You're largely correct. The technically kind of correct. The very best kind of correct. But. Political issues are typically the hardest nut to crack. And they are extraordinarily real. Slashdotters generally don't like to admit this (how many post start with 'just.....?) but you cannot simply wave away crackpot voters, slimeball politicians, annoying defense issues and a host of other squishy things.
We don't have a rational way of disposing high level nuclear waste and I cannot imagine us getting such a policy short of a credible threat of an alien invasion. So, nuclear power is nearly fatally crippled in the US and will be for generations. As usual, the nuclear industry worldwide hasn't done us any favors but again, that's humanity.
Those are tissue culture studies. Pretty much anything can be shown to do something good / bad / earthshattering in a tissue culture study. In fact, those are the kind of crappy studies that were used in the 1970's to implicate marijuana as a causative agent for various cancers.
It is virtually impossible to do decent medical studies on marijuana. You can use Marinol (delta-9-THC) but that isn't marijuana and good luck finding anybody to pay for that.
While I'm OK with marijuana being completely legal - the 'War on Drugs' has shown itself to be as a complete a failure as anything the Feds have managed to try in the past 100 years - we're a long way from figuring out what, if any, actual medical uses the stuff has.
Remember, nicotine is actually a pretty potent neurotransmitter and has been (poorly) linked to efficacy in treating a number of bad psychiatric disorders.
Amazon uses (presumably) links to what sells and what other people have purchased that might fit your interests. Works not all that well.
Awards, like Hugo / Nebula / Pulitzer don't necessarily mean that the book is interesting or relevant but do tend to reflect some higher level of decent writing. I often think that the awards ought to go to the editor more often than not.
Ursula LeGuin doesn't write "trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction" so no it doesn't count.
The fact that the vast majority of SF writers don't do that either seems to have eluded some of 'those' literary aficionados but I've always had a hard time separating them from audio enthusiasts or serious wine freaks. Their critiques sound remarkably similar. And make about as much sense.
Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.
Hey, we're special snowflakes. Companies should listen to us on tech issues? Right.
Besides, this entire argument is silly. You can replace an iPhone battery when it gets weak. Takes about 20 minutes. If you don't have the technical chops to do it yourself, Apple will do it for $100 and Juanita at the mall will do it for $40 in two hours.
All of this would have been avoidable with removable batteries.
Why? They can explode and fail like other batteries. Just because you pull it out of the rest of the circuit doesn't mean you've isolated the problem. Samsung would still have to recall the batteries. It's just as easy to recall a phone entirely. Might have saved Samsung some money but that doesn't really change much of anything.
Removable batteries are a whole other conversation, but bad QA is bad QA. Hell, the batteries on the 787 were removable. Didn't help Boeing much.
Bah. Everybody hates their tax man (how come it's always a male, huh?). I seem to recall a Beatles song about this. I have some Swedish and German friends that will go on for hours if you let them.
Welcome to Civilization. I suppose it was better when we were hunter - gatherers although starvation seems like a bad way to go out....
Oh stop it. I've dealt with the IRS on numerous occasions. They have inevitably been polite, professional and they at least attempt to be helpful. Yes, they're the IRS. Yes, it's the Evil Big Guberment. But how the hell are you supposed to run a civilization without taxes and how are you supposed to collect taxes without something like the IRS?
Don't rush the answer. Think this through carefully. Please do NOT pick up that copy of 'Atlas Shrugged'.
Bears can be quite bipedal, but this 'thing' grabbed a branch and swung on it. Seen a lot of bears, never seen them do that. When they want to go fast, they drop down on all fours.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'll be here until Google cans this thing, try the veal."
You're largely correct. The technically kind of correct. The very best kind of correct. But. Political issues are typically the hardest nut to crack. And they are extraordinarily real. Slashdotters generally don't like to admit this (how many post start with 'just .....?) but you cannot simply wave away crackpot voters, slimeball politicians, annoying defense issues and a host of other squishy things.
We don't have a rational way of disposing high level nuclear waste and I cannot imagine us getting such a policy short of a credible threat of an alien invasion. So, nuclear power is nearly fatally crippled in the US and will be for generations. As usual, the nuclear industry worldwide hasn't done us any favors but again, that's humanity.
New information? What new information. We've known pretty much all of this nonsense on all sides since the beginning.
Perhaps filling in an occasional sordid detail, but this isn't new or news.
You're kidding, right? You can bet your last bong hit that both groups of businesses are covertly and actively following this very closely.
There's gold in them hills.
Those are tissue culture studies. Pretty much anything can be shown to do something good / bad / earthshattering in a tissue culture study. In fact, those are the kind of crappy studies that were used in the 1970's to implicate marijuana as a causative agent for various cancers.
It is virtually impossible to do decent medical studies on marijuana. You can use Marinol (delta-9-THC) but that isn't marijuana and good luck finding anybody to pay for that.
While I'm OK with marijuana being completely legal - the 'War on Drugs' has shown itself to be as a complete a failure as anything the Feds have managed to try in the past 100 years - we're a long way from figuring out what, if any, actual medical uses the stuff has.
Remember, nicotine is actually a pretty potent neurotransmitter and has been (poorly) linked to efficacy in treating a number of bad psychiatric disorders.
You don't smoke weed and code?
Somebody around here sure the hell does.
Feature, not a bug. Be quiet.
It's time Unicode was deprecated and we moved on to something better.
So we can be even further behind the curve here?
Kosher, even.
Amazon uses (presumably) links to what sells and what other people have purchased that might fit your interests. Works not all that well.
Awards, like Hugo / Nebula / Pulitzer don't necessarily mean that the book is interesting or relevant but do tend to reflect some higher level of decent writing. I often think that the awards ought to go to the editor more often than not.
Because most of it is, frankly, rubbish. And I say this as someone who's read tons of it. It's just juvenile nonsense, most of it.
Like most of everything else? That's the problem - finding stuff that's halfway well written in a subject you find entertaining.
Life is hard!
Ursula LeGuin doesn't write "trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction" so no it doesn't count.
The fact that the vast majority of SF writers don't do that either seems to have eluded some of 'those' literary aficionados but I've always had a hard time separating them from audio enthusiasts or serious wine freaks. Their critiques sound remarkably similar. And make about as much sense.
Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.
There are headphones......
There are 18+ movie theaters. They're basically all that's worth going to anymore.
I thought those places went away once the Internet started hosting porn.
Hey, we're special snowflakes. Companies should listen to us on tech issues? Right.
Besides, this entire argument is silly. You can replace an iPhone battery when it gets weak. Takes about 20 minutes. If you don't have the technical chops to do it yourself, Apple will do it for $100 and Juanita at the mall will do it for $40 in two hours.
Back to explosions ....
How many counterfeit 'safe' phones do you think are out there? Easy scam.
1. Get the bad phone
2. Slap on Green Dot
3. Resell / replace phone
4. Profit!
All of this would have been avoidable with removable batteries.
Why? They can explode and fail like other batteries. Just because you pull it out of the rest of the circuit doesn't mean you've isolated the problem. Samsung would still have to recall the batteries. It's just as easy to recall a phone entirely. Might have saved Samsung some money but that doesn't really change much of anything.
Removable batteries are a whole other conversation, but bad QA is bad QA. Hell, the batteries on the 787 were removable. Didn't help Boeing much.
Bah. Everybody hates their tax man (how come it's always a male, huh?). I seem to recall a Beatles song about this. I have some Swedish and German friends that will go on for hours if you let them.
Welcome to Civilization. I suppose it was better when we were hunter - gatherers although starvation seems like a bad way to go out....
Oh stop it. I've dealt with the IRS on numerous occasions. They have inevitably been polite, professional and they at least attempt to be helpful. Yes, they're the IRS. Yes, it's the Evil Big Guberment. But how the hell are you supposed to run a civilization without taxes and how are you supposed to collect taxes without something like the IRS?
Don't rush the answer. Think this through carefully. Please do NOT pick up that copy of 'Atlas Shrugged'.
FORTH
I'd dress up as Marco Rubio. Then everyone would ignore me.
Bears can be quite bipedal, but this 'thing' grabbed a branch and swung on it. Seen a lot of bears, never seen them do that. When they want to go fast, they drop down on all fours.
10 bitcoins on a clown in a hairy suit.
Nah, hair is all wrong.
Dunno if I would call a complete rotation of the capsule as 'smooth'. Lots of fun perhaps. Vertigo inducing perhaps. But not smooth.
Looks like they need to tweak the thruster controls a bit. But it's nice that the conical capsule shape is aerodynamically stable (mostly).
That's interesting. My wife had the pretty much the same comment. "Why are you looking at a picture of a giant dildo with a feather on it?"