa, TV remote, mobile phone, household phone etc etc. In that case flu isn't your biggest concern, that enormous OCD case you have is a far bigger problem.
No. The word "public" in "public toilet" refers to it being publicly available. When a member of the public uses it, they still have an expectation of privacy. while they are within in.
While I agree with your point, please use proper analogies to illustrate them.
I really wish this attitude would filter into the Slashdot groupthink. At the moment, Google is Microsoft's enemy. Slashdot is falling for the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" idea. To put it very geekily, it's applying boolean logic to a tri-state system.
Well, the person in question probably got HIV from overly promiscuous habits that we don't want to propagate, so curing them of HIV and rendering them sterile kills two birds with one stone.
Microsoft isn't any more or less evil than any other big corporate, same as Google. Google isn't "not evil" just because they have a slogan that says so.
I see this math done all the time with all the OMG! responses.
The answer is simple: Write IM clients that run on your phone. The carriers can then charge whatever they please for SMS, people will just stop using it.
Strange how when Microsoft engages in big deals they're called monopolists, yet when Google takes over advertising from the only real competition it has, you act all surprised the the DoJ raises an eyebrow.
Microsoft was the geeks' darling 15 years ago. Is it going to take us another 15 years to realize that Google is just another Big Corp that will bite, scratch and steal its way into a position where it can dictate our lifestyles to suit its profit agenda?
The energy required to lower the temp of such a large amount of matter would be prohibitive in the absence of totally paradigm altering new technology.
The sound you hear out of your radio is the result of sound being modulated at the radio station, transmitted as radio waves, and then demodulated at your end.
Radio waves are a form of EM, which is only partly a "wave". The property that makes it propagate through a vacuum is the part of it that deviates from the definition of a wave. This is why EM radiation is given its own classification separate from waves and particles, as it exhibits features of both, and yet cannot be said to be either.
May I ask, and I stress this is not a troll (I was considering buying one):
Why do you think it's good value? I was literally hand on wallet, about to buy an eeePC 901, when I realized that, at $600, it was actually *more* expensive than the smallest Acer laptop next to it, which was about 50% larger, but was a fully fledged laptop.
I think that this trend of making low cost laptops expensive has gotten out of hand. Low cost is low cost. If the eeePC costs more than a second hand ThinkPad X40 but has half the power, is nowhere NEAR as durable, has a vastly inferior keyboard, then what's the point of the eeePC other than being just the next gadget to have?
Comparing my old (circa 2004) X40 to an eeePC was an eye opener. It's not hugely larger, but is a fully fledged laptop. And a damn good one at that. Personally, the best choice for ultra portables is to buy up X40s from eBay, put Xubuntu on them, and be done with it. 1/3 the price of an eeePC and I can actually do proper work on it.
Sound is the propagation of a wave within a medium, and in space, there is no medium with the density required to propagate a wave of any kind. Sound can travel within a medium such as a gas, however when the gas density decreases such as an atmosphere does as you get further from the surface, the sound wave attenuates, eventually petering out to nothing.
When the article says that the Earth "screams" and "whistles", it's not talking about acoustic sound waves, rather, the acoustic translation of the radio waves that are given off as a result of the helio-terrestrial effects. Whatever sensory capacity aliens have may not actually consider it to be noise, to them, it may sound pleasant, the way the waves on a beach sound to us. They may be translating it into their native sensory package, which may be "eyes" that are only sensitive to microwaves, or "ears" that only "hear" sound in a band outside of our 5hz-15khz range. Once translated, we have no idea how they'd perceive the resulting sensory experience to be. It could be a piercing shriek to them, or a gentle soothing experience.
Indeed. I hope they use isotopically pure Si, however the tie does not necessarily have to be to earth if they define the proportions accurately and discretely.
The reason this is even an issue is that it is not easy to actually obtain isotopically pure Si.
That being said, I prefer the discrete definition method. I.e., it should be defined that a Kg is a certain number of atoms of a certain element. That way, just as with the meter, any researcher is free to remeasure or construct their own standard as accurately as they are able with reference to a documented, platonically defined standard.
Well, yes, but derivative standards are true by reference to others. E.g., we all agree on the value of the Newton, but not because we agree on it independently but because it is defined with reference to the kilogram.
Also, other standards are linked to natural phenomena. The meter is defined with reference to the speed of light, the distance traveled in 1â299,792,458 of a second. This, too, is an arbitrary number.
The joule however, is define from the joule and the meter: It is one newton applied over a distance of one meter.
The kilogram was the only measure left that was not derived directly from a discrete value referencing a fact of nature. The meter, given its definition, can be measured and remeasured anywhere in the world, and can be refined as our ability to measure improves.
The kilogram however is defined according to "this one thing", making it impossible to actually measure it unless you physically have access to that one thing. Otherwise, you have to measure from copies of it, and copies may or may not be accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
The technology "needed"? Funny, there's this odd history book that seems to think that humans lived in Africa for a while before Europeans arrived. I'm not sure, but I hear that in this mysterious time before time, they even didn't have cellphones or the Internet!
What is needed is an end to things like this. Until the first world nations stop raping third world nations and supporting tinpot dictators just for the sake of guaranteeing access to their resources, human misery will continue wholesale.
The MIT people may not be the people who design the abusive foreign policy of the US that has resulted in the current state of world affairs, but they need to realize that anything that they come up with will be undermined while the US foreign policy has, as a stated goal, the maintenance of US hegemony over all other nations. While this goal still exists, any attempt by poorer nations to develop themselves will be viewed as a shifting balance of power away from the US rather than the reality, which is a net benefit to humankind.
This goal, and everyone responsible for its creation, development and ongoing application, must be purged from the US political fabric. Given that there is effectively no difference between democrats and republicans, that means a wholly new party and probably an entire system revision.
Until this happens, a million groups of smart people will not be able to do anything about poverty, disease and misery in the third world.
This is the result of a US democratic system that is totally broken. The "democracy" of the US has led to a fatal assault on the liberty that was protected by the US constitution, a population suffering under the yoke of unprecedented plutocratic oppression and a world in ruins due to the deliberate kindling of external instability and hatred in the name of "national security" and "economic interests".
The irony is that the US says that it wants to bring freedom and democracy to the middle east and elsewhere, yet they have neither themselves.
No, just because you hate Microsoft does not mean that they could return a better profit then the Yahoo board. If track record is anything to go by, then, from a business point of view, getting in a MSFT appointed board is the best thing they can do.
Hating Microsoft does not *make* Microsoft a bad business proposition. Let's try to make a token effort to separate MS hatery from investment analysis.
"The reaction from people immediately after he was overthrown"
As reported by embedded journalists paid for by the US DoD. Nope, no special interest reporting here, no siree.
"without US taxpayer's dollars"
Not much of that left, even if leftists wanted US taxpayers' dollars (which they don't, you're just trolling or have no concept of geopolitics, I cant decide which it is) they won't be getting any as they are being spent to exhaustion in Iraq. So take comfort that your dollars are being wasted responsibly.
It's an open platform, so hopefully support will come from the community. As long as the hardware works, I'm sure we (the Open Source community) will be able to collectively work it all out. After all, we reverse engineered DRM, emulated Windows and support non-documented protocols like CIFS/SMB and MSN.
The correct possessive form is "family's".
Apparently grammar isn't taught in Empire Building 101 any more.
This is the most retarded Ask Slashdot EVER.
You clean your laptop until it looks cosmetically clean. The number of microbes that can survive any length of time outside your body is so few as to be ignorable.
If you think you need to disinfect your laptop then you also need to disinfect your car, bed, sofa, TV remote, mobile phone, household phone etc etc. In that case flu isn't your biggest concern, that enormous OCD case you have is a far bigger problem.
No. The word "public" in "public toilet" refers to it being publicly available. When a member of the public uses it, they still have an expectation of privacy. while they are within in.
While I agree with your point, please use proper analogies to illustrate them.
CAT5 has a segment length of 100m. Just sayin'.
I really wish this attitude would filter into the Slashdot groupthink. At the moment, Google is Microsoft's enemy. Slashdot is falling for the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" idea. To put it very geekily, it's applying boolean logic to a tri-state system.
Oh come on mods, I wasn't serious.
Well, the person in question probably got HIV from overly promiscuous habits that we don't want to propagate, so curing them of HIV and rendering them sterile kills two birds with one stone.
Microsoft isn't any more or less evil than any other big corporate, same as Google. Google isn't "not evil" just because they have a slogan that says so.
Stop being naive.
I see this math done all the time with all the OMG! responses.
The answer is simple: Write IM clients that run on your phone. The carriers can then charge whatever they please for SMS, people will just stop using it.
Next problem?
Strange how when Microsoft engages in big deals they're called monopolists, yet when Google takes over advertising from the only real competition it has, you act all surprised the the DoJ raises an eyebrow.
Microsoft was the geeks' darling 15 years ago. Is it going to take us another 15 years to realize that Google is just another Big Corp that will bite, scratch and steal its way into a position where it can dictate our lifestyles to suit its profit agenda?
You're obviously quite the anti-semite.
I'm a grammar Nazi pointing out that you misspelled "thieves".
This post brought to you by Slashdot's Irony Department.
The energy required to lower the temp of such a large amount of matter would be prohibitive in the absence of totally paradigm altering new technology.
Indeed. Will you sign up to be a slave rower?
Radio is not sound.
The sound you hear out of your radio is the result of sound being modulated at the radio station, transmitted as radio waves, and then demodulated at your end.
Radio waves are a form of EM, which is only partly a "wave". The property that makes it propagate through a vacuum is the part of it that deviates from the definition of a wave. This is why EM radiation is given its own classification separate from waves and particles, as it exhibits features of both, and yet cannot be said to be either.
May I ask, and I stress this is not a troll (I was considering buying one):
Why do you think it's good value? I was literally hand on wallet, about to buy an eeePC 901, when I realized that, at $600, it was actually *more* expensive than the smallest Acer laptop next to it, which was about 50% larger, but was a fully fledged laptop.
I think that this trend of making low cost laptops expensive has gotten out of hand. Low cost is low cost. If the eeePC costs more than a second hand ThinkPad X40 but has half the power, is nowhere NEAR as durable, has a vastly inferior keyboard, then what's the point of the eeePC other than being just the next gadget to have?
Comparing my old (circa 2004) X40 to an eeePC was an eye opener. It's not hugely larger, but is a fully fledged laptop. And a damn good one at that. Personally, the best choice for ultra portables is to buy up X40s from eBay, put Xubuntu on them, and be done with it. 1/3 the price of an eeePC and I can actually do proper work on it.
Sound is the propagation of a wave within a medium, and in space, there is no medium with the density required to propagate a wave of any kind. Sound can travel within a medium such as a gas, however when the gas density decreases such as an atmosphere does as you get further from the surface, the sound wave attenuates, eventually petering out to nothing.
When the article says that the Earth "screams" and "whistles", it's not talking about acoustic sound waves, rather, the acoustic translation of the radio waves that are given off as a result of the helio-terrestrial effects. Whatever sensory capacity aliens have may not actually consider it to be noise, to them, it may sound pleasant, the way the waves on a beach sound to us. They may be translating it into their native sensory package, which may be "eyes" that are only sensitive to microwaves, or "ears" that only "hear" sound in a band outside of our 5hz-15khz range. Once translated, we have no idea how they'd perceive the resulting sensory experience to be. It could be a piercing shriek to them, or a gentle soothing experience.
Let's not be too hasty, the book "How to Serve Man" could be their title for the "Idiot's Guide to Being an Ood"
Indeed. I hope they use isotopically pure Si, however the tie does not necessarily have to be to earth if they define the proportions accurately and discretely.
The reason this is even an issue is that it is not easy to actually obtain isotopically pure Si.
That being said, I prefer the discrete definition method. I.e., it should be defined that a Kg is a certain number of atoms of a certain element. That way, just as with the meter, any researcher is free to remeasure or construct their own standard as accurately as they are able with reference to a documented, platonically defined standard.
Well, yes, but derivative standards are true by reference to others. E.g., we all agree on the value of the Newton, but not because we agree on it independently but because it is defined with reference to the kilogram.
Also, other standards are linked to natural phenomena. The meter is defined with reference to the speed of light, the distance traveled in 1â299,792,458 of a second. This, too, is an arbitrary number.
The joule however, is define from the joule and the meter: It is one newton applied over a distance of one meter.
The kilogram was the only measure left that was not derived directly from a discrete value referencing a fact of nature. The meter, given its definition, can be measured and remeasured anywhere in the world, and can be refined as our ability to measure improves.
The kilogram however is defined according to "this one thing", making it impossible to actually measure it unless you physically have access to that one thing. Otherwise, you have to measure from copies of it, and copies may or may not be accurate.