"A professor at the University of Tokyo has developed an optical camouflage system that makes a special reflective material seemingly disappear, including the wearer! The picture on the coat is made by a viewfinder which puts together the moving images behind the wearer. It's hoped the technology will be useful for surgeons to be able to see through their hands and tools and also for pilots so the cockpit floor will be transparent for landings."
It probably won't help with the flooding, but I've always thought geodesic homes as per R. Buckminster Fuller's design would be a lot more efficient at distributing the kind of wind stress these hurricanes put out.
Why do we keep building inefficient, multi-story box homes out of cheap materials in areas that regularly receive powerful storms? It can't just be a construction/insurance racket, can it?
the last one was, I believe, the radio,
Perhaps; even though a native Serbian named Nikola Tesla is credited as the first to discover and utilize radio waves, he did his demonstration of it as well as those of most of his other notable inventions in the USA.
I think what is relevant is that the USA is, more than a lot of other nations, composed of a heterogenous mix of immigrants from other countries, and what matters the most is that, regardless of national origin, scientists here had opportunities for growth and recognition that they didn't have in their mother countries.
As several have pointed out earlier, much of the ground-breaking research done in the 20th century was the result of the culmination of several centuries of building a foundation of mathematical and empirical learning in the august halls of learning in Europe, culminated by its later descendants who fell in USA escaping political and financial strife due to constant warfare and oppression.
Note that the cycle could and probably is, to some extent, reversing in the direction of wherever a fertile research climate can be found, and this will not be in an atmosphere of fundamentalist religion being peddled by the powers at be.
All this discussion about memories and their recall gets me thinking of the hilarious Kids in the Hall Movie _Brain Candy_, where the unscrupulous CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company rushes a not-fully-researched "happy" drug to the market, only to find out the hard way that it's far too effective at its function: to repeat your happiest memory over and over and over indefinitely.
I gather that, with more research in this direction of neuroscience regarding long-term memories, this might actually become somewhat of a reality soon, although the movie itself seemed more directed at the anti-depressant craze hitting the public at the time.
On a non-neuroscience tangent, there is an extended mental exercise that I've seen discussed in several "new-age" type of books dealing with reincarnation and increasing of one's awareness of one's purpose in life by simply going back through your memories in sequential steps, e.g. "ok, what was I doing before that... then what before that" and so on. It's not infallible, but it certainly increased introspection into my own life. Also, I was able to confirm the venue of my first memory, the farthest back I could go, with my father - a buddhist temple on the top of the hill we lived on the side of, where kids would also play.
Of course, many of my memories were not just visual, but also olfactory, kinesthetic etc. Very constructive if you have some sabbatical time!
If you ask me, this is just fodder for tabloid news and doesn't bother to dig deeper for the real motivations.
One thing that's always disturbed me about USA is the general toleration of loads of ultra-violence in movies and video games combined with a puritanical, almost childish and repressive attitude towards sex. In contrast, don't European nations have lax laws regarding smut/porn, yet are more apt to censor or legislate against firearms and the depiction of violence? It seems like a recipe for disaster to repress a natural urge, and then provide ample opportunities to purchase firearms while practically glorifying the use of them in movies and video games.
Then again, there's nothing like a few rounds of CS to blow off some steam and stress, and if the Japanese and Canadians can have the same violent games and movies and still not have much violent crime, what is the deal with USA?
You take the point.
So are a lot of other dictators in the world, both past and present. You honestly think that war, or ANY war, is about some comfy little humanitarian ideal? WHATEVER.
War is about resources, usually land or energy, or the power to control those two. We (USA) never gave a damn about Pol Pot and his mass-murdering. Or what about China's egregious human rights violations? Or North Korea starving its own people to maintain a military machine. And let's not ignore the democratically-elected governments of nations that we toppled, only to install a fascist or military caudillo in its place. (Chile, Dominican Republic and MANY others).
Regardless of whether that was the reason or not, it doesn't legitimize a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation. One that, I might add, we had a strong influence in building up, because we're so busy arrogantly assuming that we can use the excuse of policing the world to maintain our hegemony. That's why we're hated. Not because "we're free".
People get the government they deserve. It's not our business to do their work for them, nor force our citizens to pay for it to be done in a ham-fisted manner. The UN had already done their job.
So where's the WMDs, buddy? Why didn't they use any of them in any war against us? Why did we look the other way while he used the ones we basically sold him back in the 1980's to gas hundreds of thousands of Iranians? Why did we tolerate, even encourage his preemptive attack on Iran? Oh, because that's what we wanted....
GET REAL. "Saddam was a mass-murderer with WMDs" Are they cloning you fucks in some factory somewhere?
Enron - separate cache to onboard NICs, with hardcoded strong encryption for connections to DC lobbyist servers and whitehouse.gov, optimized for rapid electronic financial transactions. Unfortunately will obfuscate benchmark results.
Elron - optimized for multi-threaded usenet postings to facilitate religious subcultures. Special feature with software frontend to store user and group names in separate cache with support for specialized algorithms to scan and parse any potential dissent or criticism towards stored users and groups. Upon positive identification, immediately forks all processor resources towards parsing legal databases for obscure lawsuit keywords to use against critics.
I have a friend that works at NASA Stennis Space Center in MS (who incidentally admins a beowulf cluster for rocket testing), and he says the Hubble is simply being taken down to be replaced by several other, better telescopes, including ones that detect infrared and gamma radiation. Apparently the cost of maintaining it and keeping it in orbit is more than the benefits of putting new ones up, given his brief explanation. Anyone have any more info on this?
Slashdot Mirror
Bremerton (West Coast port for Trident Ballistic Missile Submarines, SSBN-726, etc.)
That would be Bangor. Bremerton is a separate port that has no Trident submarines.
http://datalossdb.org/
Is there a decent random number generator in there somewhere?
http://www.thegreenhead.com/technology/2004/05/jap anese-scientist-invents.php
"A professor at the University of Tokyo has developed an optical camouflage system that makes a special reflective material seemingly disappear, including the wearer! The picture on the coat is made by a viewfinder which puts together the moving images behind the wearer. It's hoped the technology will be useful for surgeons to be able to see through their hands and tools and also for pilots so the cockpit floor will be transparent for landings."
about licensing their rootkit technology!
BSD/Linux!!11!
It probably won't help with the flooding, but I've always thought geodesic homes as per R. Buckminster Fuller's design would be a lot more efficient at distributing the kind of wind stress these hurricanes put out.
Why do we keep building inefficient, multi-story box homes out of cheap materials in areas that regularly receive powerful storms? It can't just be a construction/insurance racket, can it?
the last one was, I believe, the radio,
Perhaps; even though a native Serbian named Nikola Tesla is credited as the first to discover and utilize radio waves, he did his demonstration of it as well as those of most of his other notable inventions in the USA.
Radio
I think what is relevant is that the USA is, more than a lot of other nations, composed of a heterogenous mix of immigrants from other countries, and what matters the most is that, regardless of national origin, scientists here had opportunities for growth and recognition that they didn't have in their mother countries.
As several have pointed out earlier, much of the ground-breaking research done in the 20th century was the result of the culmination of several centuries of building a foundation of mathematical and empirical learning in the august halls of learning in Europe, culminated by its later descendants who fell in USA escaping political and financial strife due to constant warfare and oppression.
Note that the cycle could and probably is, to some extent, reversing in the direction of wherever a fertile research climate can be found, and this will not be in an atmosphere of fundamentalist religion being peddled by the powers at be.
All this discussion about memories and their recall gets me thinking of the hilarious Kids in the Hall Movie _Brain Candy_, where the unscrupulous CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company rushes a not-fully-researched "happy" drug to the market, only to find out the hard way that it's far too effective at its function: to repeat your happiest memory over and over and over indefinitely.
I gather that, with more research in this direction of neuroscience regarding long-term memories, this might actually become somewhat of a reality soon, although the movie itself seemed more directed at the anti-depressant craze hitting the public at the time.
On a non-neuroscience tangent, there is an extended mental exercise that I've seen discussed in several "new-age" type of books dealing with reincarnation and increasing of one's awareness of one's purpose in life by simply going back through your memories in sequential steps, e.g. "ok, what was I doing before that... then what before that" and so on. It's not infallible, but it certainly increased introspection into my own life. Also, I was able to confirm the venue of my first memory, the farthest back I could go, with my father - a buddhist temple on the top of the hill we lived on the side of, where kids would also play.
Of course, many of my memories were not just visual, but also olfactory, kinesthetic etc. Very constructive if you have some sabbatical time!
"Technological fixes to social problems are usually bad ideas, and I think that this is a great example of that."
Take the Diebold voting machines, for example.
If you ask me, this is just fodder for tabloid news and doesn't bother to dig deeper for the real motivations. One thing that's always disturbed me about USA is the general toleration of loads of ultra-violence in movies and video games combined with a puritanical, almost childish and repressive attitude towards sex. In contrast, don't European nations have lax laws regarding smut/porn, yet are more apt to censor or legislate against firearms and the depiction of violence? It seems like a recipe for disaster to repress a natural urge, and then provide ample opportunities to purchase firearms while practically glorifying the use of them in movies and video games. Then again, there's nothing like a few rounds of CS to blow off some steam and stress, and if the Japanese and Canadians can have the same violent games and movies and still not have much violent crime, what is the deal with USA? You take the point.
But... God told him so! So he's right!
*shudder*
So are a lot of other dictators in the world, both past and present. You honestly think that war, or ANY war, is about some comfy little humanitarian ideal? WHATEVER. War is about resources, usually land or energy, or the power to control those two. We (USA) never gave a damn about Pol Pot and his mass-murdering. Or what about China's egregious human rights violations? Or North Korea starving its own people to maintain a military machine. And let's not ignore the democratically-elected governments of nations that we toppled, only to install a fascist or military caudillo in its place. (Chile, Dominican Republic and MANY others). Regardless of whether that was the reason or not, it doesn't legitimize a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation. One that, I might add, we had a strong influence in building up, because we're so busy arrogantly assuming that we can use the excuse of policing the world to maintain our hegemony. That's why we're hated. Not because "we're free". People get the government they deserve. It's not our business to do their work for them, nor force our citizens to pay for it to be done in a ham-fisted manner. The UN had already done their job. So where's the WMDs, buddy? Why didn't they use any of them in any war against us? Why did we look the other way while he used the ones we basically sold him back in the 1980's to gas hundreds of thousands of Iranians? Why did we tolerate, even encourage his preemptive attack on Iran? Oh, because that's what we wanted.... GET REAL. "Saddam was a mass-murderer with WMDs" Are they cloning you fucks in some factory somewhere?
When I develop my new rat-brain oracle, there will be no need to consult http://members.tripod.com/funky.hippy/spock.html Spock's Brain! http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/epis odes/TOS/detail/68782.html
Just think, Kirk could have grown a new one rather than spend a whole episode hunting down Spock's old one.
Next models:
Enron - separate cache to onboard NICs, with hardcoded strong encryption for connections to DC lobbyist servers and whitehouse.gov, optimized for rapid electronic financial transactions. Unfortunately will obfuscate benchmark results.
Elron - optimized for multi-threaded usenet postings to facilitate religious subcultures. Special feature with software frontend to store user and group names in separate cache with support for specialized algorithms to scan and parse any potential dissent or criticism towards stored users and groups. Upon positive identification, immediately forks all processor resources towards parsing legal databases for obscure lawsuit keywords to use against critics.
To read slashdot? Unacceptable!
at version 7?? i have been asleep too long.
I have a friend that works at NASA Stennis Space Center in MS (who incidentally admins a beowulf cluster for rocket testing), and he says the Hubble is simply being taken down to be replaced by several other, better telescopes, including ones that detect infrared and gamma radiation. Apparently the cost of maintaining it and keeping it in orbit is more than the benefits of putting new ones up, given his brief explanation. Anyone have any more info on this?
Who is this Linda and her new shell?