We already eat other arthropods, like shrimp, crab, crawfish and lobster.
There's an obvious starting point for the introduction of insects into the Western diet: "Seafood Extender".
Who knows WTF is in that stuff? I kind of assume it's made of mashed up bits of random arthropod... although that could be optimistic.
Would it make a scrap of difference to anybody if their seafood extender were made of mashed up bits of random terrestrial arthropods as well as aquatic ones (and whatever else is in there)?
No issue of how big a leg fillet you're going to get out of a grasshopper if you just mince them up into something unidentifiable.
Then batter and deep-fry it. Yum! Battered deep-fried protein stuff!
A watch is just for telling the time - your other gadgets are for everything else.
That being the case, there are few things as geekishly awesome as an automatic (ie self-winding) mechanical wristwatch.
A little tiny machine, small enough to wear on your arm, that uses nothing but springs and harmonic motion to keep time, accurate to within a couple of seconds per day.
If you have the means, you can spend $_absurd on a status-symbol automatic watch.
If you don't have those means (or that inclination), you can get some serious bargains.
My everyday watch is a Vostok. http://www.vostok-inc.com/ . Delivered from Moscow for under $100. Seemingly indestructible, and more than accurate enough - I only ever need to adjust it if it stops, after not being worn for a couple of days.
I've seen some Seiko 5 automatics recently on Amazon for similar prices. More elegant (and delicate) looking than my Vostok (which is more like a watch movement set in an anvil), but very good little units.
Second-hand mechanical watches can be found for even less.
Get some cheap watchmaking tools off Ebay and pull a cheap mechanical watch to pieces, just for fun. Because you can.
But if you don't put any barriers in how shall they ever learn about proxies, address spoofing, packet sniffers and all the other wonderful things involved in defeating technical parental controls?
I'm in Australia, you insensitive clod!
My kids won't be defeating parental controls [1] - we'll all be defeating overbearing paternalistic government controls.
[1] although she's only 2.5, this thread has given some food for thought on how to deal with my daughter's computer useage when the time comes. Monitored freedom sounds like a sensible approach.
A good example of homeopathic remedy... is good old fashioned marijuana.
I am currently breathing a homeopathic concentration of marijuana smoke.
In fact, the air I'm breathing probably exceeds homeopathic concentrations of marijuna smoke, assuming somebody in this city has smoked a joint some time in the last few days.
Comparing the effect of this "homeopathic remedy" concentration of marijuana (aka "air") against previous experiments using "naturopathic remedy" concentration... I observe a correlation between concentration and effectiveness, contrary to the theory underlying homeopathy.
A quick grep of the constitution shows no references to vibes.
It may surprise you to learn that there is more than one constitution in the world. Only some of them deal with the compulsory acquisition of property.
the thing that should stand out the most is the part mentioning how someone uses cow milk to heat his house.
That is funny, but if you've ever been around a dairy farm, it makes a lot of sense....
There's a huge amount of waste heat that could very easily be exploited for heating.
To me, that just goes to highlight the vast amount of low-grade heat that is available, effectively for free, and the absurdity of burning virgin fuel to produce low-grade heat suitable for house heating.
Warm air is a waste product of almost every process in the home (to say nothing of industry, or the warm air available free from a very crude solar-thermal collector), yet we choose to consume fuel to produce special warm air to heat our homes. Insanity.
How secure is your job, employer and industry? How transferable are your skills?
I'm 5 years your junior (in a different industry, on a different continent), and I made a considered jump out of tech a few years ago. I regret doing so.
I found myself in a specialised technical niche of a declining industry. I made a push to get into a project management role, where, if nothing else, I could get a few more generalist skills to write on a resume. Now I'm in a dull administrative role which I don't enjoy at all.
I've come to acknowledge that I get job satisfaction from solving problems. Now if I do my job properly, I don't see problems... and if I do, they're long-term problems that can't just be sat down and worked through. To run projects in a resource-constrained organisation, I need to be shameless in pushing people to do my work ahead of the other work they've been given... and that doesn't come easy to me.
The reasons for making the shift are still there - I could still be the tech guy with no transferable skills. Now I have some of the skills I would need to bluff my way into a comparable job elsewhere... but no interest in doing a comparable job elsewhere.
I don't have a good answer. Just don't burn any bridges unless you're pretty sure you're doing the right thing.
I would want to see evidence one way or the other before I decided whether the 11th time is the same or is different.
Ten times, you're late to work because of traffic.
On the eleventh day your car doesn't start.
"Oh crap", you say, "I'm going to be late for work".
Then you look at the historical records, which prove that all late-for-work events are caused by traffic.
"Phew, that was close" you say. "I won't be late for work after all".
And you go back to bed and get a few more hours sleep, safe in the knowledge that you won't be late for work because you can't even _get_ out into the traffic to get stuck.
the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings
So, by "Daylight Saving Time Wastes Energy", they actually mean "poorly insulated houses with insufficient thermal mass waste energy in Daylight Saving Time".
If the same house uses artificial heating in the morning and artificial cooling in the afternoon, it is not the fault of the time set on the clocks.
I sure hope the designers of the planes knew their math! Without them the planes wouldn't work
Not really. The designers just need to know how to use the software written around pre-existing algorithms developed by somebody who knew the mathematics.
It's helpful for the designers to have superficial understanding of the mathematics used in their software, so they can appreciate the limitations of their tools. But there's no need to actually know how to solve the equations, or even how to formulate them. It's been done before.
I've had some fairly fundamental design experience in aeroacoustics. I've never solved the wave equation. But I know (of) this guy who did...
Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that...
CO2 is a lagging indicator of global warming, not a catalyst for it. It takes 300 - 1,200 years for CO2 concentrations to rise after an increase in global temperature. This is a scientifically intriguing discovery, but it's more likely of interest to human spaceflight, not saving the world.
You're right - the records indicate that an increase in temperature is likely to be followed by an increase in CO2 concentration. That's what's happened every climate change cycle in measurable history.
But for every cycle in measurable history, the increase in temperature has happened first.
But what happens if the CO2 concentration rises first?
Stay tuned, because we're going to find out. It's never happened before, but it's happened now. There's been a step change (on a geological time scale) in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Climate modellers have a pretty good idea what's likely to happen, but as always, those with just enough knowledge to be dangerous are masking that signal with a whole bunch of "CO2 lags temperature" noise.
I won't help these parents foster an aura of chicness around useless and/or harmful mutations.
Who the hell is talking about an aura of chicness?! Have you ever heard of the concept of a support community?
Where does one even start looking for medical information specific to a child with genetic defects? Many of these conditions are rare to the point that there is absolutely zero published research on them.
You don't go to your local library and pick up a book about the gastrointestinal peculiarities of children with a chunk missing out of a particular chromosome. The best resource is other parents, who are caring 24/7 for kids with the same condition. For even the rarest conditions, with only a few diagnosed cases in the world, the internet makes it possible to contact other affected families, and discuss important issues relevant to your children.
That's how we come to form a "community" around a genetic defect. Discussing our kids' medical needs. Therapy programs. Choice of support equipment. Debriefing over recent experiences. Celebrating achievements and milestones, such as a child learning to speak... at age 9. Education strategies. Ideas for travelling with incontinent young adults. Glamourous stuff. Totally chic.
For $deity's sake, at least RTFA before posting such a ridiculous AC rant. Or, for that matter, RTFA before modding such a rant as "insightful".
I'm going to take the indulgence of posting a link to http://www.pkskids.net. I'm sure a few of you can spare a couple of bucks to help people living with and around mosaic tetrasomy 12p. Despite what our AC might think, it's not a designer disability, and not something any of us chose for our children
I don't agree that it is necessarily wrong, as long as it doesn't disrupt the service of the person who owns the Internet connection. What harm is done by me piggybacking on a neighbor's wifi connection at 2AM while they sleep, to check some email?
I understand that most DSL/cable contracts in North America are "unlimited" - unlike Australia where contracts are limited, and either throttled or fined if a monthly transfer limit is exceeded.
In any case, the bandwidth you are "borrowing" is payed for, somewhere in the supply chain, by somebody. And you can be pretty sure the bigger players aren't going to make up the difference out of their own pockets.
The cost of a North American "unlimited" contract is set by the provider dividing his upstream bandwidth costs, operating costs and margin between his customers. If you and your neighbour are sharing a connection - by agreement or stealth - the provider has one less customer to pass his costs on to. Spreading costs over fewer customers, each customer must pay more. Contract prices will go up.
It's like any other service. You might want to connect your plumbing to your neighbour's water supply [1], downstream of the meter. That way you can split the water usage charge, and only pay for one connection charge instead of two. Better yet, you might be on an unlimited water plan, where you pay a flat fee for connection, and use as much water as you like - after all, the cost of water is trivial compared to the cost of the connective infrastructure. In this case, you might not even tell your neighbour that you're tee-ing in to his plumbing, because it's not going to cost him a cent extra. As long as the pipe from the water main in the street to the meter is big enough, it's not going to dusrupt anybody's water supply.
But the water company isn't going to be terribly happy about it, because you have two houses paying one house-share of the cost of bringing the water to the meter. You're not contributing to the upkeep of the water mains.
Likewise, by sharing broadband over wireless, you're not contributing to the installation and upkeep of upstream infrastructure.
/tp
[1] one series of tubes as an analogy for another...
And their scheme has a flaw: I can keep talking with my screen turned off. Their advertisers better be dumb enough not to figure out that one.
Sorry, the advertisers are a step ahead of you.
They're listening to your conversation, remember?
If your conversation fails to be influenced by their advertisments, they'll know. And they'll be pissed.
As soon as they detect that you're not paying attention to their ads, your call will be terminated. In retribution, your closest friends and family will be served goatse instead of ads. Captioned with your name.
What do you mean they're not allowed to do that? Of course they are. It's right there at the bottom of page 384 of the license agreement that you clicked "OK" on...
Web 1.0 focused more on a one-way "I write this page, then you read it" exchange, Web 2.0 encourages multi-way communication, and users contributing content
"Web 2.0" (stupid term) concentrates ownership of the web into the hands of larger organisations.
Any monkey can build a Web 1.0 site. All it takes is a keyboard and text editor (or WYSInotWYG html editor). Host it somewhere, and if the host turns evil (or the site gets popular and needs more resources), pick it up and move it somewhere else. If Joe Average User wants to publish an autonomous independent website, it's not hard.
It takes some serious programming muscle to launch a bright shiney interactive omgponies Web 2.0 site. Joe Average User doesn't have those resources.
Joe Average User can publish his content easily on a Web 2.0 site, but it's under the control of the site owner. Web 2.0 belongs to big business. Users ceed power to corporations.
Web2.0 is McInternet - the corporatisation of the internet.
Although the theoretical data rate of 802.11n is high enough for several HD video streams, in practice you only get a third of the theoretical data rate reliably
Whatever data rate they manange to push through the air, they'll always manage to push higher rates through wires.
Whatever data rate we have available to us, we'll work out a way to use.
I can't imagine what we might "need" that will require faster communication than multiple HD video streams, but I'm sure nobody ever imagined "needing" faster communication than the telegraph either.
However fast it's possible to send data, that's (not quite) as fast as we want it to be. Wireless will always be a bit slower again.
Your reasons for pushing Hemp surely have nothing at all to do with it's biofuel properties.
The reasons for pushing hemp have everything to do with the fact that it's a banned crop.
If farmers were allowed to grow industrial hemp, it could succeed or fail on its own merit.
Chances are, it's not half as good as the rose-coloured-glasses pro-hemp crowd believe it is. We just don't know for sure.
But even if it is half as good...that might be good enough to be worthwhile. If it's better than what we do now, and there's no more downsides than what we do now, then let's do it.
If nothing else, lifting the ban will shut the pro-hemp hippies up every time biofuel or textiles or paper pulp is mentioned.
I grant full authority for them to test my sewerage, just as soon as it leaves my property.
The local sewer trunk runs through an easement at the bottom of my yard. By the time my business leaves my property, it's mixed in with everybody else's.
That being the case, I think I might become a junkie, just to spite them.
Oh FFS, what is it with/.ers and their "Why can't I buy it at Walmart yet?" comments?
Have you people never heard of research?
A lot of these stories are of lab demonstrations, or even just theoretical breakthroughs that MAY, one day, be developed to the point that they become useful. Or they may inspire further research that may lead to further research that may eventually be commercialised in a completely different form to how they were first demonstrated.
If you want to read about new ideas and developments that are unlikely to impact your life for several years, you're in the right place. If you want to read about new products that you can buy right now at your local mega-mall, try the junk mail they stuff in your mail box.
Slashdot Mirror
We already eat other arthropods, like shrimp, crab, crawfish and lobster.
There's an obvious starting point for the introduction of insects into the Western diet: "Seafood Extender".
Who knows WTF is in that stuff? I kind of assume it's made of mashed up bits of random arthropod... although that could be optimistic.
Would it make a scrap of difference to anybody if their seafood extender were made of mashed up bits of random terrestrial arthropods as well as aquatic ones (and whatever else is in there)?
No issue of how big a leg fillet you're going to get out of a grasshopper if you just mince them up into something unidentifiable.
Then batter and deep-fry it. Yum! Battered deep-fried protein stuff!
Yes, sure, and you can get battery-powered analog quartz watches that look like a mechanical analog watch, and you don't have to wind them either.
There's something special about a wearable machine. An atomic-syncing solar-powered watch is cool and all, but I'll keep my automatic thanks.
A watch is just for telling the time - your other gadgets are for everything else.
That being the case, there are few things as geekishly awesome as an automatic (ie self-winding) mechanical wristwatch.
A little tiny machine, small enough to wear on your arm, that uses nothing but springs and harmonic motion to keep time, accurate to within a couple of seconds per day.
If you have the means, you can spend $_absurd on a status-symbol automatic watch.
If you don't have those means (or that inclination), you can get some serious bargains.
My everyday watch is a Vostok. http://www.vostok-inc.com/ . Delivered from Moscow for under $100. Seemingly indestructible, and more than accurate enough - I only ever need to adjust it if it stops, after not being worn for a couple of days.
I've seen some Seiko 5 automatics recently on Amazon for similar prices. More elegant (and delicate) looking than my Vostok (which is more like a watch movement set in an anvil), but very good little units.
Second-hand mechanical watches can be found for even less.
Get some cheap watchmaking tools off Ebay and pull a cheap mechanical watch to pieces, just for fun. Because you can.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google+profile
I'm in Australia, you insensitive clod!
My kids won't be defeating parental controls [1] - we'll all be defeating overbearing paternalistic government controls. [1] although she's only 2.5, this thread has given some food for thought on how to deal with my daughter's computer useage when the time comes. Monitored freedom sounds like a sensible approach.
I am currently breathing a homeopathic concentration of marijuana smoke.
In fact, the air I'm breathing probably exceeds homeopathic concentrations of marijuna smoke, assuming somebody in this city has smoked a joint some time in the last few days.
Comparing the effect of this "homeopathic remedy" concentration of marijuana (aka "air") against previous experiments using "naturopathic remedy" concentration... I observe a correlation between concentration and effectiveness, contrary to the theory underlying homeopathy.
It may surprise you to learn that there is more than one constitution in the world. Only some of them deal with the compulsory acquisition of property.
This thread is going straight to the pool room.
It's not the fault of social scientists, really, that their error bars are huge
The next generation of social scientists will have significantly smaller error bars due to the feminising synthetic hormones in the environment...
the thing that should stand out the most is the part mentioning how someone uses cow milk to heat his house.
That is funny, but if you've ever been around a dairy farm, it makes a lot of sense. ...
There's a huge amount of waste heat that could very easily be exploited for heating.
To me, that just goes to highlight the vast amount of low-grade heat that is available, effectively for free, and the absurdity of burning virgin fuel to produce low-grade heat suitable for house heating.
Warm air is a waste product of almost every process in the home (to say nothing of industry, or the warm air available free from a very crude solar-thermal collector), yet we choose to consume fuel to produce special warm air to heat our homes. Insanity.
How secure is your job, employer and industry? How transferable are your skills?
I'm 5 years your junior (in a different industry, on a different continent), and I made a considered jump out of tech a few years ago. I regret doing so. I found myself in a specialised technical niche of a declining industry. I made a push to get into a project management role, where, if nothing else, I could get a few more generalist skills to write on a resume. Now I'm in a dull administrative role which I don't enjoy at all.
I've come to acknowledge that I get job satisfaction from solving problems. Now if I do my job properly, I don't see problems... and if I do, they're long-term problems that can't just be sat down and worked through. To run projects in a resource-constrained organisation, I need to be shameless in pushing people to do my work ahead of the other work they've been given... and that doesn't come easy to me.
The reasons for making the shift are still there - I could still be the tech guy with no transferable skills. Now I have some of the skills I would need to bluff my way into a comparable job elsewhere... but no interest in doing a comparable job elsewhere.
I don't have a good answer. Just don't burn any bridges unless you're pretty sure you're doing the right thing.
I would want to see evidence one way or the other before I decided whether the 11th time is the same or is different.
Ten times, you're late to work because of traffic.
On the eleventh day your car doesn't start.
"Oh crap", you say, "I'm going to be late for work".
Then you look at the historical records, which prove that all late-for-work events are caused by traffic.
"Phew, that was close" you say. "I won't be late for work after all".
And you go back to bed and get a few more hours sleep, safe in the knowledge that you won't be late for work because you can't even _get_ out into the traffic to get stuck.
So, by "Daylight Saving Time Wastes Energy", they actually mean "poorly insulated houses with insufficient thermal mass waste energy in Daylight Saving Time".
If the same house uses artificial heating in the morning and artificial cooling in the afternoon, it is not the fault of the time set on the clocks.
Not really. The designers just need to know how to use the software written around pre-existing algorithms developed by somebody who knew the mathematics.
It's helpful for the designers to have superficial understanding of the mathematics used in their software, so they can appreciate the limitations of their tools. But there's no need to actually know how to solve the equations, or even how to formulate them. It's been done before.
I've had some fairly fundamental design experience in aeroacoustics. I've never solved the wave equation. But I know (of) this guy who did...
Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that...
You're right - the records indicate that an increase in temperature is likely to be followed by an increase in CO2 concentration. That's what's happened every climate change cycle in measurable history.
But for every cycle in measurable history, the increase in temperature has happened first.
But what happens if the CO2 concentration rises first?
Stay tuned, because we're going to find out. It's never happened before, but it's happened now. There's been a step change (on a geological time scale) in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Climate modellers have a pretty good idea what's likely to happen, but as always, those with just enough knowledge to be dangerous are masking that signal with a whole bunch of "CO2 lags temperature" noise.
The free shirt identifies you as a "Windows Vista Advisor".
If the label fits... I often advise people to avoid Vista.
I won't help these parents foster an aura of chicness around useless and/or harmful mutations.
Who the hell is talking about an aura of chicness?! Have you ever heard of the concept of a support community?
Where does one even start looking for medical information specific to a child with genetic defects? Many of these conditions are rare to the point that there is absolutely zero published research on them.
You don't go to your local library and pick up a book about the gastrointestinal peculiarities of children with a chunk missing out of a particular chromosome. The best resource is other parents, who are caring 24/7 for kids with the same condition. For even the rarest conditions, with only a few diagnosed cases in the world, the internet makes it possible to contact other affected families, and discuss important issues relevant to your children.
That's how we come to form a "community" around a genetic defect. Discussing our kids' medical needs. Therapy programs. Choice of support equipment. Debriefing over recent experiences. Celebrating achievements and milestones, such as a child learning to speak... at age 9. Education strategies. Ideas for travelling with incontinent young adults. Glamourous stuff. Totally chic.
For $deity's sake, at least RTFA before posting such a ridiculous AC rant. Or, for that matter, RTFA before modding such a rant as "insightful".
I'm going to take the indulgence of posting a link to http://www.pkskids.net. I'm sure a few of you can spare a couple of bucks to help people living with and around mosaic tetrasomy 12p. Despite what our AC might think, it's not a designer disability, and not something any of us chose for our children
>> You can't shine shit.
> That's what Jerry Lewis thought, until Stanley Kubrick suggested freezing it.
So you're saying that Vista is a polished frozen turd?
In any case, the bandwidth you are "borrowing" is payed for, somewhere in the supply chain, by somebody. And you can be pretty sure the bigger players aren't going to make up the difference out of their own pockets.
The cost of a North American "unlimited" contract is set by the provider dividing his upstream bandwidth costs, operating costs and margin between his customers. If you and your neighbour are sharing a connection - by agreement or stealth - the provider has one less customer to pass his costs on to. Spreading costs over fewer customers, each customer must pay more. Contract prices will go up.
It's like any other service. You might want to connect your plumbing to your neighbour's water supply [1], downstream of the meter. That way you can split the water usage charge, and only pay for one connection charge instead of two. Better yet, you might be on an unlimited water plan, where you pay a flat fee for connection, and use as much water as you like - after all, the cost of water is trivial compared to the cost of the connective infrastructure. In this case, you might not even tell your neighbour that you're tee-ing in to his plumbing, because it's not going to cost him a cent extra. As long as the pipe from the water main in the street to the meter is big enough, it's not going to dusrupt anybody's water supply.
But the water company isn't going to be terribly happy about it, because you have two houses paying one house-share of the cost of bringing the water to the meter. You're not contributing to the upkeep of the water mains.
Likewise, by sharing broadband over wireless, you're not contributing to the installation and upkeep of upstream infrastructure.
/tp
[1] one series of tubes as an analogy for another...
Sorry, the advertisers are a step ahead of you.
They're listening to your conversation, remember?
If your conversation fails to be influenced by their advertisments, they'll know. And they'll be pissed.
As soon as they detect that you're not paying attention to their ads, your call will be terminated. In retribution, your closest friends and family will be served goatse instead of ads. Captioned with your name.
What do you mean they're not allowed to do that? Of course they are. It's right there at the bottom of page 384 of the license agreement that you clicked "OK" on...
"Web 2.0" (stupid term) concentrates ownership of the web into the hands of larger organisations.
Any monkey can build a Web 1.0 site. All it takes is a keyboard and text editor (or WYSInotWYG html editor). Host it somewhere, and if the host turns evil (or the site gets popular and needs more resources), pick it up and move it somewhere else. If Joe Average User wants to publish an autonomous independent website, it's not hard.
It takes some serious programming muscle to launch a bright shiney interactive omgponies Web 2.0 site. Joe Average User doesn't have those resources.
Joe Average User can publish his content easily on a Web 2.0 site, but it's under the control of the site owner. Web 2.0 belongs to big business. Users ceed power to corporations.
Web2.0 is McInternet - the corporatisation of the internet.
Let the younger crowd to sort out the bugs in the dot-zero release...
Most of the older crowd are waiting for Web 2.1 before we upgrade.
Whatever data rate they manange to push through the air, they'll always manage to push higher rates through wires.
Whatever data rate we have available to us, we'll work out a way to use.
I can't imagine what we might "need" that will require faster communication than multiple HD video streams, but I'm sure nobody ever imagined "needing" faster communication than the telegraph either.
However fast it's possible to send data, that's (not quite) as fast as we want it to be. Wireless will always be a bit slower again.
Your reasons for pushing Hemp surely have nothing at all to do with it's biofuel properties.
The reasons for pushing hemp have everything to do with the fact that it's a banned crop.
If farmers were allowed to grow industrial hemp, it could succeed or fail on its own merit.
Chances are, it's not half as good as the rose-coloured-glasses pro-hemp crowd believe it is. We just don't know for sure.
But even if it is half as good...that might be good enough to be worthwhile. If it's better than what we do now, and there's no more downsides than what we do now, then let's do it.
If nothing else, lifting the ban will shut the pro-hemp hippies up every time biofuel or textiles or paper pulp is mentioned.
I grant full authority for them to test my sewerage, just as soon as it leaves my property.
The local sewer trunk runs through an easement at the bottom of my yard. By the time my business leaves my property, it's mixed in with everybody else's.
That being the case, I think I might become a junkie, just to spite them.
Oh FFS, what is it with /.ers and their "Why can't I buy it at Walmart yet?" comments?
Have you people never heard of research?
A lot of these stories are of lab demonstrations, or even just theoretical breakthroughs that MAY, one day, be developed to the point that they become useful. Or they may inspire further research that may lead to further research that may eventually be commercialised in a completely different form to how they were first demonstrated.
If you want to read about new ideas and developments that are unlikely to impact your life for several years, you're in the right place. If you want to read about new products that you can buy right now at your local mega-mall, try the junk mail they stuff in your mail box.