"You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort. There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn."
Does this mean that I really *can't* cash my million dollar bill at Walmart?
These are the same stupid people overpopulating the planet, often at government expense, literally spamming the gene pool. People who are smart and/or alert enought to recognize the problem generally choose to breed less, while the morons are popping them out like rabbits. An effective spam filter *there* would work wonders.
Sorry if this slipped off topic, but it's the best I could do. Excuse me while I go reproduce....
Can you say daylight stealth? Cover the bottom of a military jet or helicopter with OLED panels, then emit the same color as the surrounding sky. Or tanks. Or ships. Or....
Kodak, for one, has a fairly new camera with a pretty big (for a camera) OLED display, not to mention a 10x optical lens.
Yes, exactly what I thought too. Somethink like those protective plastic static-cling covers that come on the faces of electronic gadgets. I'd also agree that there wouldn't be much of a weight penalty, either.
Maybe our next robots will be equipped with their own little cleaning robots.
I just figured it had run off with a poodle, until I learned that there are no poodles on Mars. Then I though it landed in a puddle, until I was told there are no puddles on Mars. I guess that rules out a poodle puddle too.
I've had extensive cervical spine surgery, and find it impossible to work on a desktop that doesn't have room to rest my entire arm, never mind the wrist. So as far as ergonomics go, individual user requirements can vary.
On the other hand, raving schizophrenic maniacs can now look perfectly normal! All they have to do is strap on a headset and carry a cordless mouse around, and they'll look like they are hard at work.
Re:Forget the alarms -- my personal anti-theft dev
on
Stolen Laptop Alarms
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Yes, I call that 'uglification'. It's a good trick to keep the staplers, tape dispensers, footstools, etc., from running off at work.
I wonder if it might be enough to stick a prominent "Protected by Brink's Security" sticker on the lid. Maybe glue an old beeper case on, with a push button that flashes a red LED. After all, the threat of deterrence is almost as good as deterrence itself.
"I wonder what possesses people to steal others' laptops. Is there a deep insatiable need to steal inherent in the theives that brings them to that point?"
I guess the same thing that keeps me from going down to Best Buy every payday to buy a new laptop is what motivates the thieves. It's like walking into the library and seeing a stack of hundred dollar bills sitting on a table.
Now, what I would *really* like to see is an exploding dye packet, like the ones the banks slip into the stolen money during robberies. Slide it in and close the cover. When the thief opens the lid for the first time...BAM...all of a sudden he looks like one of those blue guys in the Pentium ads. Oh, wouldn't that be good fun!
Probably preaching to the choir, here, but just in case someone hasn't read it... I found Robert Forward's 'Indistinguisable from Magic' to be a pretty good read. If you like the idea of a space elevator, then you'll love the rotating 'space bolo' version, kind of like a bullroarer on ubersteroids.
The earlier posts on 'space bungees' might not be so far off the mark after all.
I don't know if you are considering used or not, but if you are...
SurplusShed is a site where I've bought optics from time to time, but they carry some electronics also.
To quote the website:
http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/r1456.html
This is a powerful 100 Mhz oscilloscope with 5 channels and 12 traces. It has a four way trigger off either channels 1, 2, 3, or ALT. Trigger lock for stable automatic triggering for complex signals such as video waveforms. Can display several Lissajous patterns at the same time. 5 mV to 5 V per division (1 mV with magnifier) and 2% accuracy. Sweep speeds are 20 ns to 500 ms. This is the scope that is being used in production, testing, R&D, and home shops because of its versatility and portability. Tested and in good working condition. Complete manual copy included. Only have a few."
Oops, forgot to grab the price, but it is around US $225
Yeah, that's the spirit! Come to think of it, I wonder if the U.S. Patent Office has a patent on the patent process? Could be the whole system is buggered.
>>"I don't know much about the patent laws but it seems to me that companies that use concepts that someone patented, and who implemented them with no knowledge of the patent shouldn't be able to be sued."
Well...if I take my maching gun and fire it blindly about the neighborhood one night, should I not be responsible for harm if I didn't willfully intend to kill a particular person? Of course not. Not quite the same thing, true, and I have to agree with you that litigation as a whole is getting out of hand.
Patents are a matter of public record (which is the whole idea, after all), and if a manufacturer is using a process that he doesn't know is patented or not, then I wouldn't think much of his business acumen, since he should either be protecting his process by patenting it himself, or, with the same research, discovering that it is already patented.
I have to admit, though, that many of these intellectual properties patents, such as the Amazon 'one-click' process cited in other posts, certainly muddies the water for me. I always thought of a patent being for something you can hold in your hand (figuratively if not literally).
I'm one of those greybeards who was writing college reports in the pre-BBS days, never mind the World Wide Web. Remembering back to when I used to spend a half-day of research in the library to mine info that now magically appears on my computer screen in ten seconds, well...it's hard to throw stones. I'm just happy the damned things work at all.
Well, what about diamond-encrusted kevlar body armor? Protection *and* style, all in one, and a different color for every day of the week! Very smart and practical protection from DeBeer's assasins.
So...A Diamond is Forever, but DeBeers isn't. Good.
Jewelry stores use numerous small, bright lights (metal halide, I suppose) to have the best chance to flashing pretty refractions to the potential buyer. Makes all stones look better, not just the bad ones.
Me, I'm waiting until they grow 10 by 12 inch wafers cheap enough to use for tower windows. And I'll bet you could make some really bitchin' snow tires with them, but I guess the potholes might be a problem.
Where exactly *does* DeBeers keep all those hoarded stones? Seems to me that a few hundred nerds with assault rifles ought to be able to knock it off; that might even solve our Valentine's problems....
Right. If I recall correctly, the time window is two to three hours from initial onset, and the differential diagnosis is indeed critical before administring tPA, which is why if you've had a brain attack you hope that your local hospital has enought CT scanner capacity (that is, hardware *and* qualified staff) to get you scanned fast. Something to mention the next time you hear someone fretting about the high cost of health care.
As far as headaches go, well, right again, if you don't already have a killer headache from the stroke itself, you don't give a damn about getting one from a cold helmet if it will prevent brain damage.
Next time I get a headache, I think I'll stick my head in the freezer just in case.;-)
Well, speak for yourself. It *worked* for me, quadrupled my length in only one week! Unfortunately, it also quadrupled my width, so now I can only fsck elephants, but luckily all I have to do is slip a twenty to the night watchman at the zoo and I'm set for the evening, as long as I remember to bring my ladder.
But those x-ray glasses I bought when I was a kid, well, that was a *real* ripoff!
I remember a Mad Magazine piece when I was a kid (mid-Sixties, I guess) titled something like: "Kids: build your own 707!" It used four of those cylinder-type Electrolux vacuum cleaners for engines, presumably with really long extension cords...If we could only build a *really* big catapult, then the sky's the limit!
Seriously, it's easy to forget that just a century ago we were literally a horse-and-buggy civilization, and how amazing it is that we can make these things work at all. I was talking to a youngster at work the other day, and was suprised to learn that he didn't know what a slide rule was. Now our tools and toys are an order of magnitude better than when we went to the Moon, but we still have a lot of learning to do.
I can never get tired of watching those same rehashed rocket shows on the science channels, so thanks to the originator for the link!
"This is truly a poverty vs. great advancement issue."
Yes, just so. Knowledge is the only true coin we can pass to the ages. Governments and economies come and go, money is made and lost, people live and die, and what remains but knowledge? And we gain knowledge through science.
I don't like sounding mean-spirited, but all too often the result of feeding poor people is just the creation of more poor people. I'm certainly not suggesting we sacrifice humanity on the alter of science, but we must have a higher purpose other than just putting another billion or two mouths on the planet.
I feel the same way. Anymore I have a very hard time feeling good about spending so many hundreds of billions of dollars just to have a walkabout and bring back a couple of buckets of soil. Our main goal needs to be colonization, not exploration, because the colonists can explore just as readily as a short-timer waiting for the next train out.
As far as contamination goes, we might as well face facts: we *are* going to contaminate Mars, later if not sooner, for the same reasons you see beer cans on the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Once we step foot on Mars there is no getting around the fact that whatever bugs we bring with us are going to get out, no matter how hard we try not to. I would hope our scientists are smart enough to tell Terran microbes from Martian ones; if they aren't, there's probably no point in fetching back any samples anyway, are there?;-)
I think 100 years is *wildly* optimistic. The last 100 we went from literally a horse-and-buggy society straight into the Electronic Age, and from mainframes to handhelds in a quarter of that. I expect to see my every move tracked within the next 20, and DMV barcodes are tame next to face-recognition systems and rf tags.
I imagine that implantable chips have been discussed here before, probably ad nauseum, but it isn't much of a stretch to imagine that within a quarter century everyone under the age of 15 or 20 could be carrying one. In my country (USA) it will be called something like the Child and Infant Freedom and Protection Act, requiring implantation of ID tags in every newborn in the counry, and after that it's just a matter of time. After all, who's not all for protecting our children? And as long as they're already there, why not make it illegal to have them removed or deactivated--we have nothing to hide, do we?
If it's unpatriotic now to oppose the Patriot Act, how about a decade and a few more pre-emptive wars from now? We'll all be talking about the good old days when all we had to worry about were the barcodes on our drivers licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
"You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort. There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn."
Does this mean that I really *can't* cash my million dollar bill at Walmart?
These are the same stupid people overpopulating the planet, often at government expense, literally spamming the gene pool. People who are smart and/or alert enought to recognize the problem generally choose to breed less, while the morons are popping them out like rabbits. An effective spam filter *there* would work wonders.
Sorry if this slipped off topic, but it's the best I could do. Excuse me while I go reproduce....
Can you say daylight stealth? Cover the bottom of a military jet or helicopter with OLED panels, then emit the same color as the surrounding sky. Or tanks. Or ships. Or....
Kodak, for one, has a fairly new camera with a pretty big (for a camera) OLED display, not to mention a 10x optical lens.
Yes, exactly what I thought too. Somethink like those protective plastic static-cling covers that come on the faces of electronic gadgets. I'd also agree that there wouldn't be much of a weight penalty, either.
Maybe our next robots will be equipped with their own little cleaning robots.
I just figured it had run off with a poodle, until I learned that there are no poodles on Mars. Then I though it landed in a puddle, until I was told there are no puddles on Mars. I guess that rules out a poodle puddle too.
Sometimes dogs just run off for no reason.
I've had extensive cervical spine surgery, and find it impossible to work on a desktop that doesn't have room to rest my entire arm, never mind the wrist. So as far as ergonomics go, individual user requirements can vary.
On the other hand, raving schizophrenic maniacs can now look perfectly normal! All they have to do is strap on a headset and carry a cordless mouse around, and they'll look like they are hard at work.
Poker players. Drug dealers. Rich people.
Yes, I call that 'uglification'. It's a good trick to keep the staplers, tape dispensers, footstools, etc., from running off at work.
I wonder if it might be enough to stick a prominent "Protected by Brink's Security" sticker on the lid. Maybe glue an old beeper case on, with a push button that flashes a red LED. After all, the threat of deterrence is almost as good as deterrence itself.
"I wonder what possesses people to steal others' laptops. Is there a deep insatiable need to steal inherent in the theives that brings them to that point?"
I guess the same thing that keeps me from going down to Best Buy every payday to buy a new laptop is what motivates the thieves. It's like walking into the library and seeing a stack of hundred dollar bills sitting on a table.
Now, what I would *really* like to see is an exploding dye packet, like the ones the banks slip into the stolen money during robberies. Slide it in and close the cover. When the thief opens the lid for the first time...BAM...all of a sudden he looks like one of those blue guys in the Pentium ads. Oh, wouldn't that be good fun!
Good. Maybe I can adapt one to go off when my wife picks up my wallet.
Probably preaching to the choir, here, but just in case someone hasn't read it... I found Robert Forward's 'Indistinguisable from Magic' to be a pretty good read. If you like the idea of a space elevator, then you'll love the rotating 'space bolo' version, kind of like a bullroarer on ubersteroids.
The earlier posts on 'space bungees' might not be so far off the mark after all.
I don't know if you are considering used or not, but if you are...
l
SurplusShed is a site where I've bought optics from time to time, but they carry some electronics also.
To quote the website:
http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/r1456.htm
This is a powerful 100 Mhz oscilloscope with 5 channels and 12 traces. It has a four way trigger off either channels 1, 2, 3, or ALT. Trigger lock for stable automatic triggering for complex signals such as video waveforms. Can display several Lissajous patterns at the same time. 5 mV to 5 V per division (1 mV with magnifier) and 2% accuracy. Sweep speeds are 20 ns to 500 ms. This is the scope that is being used in production, testing, R&D, and home shops because of its versatility and portability. Tested and in good working condition. Complete manual copy included. Only have a few."
Oops, forgot to grab the price, but it is around US $225
Yeah, that's the spirit! Come to think of it, I wonder if the U.S. Patent Office has a patent on the patent process? Could be the whole system is buggered.
>>"I don't know much about the patent laws but it seems to me that companies that use concepts that someone patented, and who implemented them with no knowledge of the patent shouldn't be able to be sued."
Well...if I take my maching gun and fire it blindly about the neighborhood one night, should I not be responsible for harm if I didn't willfully intend to kill a particular person? Of course not. Not quite the same thing, true, and I have to agree with you that litigation as a whole is getting out of hand.
Patents are a matter of public record (which is the whole idea, after all), and if a manufacturer is using a process that he doesn't know is patented or not, then I wouldn't think much of his business acumen, since he should either be protecting his process by patenting it himself, or, with the same research, discovering that it is already patented.
I have to admit, though, that many of these intellectual properties patents, such as the Amazon 'one-click' process cited in other posts, certainly muddies the water for me. I always thought of a patent being for something you can hold in your hand (figuratively if not literally).
I'm one of those greybeards who was writing college reports in the pre-BBS days, never mind the World Wide Web. Remembering back to when I used to spend a half-day of research in the library to mine info that now magically appears on my computer screen in ten seconds, well...it's hard to throw stones. I'm just happy the damned things work at all.
Well, we had the Monkeys, the Beatles, and the Byrds, why not the Hamsters?
Well, what about diamond-encrusted kevlar body armor? Protection *and* style, all in one, and a different color for every day of the week! Very smart and practical protection from DeBeer's assasins.
What better way to find out fast that you were about to marry the wrong woman?
So...A Diamond is Forever, but DeBeers isn't. Good.
Jewelry stores use numerous small, bright lights (metal halide, I suppose) to have the best chance to flashing pretty refractions to the potential buyer. Makes all stones look better, not just the bad ones.
Me, I'm waiting until they grow 10 by 12 inch wafers cheap enough to use for tower windows. And I'll bet you could make some really bitchin' snow tires with them, but I guess the potholes might be a problem.
Where exactly *does* DeBeers keep all those hoarded stones? Seems to me that a few hundred nerds with assault rifles ought to be able to knock it off; that might even solve our Valentine's problems....
Right. If I recall correctly, the time window is two to three hours from initial onset, and the differential diagnosis is indeed critical before administring tPA, which is why if you've had a brain attack you hope that your local hospital has enought CT scanner capacity (that is, hardware *and* qualified staff) to get you scanned fast. Something to mention the next time you hear someone fretting about the high cost of health care.
;-)
As far as headaches go, well, right again, if you don't already have a killer headache from the stroke itself, you don't give a damn about getting one from a cold helmet if it will prevent brain damage.
Next time I get a headache, I think I'll stick my head in the freezer just in case.
Well, speak for yourself. It *worked* for me, quadrupled my length in only one week! Unfortunately, it also quadrupled my width, so now I can only fsck elephants, but luckily all I have to do is slip a twenty to the night watchman at the zoo and I'm set for the evening, as long as I remember to bring my ladder.
But those x-ray glasses I bought when I was a kid, well, that was a *real* ripoff!
I remember a Mad Magazine piece when I was a kid (mid-Sixties, I guess) titled something like: "Kids: build your own 707!" It used four of those cylinder-type Electrolux vacuum cleaners for engines, presumably with really long extension cords...If we could only build a *really* big catapult, then the sky's the limit!
Seriously, it's easy to forget that just a century ago we were literally a horse-and-buggy civilization, and how amazing it is that we can make these things work at all. I was talking to a youngster at work the other day, and was suprised to learn that he didn't know what a slide rule was. Now our tools and toys are an order of magnitude better than when we went to the Moon, but we still have a lot of learning to do.
I can never get tired of watching those same rehashed rocket shows on the science channels, so thanks to the originator for the link!
Now if we could only develop a smog that breaks down lead-based paint....
"This is truly a poverty vs. great advancement issue."
Yes, just so. Knowledge is the only true coin we can pass to the ages. Governments and economies come and go, money is made and lost, people live and die, and what remains but knowledge? And we gain knowledge through science.
I don't like sounding mean-spirited, but all too often the result of feeding poor people is just the creation of more poor people. I'm certainly not suggesting we sacrifice humanity on the alter of science, but we must have a higher purpose other than just putting another billion or two mouths on the planet.
Bottom line: we must find a way to do both.
I feel the same way. Anymore I have a very hard time feeling good about spending so many hundreds of billions of dollars just to have a walkabout and bring back a couple of buckets of soil. Our main goal needs to be colonization, not exploration, because the colonists can explore just as readily as a short-timer waiting for the next train out.
;-)
As far as contamination goes, we might as well face facts: we *are* going to contaminate Mars, later if not sooner, for the same reasons you see beer cans on the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Once we step foot on Mars there is no getting around the fact that whatever bugs we bring with us are going to get out, no matter how hard we try not to. I would hope our scientists are smart enough to tell Terran microbes from Martian ones; if they aren't, there's probably no point in fetching back any samples anyway, are there?
I think 100 years is *wildly* optimistic. The last 100 we went from literally a horse-and-buggy society straight into the Electronic Age, and from mainframes to handhelds in a quarter of that. I expect to see my every move tracked within the next 20, and DMV barcodes are tame next to face-recognition systems and rf tags.
I imagine that implantable chips have been discussed here before, probably ad nauseum, but it isn't much of a stretch to imagine that within a quarter century everyone under the age of 15 or 20 could be carrying one. In my country (USA) it will be called something like the Child and Infant Freedom and Protection Act, requiring implantation of ID tags in every newborn in the counry, and after that it's just a matter of time. After all, who's not all for protecting our children? And as long as they're already there, why not make it illegal to have them removed or deactivated--we have nothing to hide, do we?
If it's unpatriotic now to oppose the Patriot Act, how about a decade and a few more pre-emptive wars from now? We'll all be talking about the good old days when all we had to worry about were the barcodes on our drivers licenses.