My first ever encounter with this mentality was in high school when my metal shop instructor told us that she loved her Hummer and when I tried to argue with her about a number of things, she'd repeatedly reply with "No Hummer has ever been carjacked or exploded into flames."
Now, at the time, I was a young gearheadlet and probably should have let it slide but instead I snuck into her garage and opened up her Hummer's hood with the intent of some lil' bastardry. I found the fuel feed to the carburetor. After that, whenever she turned the ignition key, gasoline would spill out all over the engine. Unfortunately, her son knew enough about cars to fix it so my fun didn't last very long (only one or two lunges at the fire extinguisher).
Back to the issue--I think it is a grave mistake for anyone to ever feel 100% invulnerable when it comes to SUVs that are driven on the highway in anyway. I would diagnose this as a standard case of a false sense of security. This is something that has plagued many people throughout history and often led to their downfalls.
What message am I trying to get across to Hummer drivers? First, realize you're not invulnerable. Second, just browse around and look at what's out there for you to use as anti-carjack and fire prevention tools. And if you don't want to, read some horror stories, perhaps that will motivate you to become aware of possible explosions in your Hummer.
So while this may seem "lazy" and easier than walking or riding a bike, I can't exactly imagine a less comfortable way for an able-bodied person to travel a long distance.
You must not have much imagination. For example, you could hang under an SUV.
If the energy they're taking is but a tiny, tiny fraction of the thermal energy availible in the ocean (which i think is most likely the case) then it won't be an issue.
The article says that the current world consumption of energy is about 1/300th of the energy available from the oceans in this way. I'm not sure if that's a tiny fraction or not, actually. Local effects on the ecology could be significant for a large power generation facility.
But the article also says that they can produce fresh water as a by-product, and that the process works best in the tropics (i.e. the developing world), so this might have a chance, since it'd probably be better for the environment than more fossil fuel consumption.
The Marketers have found it now and blogging will never be the same again.
OK, we'll be needing a new word for "blog spam". The obvious candidates are blam and splog (or spog). I'll vote for blam! (with the exclamation point). I should register this as a trademark...
From the BBC article: [The $100 laptop] can also be held and used like a handheld games console and can function as a TV.
Apparently the plan is to rot the minds of third-world children, thus preventing them from becoming a threat to the US in the future. How diabolical! Kudos to the UN for facilitating this.
Except that this "industry heavyweight" is actually Tera, the little company that bought out the Cray name as the supercomputer industry was dying. Only the name Cray remains, not the old-time reputation.
Of course, we don't have decades of advanced warning, since we can't calculate orbits that precisely. So the whole idea is bogus, even if we could afford to boost a big chunk of mass out of earth orbit affordably. And how do we work Bruce Willis into the movie in this scenario? He'd be retired before the job was done.
Besides, if all you're going to do is transfer energy from one to the other, why not just ram the asteroid ASAP in the first place? Inverse-square law means energy transfer via gravity is going to be inefficient, right?
There are a lot of other "bugs" like this one in the records; for example, one of the Airbus crashes happened because the crew confused descent rate with descent angle in their autopilot settings. Another crash was attributed to pilots fighting the autopilot for control (again, a bad interface).
If you enjoy reading about other people's software screwups, checkout Risks Digest, which contains decades worth of this sort of stuff.
Boy, I don't know where Wired got their info (or how long ago), but the Neuros 442 is not just "designed", but has been in the hands of (test) customers since early September. Look here if you're curious. You can buy one today if you're interested.
Also, Digital Innovations has been open with their source code since their original Neuros audio player. Unfortunately, the code for that player had to be compiled with a proprietary DSP compiler.
Personally, my Neuros just died last month, and I really miss it, but I decided to go with an iPod to replace it, mainly because DI didn't really have a direct replacement available. The 442 is physically bigger, has a smaller HD, and costs the same as the largest iPod now available, plus you can't buy accessories at every store in the world like with an iPod. Neuros did support Ogg Vorbis, and had several features better than Apple did (like FM transmitter built-in, presets, and some nice third-party open-source sync software). But it's hard to be counterculture all the time; all I really want to do is listen to my music on the go, not fight a culture war. Pity...
In 2002 it was upped to 195,000 million theoretical operations per second, and the limit goes up automatically every six months. A typical PC in 2002 was 2000 MTOPs, so this allows export of some rather big honking systems.
I don't intend on using any of the insurance I have
Let me guess, you're 18 years old and you'll never be sick a day in your life? Don't worry, you'll use it. Besides, 18-year-olds pay lower premiums than older people, exactly because they don't get sick much (and they don't think they ever will, like you).
The real solution to our country's medical-care-funding mess is mandatory government -run health insurance, with limits on the care options (no multi-million-dollar heroic lifesaving procedures). Unfortunately, it'll never happen because most people can't bear rationing health care. They'd rather have 20% of the population unable to get any health care than have everybody unable to get 1% of the most expensive procedures.
Closer. The article says it's a technological protection measure. I guess a shotgun loaded with rock salt qualifies, in a different application domain.:)
The right to, um, test other people's security systems. Yeah, that's the ticket! It's in the UN's Charter of Human Rights, somewhere, I'm pretty sure...
It's interesting that, much like in Watergate, he got in trouble mostly because of the coverup, not the crime itself.
If there's anything to be learned from this, it's probably "don't lie to the authorities". I'm sure many will take offense at this, but basically he got convicted because he wasn't honest to the police investigating his intrusions.
By the way, the first thing that (superficially) struck me about the story was the guy's name:
Slashdot Mirror
My first ever encounter with this mentality was in high school when my metal shop instructor told us that she loved her Hummer and when I tried to argue with her about a number of things, she'd repeatedly reply with "No Hummer has ever been carjacked or exploded into flames."
Now, at the time, I was a young gearheadlet and probably should have let it slide but instead I snuck into her garage and opened up her Hummer's hood with the intent of some lil' bastardry. I found the fuel feed to the carburetor. After that, whenever she turned the ignition key, gasoline would spill out all over the engine. Unfortunately, her son knew enough about cars to fix it so my fun didn't last very long (only one or two lunges at the fire extinguisher).
Back to the issue--I think it is a grave mistake for anyone to ever feel 100% invulnerable when it comes to SUVs that are driven on the highway in anyway. I would diagnose this as a standard case of a false sense of security. This is something that has plagued many people throughout history and often led to their downfalls.
What message am I trying to get across to Hummer drivers? First, realize you're not invulnerable. Second, just browse around and look at what's out there for you to use as anti-carjack and fire prevention tools. And if you don't want to, read some horror stories, perhaps that will motivate you to become aware of possible explosions in your Hummer.
Including borrowed CDs, of course. It's not a "download" then, although still copyright infringement.
Google does it, so by definition it's not evil.
You must not have much imagination. For example, you could hang under an SUV.
The article says that the current world consumption of energy is about 1/300th of the energy available from the oceans in this way. I'm not sure if that's a tiny fraction or not, actually. Local effects on the ecology could be significant for a large power generation facility.
But the article also says that they can produce fresh water as a by-product, and that the process works best in the tropics (i.e. the developing world), so this might have a chance, since it'd probably be better for the environment than more fossil fuel consumption.
Clearly you use C++ but not Java, or you'd be able to spell "exception".
Besides, Java is so on-the-way-out these days. Didn't you get the memo? I'll forward you a copy.
That's the top Google news search, not the top search overall. But really, the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction was in 2004...
OK, we'll be needing a new word for "blog spam". The obvious candidates are blam and splog (or spog). I'll vote for blam! (with the exclamation point). I should register this as a trademark...
Or is he a blogger bragging that bloggers are hot shit right now?
Please clue me in, then: do frames no longer suck?
Are they adding MP3 support to the base Ubuntu system, to support their local culture of IP piracy?
find . -name '*.[ch]*' -exec egrep -H 'strcpy|gets' {} \;
Oh, wait, that won't work on Windows, will it? Maybe you could install cygwin first. Anyway, get on it, guys.
Yeah, you can sure tell exactly what it does from the name "base".
There was a great quote in today's New York Times science section, in an article about evolution in birds on islands:
In one lineage, the monarch flycatchers tripled their body size in less than a million years. "This stuff can happen really fast," Dr. Filardi said.
Yes, that's right. "Less than a million years" is "really fast" in evolutionary terms!
Apparently the plan is to rot the minds of third-world children, thus preventing them from becoming a threat to the US in the future. How diabolical! Kudos to the UN for facilitating this.
Maybe it's plugged into a powered USB port?
Except that this "industry heavyweight" is actually Tera, the little company that bought out the Cray name as the supercomputer industry was dying. Only the name Cray remains, not the old-time reputation.
Besides, if all you're going to do is transfer energy from one to the other, why not just ram the asteroid ASAP in the first place? Inverse-square law means energy transfer via gravity is going to be inefficient, right?
If you enjoy reading about other people's software screwups, checkout Risks Digest, which contains decades worth of this sort of stuff.
Also, Digital Innovations has been open with their source code since their original Neuros audio player. Unfortunately, the code for that player had to be compiled with a proprietary DSP compiler.
Personally, my Neuros just died last month, and I really miss it, but I decided to go with an iPod to replace it, mainly because DI didn't really have a direct replacement available. The 442 is physically bigger, has a smaller HD, and costs the same as the largest iPod now available, plus you can't buy accessories at every store in the world like with an iPod. Neuros did support Ogg Vorbis, and had several features better than Apple did (like FM transmitter built-in, presets, and some nice third-party open-source sync software). But it's hard to be counterculture all the time; all I really want to do is listen to my music on the go, not fight a culture war. Pity...
In 2002 it was upped to 195,000 million theoretical operations per second, and the limit goes up automatically every six months. A typical PC in 2002 was 2000 MTOPs, so this allows export of some rather big honking systems.
Let me guess, you're 18 years old and you'll never be sick a day in your life? Don't worry, you'll use it. Besides, 18-year-olds pay lower premiums than older people, exactly because they don't get sick much (and they don't think they ever will, like you).
The real solution to our country's medical-care-funding mess is mandatory government -run health insurance, with limits on the care options (no multi-million-dollar heroic lifesaving procedures). Unfortunately, it'll never happen because most people can't bear rationing health care. They'd rather have 20% of the population unable to get any health care than have everybody unable to get 1% of the most expensive procedures.
Closer. The article says it's a technological protection measure. I guess a shotgun loaded with rock salt qualifies, in a different application domain. :)
It's interesting that, much like in Watergate, he got in trouble mostly because of the coverup, not the crime itself.
By the way, the first thing that (superficially) struck me about the story was the guy's name:
D an i e l Cuth bert