What we need is a new wonderdrug. Its the world's most powerful antibiotic. It cures the flu and the common cold. It even cures headaches! And best of all it only costs $15 retail for a 30 day supply. Its called Placebofen and side effects may include nausea, upset stomach, sexual side effects, increased gambling habits, drymouth, and dizziness.
NetFlix, on the other hand, may be smart enough to realise that internet access to movies is inevitable, but only came up with some shitty "on your computer only" service, with bandwidth restrictions.
Your computer monitor isn't the biggest screen you own?
Your geek card must be returned to the issuing agency by the end of the week.
Because if you don't have antiquated infrastructure to lean on, you buy the latest and greatest. Same goes for electoral systems and government in general.
I think they could air condition the server rooms and take care of this issue. However, I don't think this idea makes much sense. Ships are very expensive to maintain and keep from rusting away. With all the work associated with wastage (rusting), keeping a ship painted etc. I can't understand how this could be cheaper than an office building. They will also probably need a master (captain) 24/7 on the vessel, even though it is tied to the dock unless they do some monkey business with their ship class. As for the idea of using diesel power; the power company can make electricity cheaper than you can. That's why they're the power company. Large datacenters pay the industrial rate (cheaper), not the consumer rate.
I don't see any huge advantages either. You're still in US waters so you're still under US law. They claim to use extra heat from the engine to heat the ship, but with all that electrical equipment there shouldn't be a need to. Electrical rooms in ships can get very warm. If anything they will need extra AC above what a shore facility would need. Plus, in the event of a disaster like a hurricane or earthquake, the fiber line to shore will probably have issues anyway somewhere.
I could go on, but these are the biggest issues. Why yes, I am a marine engineer.
Removing the legal exchange won't prevent it. Look at Diablo 2 and the insane rates of SOJs on eBay in the beginning. No matter what, people will scam for money because even if its not worth real money, its still worth something to someone.
I submit that if someone will pay you real money for something, then it IS worth real money.
An extra bonus is that the more you absorb the sun's energy as electricity, the less of it is converted to heat which dissipates around the planet, and that in and of itself reduces the effect global warming. So you are being twice as productive - not rely on heat-trapping coal, and reduce the amount of heat that saturates on the planet in the first place.
Well, no. No matter what you do with your electricity, it always ends up as heat. Lightbulbs? Heat. Even Compact Floro's, even LEDs. Computers? Little space heaters. Ovens, Toasters, hairdryers etc go without saying. Air conditioners are just heat *pumps* that move heat from one place to another, adding some more heat in the proceses. I think someone failed thermo.
These are all good points, but I think the extra time that people spend waiting for the wii will be spend evaluating the other options, looking at the games, deciding if it is worth it and if the cross platform games perform the same or better on other consoles. While it is true that the wii has titles and gameplay the other consoles do not, cross platform game support for the wii is downright awful. Plus while it comes with wireless internet support out of the box, practically no game uses it for multiplayer play.
When it comes down to it, for me the choice was pretty clear. Since I don't like Metroid that much and I've already completed Twilight Princess on wii, I could have a $300 mario machine with shitty 3rd party games or pay the same amount and get a PS2 with a pile of accessories and games. Is it fair to compare the mature PS2 library to the wii's? Not entirely, but the Gamecube's at end of life wasn't anything like the PS2's is now either. I don't have high hopes for seeing a wide variety of good games on the wii, aside from Nintendo published games
I wouldn't be surprised if a few more networks, like Comedy Central, get into the action. I think what's happening is that the corporations that run the networks have seen how a site like Youtube has practically sprouted up overnight, and they're seeing this as a way to reach out to more people (and thereby increase their advertising streams and revenue).
Comedy Central recently added the entire library of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to their website. This is a tremendous amount of content that you could spend weeks watching if you wanted to and not see the same episode twice. This is good, since new episodes are currently suspended due to the Writer's Guild Strike or something similarly silly.
Of course, what is to stop the representatives from carrying out tyranny against people they do not represent?
I think the biggest problem today (besides corporate sponsorship) with the US government is that the representatives are elected by their constituent states. When a congressman thinks of "his people", he does not think of "Americans", he thinks of all the people back in Timbucktoo, Alabama that need a new hickway, erm Highway to Wockahooey, Alabama so he can get elected again. Meanwhile all his fellow congressmen are doing the same thing porking money back to their home states so they can get re-elected.
At this point I think we would be better drawing names from a hat than rubber-stamping incumbents back into congress over and over.
Thats not a bug, thats a feature! Microsoft is trying to get people to use greener, less CPU-intensive codecs like MP3 to save power and the environment.
Kidding aside, what is Microsoft's business plan with the Zune??? Judging from the vast numbers of deeply-discounted Zunes being dumped into the market (I bought mine for $80 on Woot), they can't possibly be making money on the hardware. The software is so terrible that I only use it when my music collection changes substantially, and their music store certainly doesn't have much going for it right now. What is the "attachment rate" for Zune store purchase? Its probably shockingly low.
The whole thing reminds me of Xbox 1 (and the 360 to some extent) where Microsoft deeply discounted the hardware hoping to make money on the software, but then didn't because their projections of attachment rates were completely off and the hardware was selling at just too great of a loss.
It is unfortunate that the damage is done. People are convinced that nuclear is a dangerous, dirty, and impossible to maintain power source. Building one is next to impossible due to the misinformation. It will take another 30 years to convince people that they are ok.
I don't think thats true at all. It will take that long for everyone who remembers Chernobyl and Three Mile Island to die or become senile. People changing their minds suddenly isn't going to happen in large numbers.
To me, a language learning software package for deployment in Mexico would be the killer app. Mexico should have a leg up on India and China when it comes to importing stuff to the United States. Mexico is much closer and the time difference isn't much if any. Mexico is getting shoved out of nearly all markets however due to their inability to compete. China is shoving them out of the goods market because of their low prices (and associated poor environmental and human practices). India is beating them on call centers because many Indians are willing to learn English and have a chance to do so- something most Mexicans can not or will not.
Mass adoption of English as a second language could give Mexico the enormous economic boost that India has enjoyed in recent years. Can the OLPC fill this gap in Mexican education? Will Mexicans care to learn English? I doubt it. There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India. It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.
The researchers used this method to find how individuals on the IMDb privately rated films on Netflix, in the process possibly working out their political affiliation, sexual preferences and a number of other personal details"
This is a loaded statement. The most you can determine is that if a person likes movie A, B, C and D but hated E and F, there is a higher probability they are a guy. If they liked Z but didn't like X, there is a higher probability they might be a republican than not. You're still anonymous.
Unless, of course, you're one of the three people that liked "Glitter". Then I think they might have something on you.
I first heard about this when I was an undergrad studying naval architecture. Because of the poorly trained, tiny crews, many of whom don't even speak all the same language, my classmates and I never thought it would happen on a commercial ship. Clearly it has. Maybe it will even become common someday. Then again, it could be as unwieldy and difficult to manage as nuclear powered freigthers and oil tankers- examples of which you can pretty much count on one hand.
The main problem I see is the additional burden of a sail in an emergency. It almost surely has an emergency release (I would bet money on this), but dumping the sail to save the ship would probably be viewed by many captains as a career-ending move. Because of this some captains might be reluctant to dump the sail and an accident might result that otherwise may not have.
I can agree that power usage by the CPU is cut since the utilization is not as high. But since the GPU is doing all this decoding, power usage by the GPU will increase. If the GPU is equal in decoding efficiency to the CPU, then power consumption is a wash and there is no power savings.
The real benefeit here is the ability to use the slowest, lowest powered chip you can find in a media center and still be able to decode HD.
Rockstar should get into the underwear business. If they starting could develop panties that resisted bunching, they could crush their compeditors.
What are these congressmen bent out of shape over? You already have to be 17 to buy the game and provide proof of age and identification at the checkout.
Cookie Monster has serious issues that need to be addressed. Any character that simultaneously binges and purges probably has emotional problems stemming from childhood trauma.
Small power generation, like solar and wind, is great from a grid management perspective, because a grid operator can shut down or bring up a solar or wind service more easily than a large power plant. They need to do this to control voltage fluctuations and meet demand.
As someone who has worked in several power plants, I can say that this is never done and is completely wrong. The clean plants, your Hydro, your wind, your solar, are running at maximum sustainable capacity all of the time. Because they don't consume fuel theres very little overhead aside from maintanance. Thus they are much cheaper to operate than conventional natural gas plants. The initial cost is much higher on a per-MW basis, sure. And you can't run a hydro plant at full blast all of the time because your resovoir would run out of water.
But in general, the clean plants run full speed ahead and you regulate the fuel-consuming plants to meet load.
Slashdot Mirror
Residents of New Jersey and Oregon are thrilled by this latest development. Finally, a way to fuel up without rolling down the window.
What we need is a new wonderdrug. Its the world's most powerful antibiotic. It cures the flu and the common cold. It even cures headaches! And best of all it only costs $15 retail for a 30 day supply. Its called Placebofen and side effects may include nausea, upset stomach, sexual side effects, increased gambling habits, drymouth, and dizziness.
Finally the blind can now see what they are building!
oh wait...
Thats still a majority. Implying otherwise is silly.
You give other people your opinion without having to listen to theirs.
It often takes accidents or other strange happenstances to spur innovation and invention. See Penicillin or any other number of other examples.
NetFlix, on the other hand, may be smart enough to realise that internet access to movies is inevitable, but only came up with some shitty "on your computer only" service, with bandwidth restrictions.
Your computer monitor isn't the biggest screen you own?
Your geek card must be returned to the issuing agency by the end of the week.
Why is Iraq full of cell phones?
Because if you don't have antiquated infrastructure to lean on, you buy the latest and greatest. Same goes for electoral systems and government in general.
I think they could air condition the server rooms and take care of this issue. However, I don't think this idea makes much sense. Ships are very expensive to maintain and keep from rusting away. With all the work associated with wastage (rusting), keeping a ship painted etc. I can't understand how this could be cheaper than an office building. They will also probably need a master (captain) 24/7 on the vessel, even though it is tied to the dock unless they do some monkey business with their ship class. As for the idea of using diesel power; the power company can make electricity cheaper than you can. That's why they're the power company. Large datacenters pay the industrial rate (cheaper), not the consumer rate.
I don't see any huge advantages either. You're still in US waters so you're still under US law. They claim to use extra heat from the engine to heat the ship, but with all that electrical equipment there shouldn't be a need to. Electrical rooms in ships can get very warm. If anything they will need extra AC above what a shore facility would need. Plus, in the event of a disaster like a hurricane or earthquake, the fiber line to shore will probably have issues anyway somewhere.
I could go on, but these are the biggest issues. Why yes, I am a marine engineer.
People who want to enter the country for nefarious purposes will always have a variety of methods of entry that completely bypass these systems.
I recommend a fake ID with a birthdate of February 29. Customs systems reject this date so they can't look up any records.
Removing the legal exchange won't prevent it. Look at Diablo 2 and the insane rates of SOJs on eBay in the beginning. No matter what, people will scam for money because even if its not worth real money, its still worth something to someone.
I submit that if someone will pay you real money for something, then it IS worth real money.
An extra bonus is that the more you absorb the sun's energy as electricity, the less of it is converted to heat which dissipates around the planet, and that in and of itself reduces the effect global warming. So you are being twice as productive - not rely on heat-trapping coal, and reduce the amount of heat that saturates on the planet in the first place.
Well, no. No matter what you do with your electricity, it always ends up as heat. Lightbulbs? Heat. Even Compact Floro's, even LEDs. Computers? Little space heaters. Ovens, Toasters, hairdryers etc go without saying. Air conditioners are just heat *pumps* that move heat from one place to another, adding some more heat in the proceses. I think someone failed thermo.
These are all good points, but I think the extra time that people spend waiting for the wii will be spend evaluating the other options, looking at the games, deciding if it is worth it and if the cross platform games perform the same or better on other consoles. While it is true that the wii has titles and gameplay the other consoles do not, cross platform game support for the wii is downright awful. Plus while it comes with wireless internet support out of the box, practically no game uses it for multiplayer play.
When it comes down to it, for me the choice was pretty clear. Since I don't like Metroid that much and I've already completed Twilight Princess on wii, I could have a $300 mario machine with shitty 3rd party games or pay the same amount and get a PS2 with a pile of accessories and games. Is it fair to compare the mature PS2 library to the wii's? Not entirely, but the Gamecube's at end of life wasn't anything like the PS2's is now either. I don't have high hopes for seeing a wide variety of good games on the wii, aside from Nintendo published games
I wouldn't be surprised if a few more networks, like Comedy Central, get into the action. I think what's happening is that the corporations that run the networks have seen how a site like Youtube has practically sprouted up overnight, and they're seeing this as a way to reach out to more people (and thereby increase their advertising streams and revenue).
Comedy Central recently added the entire library of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to their website. This is a tremendous amount of content that you could spend weeks watching if you wanted to and not see the same episode twice. This is good, since new episodes are currently suspended due to the Writer's Guild Strike or something similarly silly.
Of course, what is to stop the representatives from carrying out tyranny against people they do not represent?
I think the biggest problem today (besides corporate sponsorship) with the US government is that the representatives are elected by their constituent states. When a congressman thinks of "his people", he does not think of "Americans", he thinks of all the people back in Timbucktoo, Alabama that need a new hickway, erm Highway to Wockahooey, Alabama so he can get elected again. Meanwhile all his fellow congressmen are doing the same thing porking money back to their home states so they can get re-elected.
At this point I think we would be better drawing names from a hat than rubber-stamping incumbents back into congress over and over.
Thats not a bug, thats a feature! Microsoft is trying to get people to use greener, less CPU-intensive codecs like MP3 to save power and the environment.
Kidding aside, what is Microsoft's business plan with the Zune??? Judging from the vast numbers of deeply-discounted Zunes being dumped into the market (I bought mine for $80 on Woot), they can't possibly be making money on the hardware. The software is so terrible that I only use it when my music collection changes substantially, and their music store certainly doesn't have much going for it right now. What is the "attachment rate" for Zune store purchase? Its probably shockingly low.
The whole thing reminds me of Xbox 1 (and the 360 to some extent) where Microsoft deeply discounted the hardware hoping to make money on the software, but then didn't because their projections of attachment rates were completely off and the hardware was selling at just too great of a loss.
It is unfortunate that the damage is done. People are convinced that nuclear is a dangerous, dirty, and impossible to maintain power source. Building one is next to impossible due to the misinformation. It will take another 30 years to convince people that they are ok.
I don't think thats true at all. It will take that long for everyone who remembers Chernobyl and Three Mile Island to die or become senile. People changing their minds suddenly isn't going to happen in large numbers.
To me, a language learning software package for deployment in Mexico would be the killer app. Mexico should have a leg up on India and China when it comes to importing stuff to the United States. Mexico is much closer and the time difference isn't much if any. Mexico is getting shoved out of nearly all markets however due to their inability to compete. China is shoving them out of the goods market because of their low prices (and associated poor environmental and human practices). India is beating them on call centers because many Indians are willing to learn English and have a chance to do so- something most Mexicans can not or will not.
Mass adoption of English as a second language could give Mexico the enormous economic boost that India has enjoyed in recent years. Can the OLPC fill this gap in Mexican education? Will Mexicans care to learn English? I doubt it. There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India. It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.
The researchers used this method to find how individuals on the IMDb privately rated films on Netflix, in the process possibly working out their political affiliation, sexual preferences and a number of other personal details"
This is a loaded statement. The most you can determine is that if a person likes movie A, B, C and D but hated E and F, there is a higher probability they are a guy. If they liked Z but didn't like X, there is a higher probability they might be a republican than not. You're still anonymous.
Unless, of course, you're one of the three people that liked "Glitter". Then I think they might have something on you.
I first heard about this when I was an undergrad studying naval architecture. Because of the poorly trained, tiny crews, many of whom don't even speak all the same language, my classmates and I never thought it would happen on a commercial ship. Clearly it has. Maybe it will even become common someday. Then again, it could be as unwieldy and difficult to manage as nuclear powered freigthers and oil tankers- examples of which you can pretty much count on one hand.
The main problem I see is the additional burden of a sail in an emergency. It almost surely has an emergency release (I would bet money on this), but dumping the sail to save the ship would probably be viewed by many captains as a career-ending move. Because of this some captains might be reluctant to dump the sail and an accident might result that otherwise may not have.
I can agree that power usage by the CPU is cut since the utilization is not as high. But since the GPU is doing all this decoding, power usage by the GPU will increase. If the GPU is equal in decoding efficiency to the CPU, then power consumption is a wash and there is no power savings.
The real benefeit here is the ability to use the slowest, lowest powered chip you can find in a media center and still be able to decode HD.
Rockstar should get into the underwear business. If they starting could develop panties that resisted bunching, they could crush their compeditors.
What are these congressmen bent out of shape over? You already have to be 17 to buy the game and provide proof of age and identification at the checkout.
Cookie Monster has serious issues that need to be addressed. Any character that simultaneously binges and purges probably has emotional problems stemming from childhood trauma.
This is Simcopter one, reporting heavy philanthropy.
Small power generation, like solar and wind, is great from a grid management perspective, because a grid operator can shut down or bring up a solar or wind service more easily than a large power plant. They need to do this to control voltage fluctuations and meet demand.
As someone who has worked in several power plants, I can say that this is never done and is completely wrong. The clean plants, your Hydro, your wind, your solar, are running at maximum sustainable capacity all of the time. Because they don't consume fuel theres very little overhead aside from maintanance. Thus they are much cheaper to operate than conventional natural gas plants. The initial cost is much higher on a per-MW basis, sure. And you can't run a hydro plant at full blast all of the time because your resovoir would run out of water.
But in general, the clean plants run full speed ahead and you regulate the fuel-consuming plants to meet load.