Agree 100% with him there. For some reason US corporations take it for granted that all countries/entities everywhere exist merely to pander to their interests. To this end, they are fucking not only with the citizens of the US, but with people everywhere.
Ignoring the off-topic political overtones of the parent for a moment, do all US corporations expect the world to pander to them? Seems like a bit of a generality to me. In fact, I can only think of one instance where it was argued that the role of the various US "intellectual property" guardians (ie, copyright) is to enable large corporations.
Yes, our old friends at SCO. Recall when they tried the whole "The GPL is illegal because US copyright laws protect the profit motivation" argument, and got laughed at? And now we have Ken Brown saying that OSS is bad because it will kill the software sector?
*I don my tin-foil hat...*
It's looking more and more likely that Microsoft could be behind this crap, pulling the puppet strings. The arguments are the same. Linux is legally insecure, no company vouches for linux, linux is bad for the software sector, linux is stolen from Unix, linux will rot your brane!. MS is definitely funding SCO, and the AdTI has been verrrry touchy about where their $$$ comes from. I would wager at least even money that MS is behind it.
I know it sounds like the same slashdot ravings, but it's looking more and more like all this could be the voice of MS at work. So my ultimate point is don't assume that this point of view is anything but FUD until further notice.
C'mon, do you really see no middle ground between "rigorous stress testing with every possible laptop for which this product could be used" and "designed by an army of Mr. Magoo clones"? Is "product quality" a binary value?
My point was that designing a single product that is useful in such a wide variety of situations wouldn't require a bunch of Magoo's to screw up. Like I said, maybe the thing's OK...but maybe not. Maybe it's OK for the laptop they tested, but did they test enough? I don't know.
All I'm saying is that it's reasonable to assume that a design team--even a mediocre design team--would be able to envision the kind of glaringly obvious "What about X?" flotsam that gets posted on this sort of topic.
Yeah, but until I'm sure, I'm not risking my $2500 laptop with such a product. Hell, it's on my lap now, and I can't feel it through my clothes where it's actually touching. You're also forgetting the other possibility - that it occurred to them, they realized how hard it would be to thoroughly test, figured it was good enough based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, and just went with it. Just because a potential flaw occurred to them doesn't mean they fixed it. Every company has beancounters whose job it is to make such decisions of cost vs. risk. Also, does the warrantly for this thing cover damage to the laptop caused by excessive heat? The question will have to remain rhetorical until their server recovers.
Do you honestly believe that it is more likely than not that this company developed and released this product without ever considering the internal heat levels of the laptop?
Two points: one, as I mentioned above, it's not whether they considered it but whether such considerations were pursued. Second, there is no such thing as "the" laptop, and that's where the problem lies. If they tested a plastic-case Dell that doesn't use the case for heat transfer as much, that wouldn't apply to my titanium Powerbook that does.
Reading the FA aside, does it ever occur to people that a company in the business of making heat-dissipating pads specifically designed to work with laptops just might take the internal temperature of the laptop into consideration? Do people really think that products are designed by an army of Mr. Magoo clones?
At this level of "design"? Yes, I do indeed think that. If only because the alternative is that they did rigorous stress testing with every possible laptop for which this product could be used. Every laptop has different heat transfer properties, different vent locations, and uses the case to different degrees to ensure proper heat transfer (Apple is the obvious example here).
Is it possible that the material designed to contact the laptop is corrugated enough to still let air through and they did their job? Sure. But it's at least reasonable to question this until it's addressed, which it wasn't on the review and LapLogic's server appears melted. Methinks you're too trusting a consumer.
Put it another way - do you NOT see informercials when watching TV late at night?
Or yet another - if their website can't even survive a good slashdotting...
I'd imagine that the complex stuff Google is doing requires a substantial coming up to speed for all employees working on it irrespective of their degrees. After all, Google isn't specifing highly specific Ph.D.s they want, but rather just likes Ph.D.s in general.
I'm not so sure about that - they seemed pretty much into pattern classification and information theory people when they were recruiting here, but I'm not 100% sure.
I'd say the biggest plus of hiring Ph.D.s is that Google has a quantifiable analysis of how "smart" that employee is.
Being a few months away from getting mine, it's changed my tune on how high the bar is for getting a Ph.D. Namely, I realize now how low it is.;) But seriously, just having the degree means *very* little.
I'd say they're going after people who are, at least, extremely well versed in multivariate statistics and the algebraic transforms generally attendant with such data. And as someone who works with such data, I can tell you how few people in my Ph.D. program can stare at that stuff for more than 5 minutes before their eyes roll back into their skulls.
It was time to do that at least a year ago. It's pretty much impossible to find good information on any popular consumer product and this is a problem that's been around for a long time.
That's what froogle's for. Are you familiar with it? Type in a term and you'll find nothing BUT consumer items. If you're looking for a review site, that's eopinions. And if your complaint is that google should have a dedicated product review site, that fails your other point of them being all things to all people.
Also, I have NEVER typed in the model number of a product, with some reasonable attendant keywords, and NOT found good review info as well as the manufacturer's site. A little google prowess is all that's required. As someone else mentioned, do you have an example of a search that failed? With keywords, please.
But they're too busy making an email application with 9 frames and 200k of Javascript to pay attention to the reason people use them in the first place. It's a little disappointing, I'm an AltaVista alumni and I got to watch them forget about search and do a bunch of useless crap instead, then die. I was hoping Google would be different.
Please, gmail is a wonderful and necessary idea. Most webmail email clients suck - it's impossible to find your messages, either because they're not indexed or because you had to delete them to keep under your tiny limit. A ton of people, myself included, can't wait for gmail.
Also, it's not like they aren't actively fixing the problems with abuse, but it's hard to keep up with the entire spamming world. Recall SearchKing - they killed that effectively. And just because they don't publically detail their changes to PageRank doesn't mean they aren't working on it.
I would expect the PageRanks of the Wikifarms to decrease within a month.
Although having an advanced degree is great, some of the best tech sector innovators come without advanced degrees.
Not for what Google does. This is stuff that generally isn't the material of undergraduate courses, even advanced level. The stuff google is doing is so complex that you need a very strong background to even get to the point that you can use your creativity to solve problems.
There may be a very few people out there who have the background to do what google requires and don't have Ph.D.'s. For their innovation in algorithm design, such people will be rare. At that level, the coding is the easy part.
With each of these actions (or inactions) there are consequences.
How about the air filter in your car? And your furnace filter? How about your roof? Your fuel filter? Fuel pump? Wiper blades? And I bet you've never hit 3001 miles before that oil change, right?
I guarantee there is something you've lapsed on, so I'd move out of that glass house.
What pisses me off is how their infection affects me.
Right, because it's reasonable to expect all computer users to become experts to use their machine. Apply that standard to cars and, well, traffic would be great anbd you wouldn't be driving. Blame the company who set up such a ridiculous situation. Or use another OS.
Yet people have time to go out drinking, watch 'The Swan', and masturbate (not necessarily in that order).
I have no idea what the Swan is, or why you have hang ups about drinking and wanking. But if you're trying to imply that people should spend every waking hour performing routine maintenance and leading completely miserable lives...all I can say is you really need to get laid.
Which is why they have Automatic Updates, which will automatically download and install patches as they are released.
And there are reasons that won't work. What if you don't have an always-on connection? What if the virus hits you first (and that's plausible)? What's the lag time between infection and fix? And I imagine you're one of the lucky ones that haven't had MS's "fix" break something else?
I wish that, just once, a lot of people will get ripped off. The credit card companies will cover any losses (they have to by law), and people will actually realise that yes, keeping up to date with patches is a good idea.
It's easy for us to say that, we're computer users who (presumably) know what we're doing. But if one is to condemn non-patchers in that way - I assume you also change your oil every 3000 miles, go to the dentist every 6 months, floss daily, get an annual physical, clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load, eat 6 daily servings of vegetables, rotate your tires every 20,000 miles, have all your car's factory recalls done, change the air filters in your heater monthly, and perform all the other mindless routine maintenance you're supposed to do.
The bottom line is, no one on earth outside the most anal retentive person alive does all that stuff. Not doing any of them could have consequences, but people simply don't have time to do all this shit.
So yes, I do blame microsoft. One shouldn't have to constantly check symantec's web page just to keep your computer usable. Computers are appliances now. They should just work, dammit.
When I build a new computer for myself I tend to spend in the range of 3-5k after everything is said and done. However I build that computer to last at least five years.
I have no idea why you'd want to do that when even the best machine you can get is toast after 2 years. If you spent $2000 initially and upgraded the important bits every year or so, you would spend less than $5000 and have a machine that is, on average over the 5 year span, far better.
Can stallman say *anything* without making it a discussion of GNU vs. Linux? Can he order a value meal at McDonalds? "I'd like a number 3, hold the pickles, and by the way Linux should really be called GNU/Linux?
He makes himself irrelevant by making arguments that are, at best, tangentially related to the subject matter, and in the case of Ken Brown's book, Linux REALLY MEANS Linux - Linus never even claimed to have authored any of the GNU stuff that goes with a typical distro.
No, if they were well-controlled there wouldn't be a need for insurance.
First, damn near everything is insured these days. Second, the firms are preying on the unfounded fears of their clients.
No, again, tech stuff is not natural ( technology is man-made ).
Not by definition. And the point is, all of those materials WOULD BE CLASSIFIED as nanotech if they were made. A layer of oil on water is a single molecule thick and extremely regular. A peacock's feather is a natural example of a photonic crystal, aka optical bandgap materials that is transmissive to a specific frequency of light at a given angle (also works as a diffraction grating.
Ultimately, anything small and well-controlled is nanotech. I tried to give real world examples because if I gave real tech examples no one on slashdot would know what the hell I was talking about.
Throwing around these phrases so loosely makes your whole understanding questionable.
Rest assured, as a chemist who develops such materials, I am as close to an expert on the matter as slashdot is likely to see.
No, you are wrong. If you read the article you would understand why.
No, I'm not. I work in the field.
Nanotechnology as it exists today produces materials which are far smaller than any cell in your body. Whether that cell is a human eukaryotic cell, or a bacterial prokaryotic cells. Nanoparticles, such as carbon buckyballs, are so small that they pass through cell membranes with ease, and your cells cannot regulate how these substances are absorbed.
First, the definition of nanotech goes as high as 200nm, which is about 300 times as large as a bucky, so you're picking extreme definitions. Additionally, at that point, a sodium atom should definitely be regarded as nanotech, as it's much smaller. You see where ridiculous comments like that get. Sodium also passes through cell membranes. Conclusion: it's not the SIZE of something that makes it dangerous, it's the CHEMISTRY of it. That's why these things have to be evaluated case by case.
What you are doing is thinking to yourself that nanotechnology means nothing more than "small technology" which is just stupid. Computer Chips? OIL?? I mean, what the fuck. Use your head.
Blow me. Go look up "Langmuir-Blodgett film and educate yourself.
By the way, "nano" means 10^-9, which is a VERY SMALL number.
Wow, what a concept. The prefix is also to "meter," which is a pretty big thing dipshit.
Buckyballs have already proven themselves to be dangerous to living organisms. What is next?
So has cyanide, does that mean we should outlaws all molecules with 3 atoms? Use your fucking brain.
Btw, I'm a chemist, so you're going to lose this. And sign your fucking posts.
That's why they call low-limit poker No Fold 'em Hold 'em. It's actually pretty easy to do well just by playing tight aggressive(if you don't know the meaning of this term then read a book before playing:) ). It only takes 1-2 lose players at the table and you will be rolling in all their chips in no time.
Amen! That was my experience. I read Ken Warren's book (not bad) before playing, and I went with a friend who's pretty damned good - he was up over $1000 on Sat night playing $10/20 when I left, and he gave me some pointers. Like I said, I tried bluffing *once*, realized my error, didn't try again the entire time. And the rest of the time, I played tight aggressive, while being watchful for the inevitability of some retard holding 7-10 hitting his straight on the river.
Also, I wouldn't worry much about "sharks" in a 2-4 or 3-6 table. Not really enough money there to make it worth their time.
When I was there on Saturday night and it was packed, there were enough of them to kill my action. One guy was killing time waiting for a $20-40 table to open up, and the other came with too little cash for $20/40 and was building up his bankroll so he could play normally at that level. They were both better than me, so I bolted. But those guys were only there on Sat night, no other time. Outside of that, the highest caliber of player playing $3-6 was the old-timer local playing at 7 am, as one would expect. And during afternoons? Man, those people were dumb.
Of course you know the old saying..."If you sit down at a poker table and can't pick out the sucker it's you."
I am glad to see some sort of forward thinking on the possible risks on this new technology. Though it surprises me to see the source isnt government regulation, but instead insurance hesitation.
I truly mean no offense, but the way you phrase your statement - "*this* new technology" - belies the fact that you (like the insurance companies here) don't know what nanotechnology *is*.
First, nanotech is a very loose definition for anything small. It isn't a technology - it is a very heterogeneous collection of diverse technologies bearing no resemblance to each other except that they have small, well-controlled features. To be described as nanotech, your device must have features or design control on a level below 200 nm. As such, things that are "nanotech" need not even be small, but rather large and very regularly patterned.
As such, each technology needs to be evaluated separately, just as larger technologies would. People in general don't know what nanotech is - and isn't - and in the scientific world, it's just a word to put on grant proposals to impress reviewers.
People are afraid of "nanotech" (whatever it is or isn't) because they don't know what it is. Are there some technologies that have the potential for danger? Of course, and that's true on any size scale.
To make real-world examples, here are some things that would meet the definition of nanotech:
iridescent peacock feathers
crystals of anything, including salt.
A layer of oil on water
living cells
computer chips
When you give examples of this nebulous, fear-inspiring phenomenon, it's hard to be afraid of the concept. Again, trying to deal with "nanotech" as a united whole is a flawed premise from the start,.
I would actually say that playing poker w/others is the only way to beat the house pretty consistently, though. However, this is not always the case, and Vegas is loaded with ringers who will be happy to take your money as they teach you this fact.
Somewhat - but because Vegas is also filled with morons that are interested in poker because of its popularity, there are also lots of fish.
If you play certain hands and avoid dumb, loser hands, you can usually beat anyone at a home game of poker. But in a Casino? I don't like my odds of coming away with any money playing people at a Casino in Vegas.
I did last month, and I'd never played before. I played $3-$6 limit Hold 'em exclusively. At some times of the day, there were decent players, at some times there were sharks like you describe, and at some times there were no sharks and an absolute abundance of the stupidest, math-uninclined, play-any-hand-like-it-was-aces morons. I found afternoons best for that, and it's hard to lose money consistently to those people.
In fact, the idiots call so much you can't bluff. I tried once - I had a nut straight draw and missed it, but there was nothing on the board, I was on the button, and people were all checking on the river so I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) they had nothing. I either bet or raised on the river (can't remember if someone finally bet in front of me), got rid of everyone except one guy who called, and it turned out he had 8's or something equally crappy (compared to my K high or whatever). He was genuinely surprised, and said "I thought you had the straight!" I rolled my eyes and said "So why did you call if you thought you had 8's losing to a straight?" The guy shrugged and said he'd come that far with the 8's... Shit like that pisses you off, but all you have to realize is that 1) you can't bluff all the callers out of the pot in low limit, and 2) when you really do have a hand, you'll get paid well for it.
Personally, I wouldn't know why so many people would play WSOP. I'm sure the majority got in through satellites and such, but still, to me that's like throwing money at a brick wall if you haven't played (and won) in a bunch of tournaments first.
No question. But I think you can make enough to subsidize a vacation if you know what you're doing (I wasn't that good because it was my first time and I played low limit) and keep to a sane limit, while knowing when to play and how to avoid the sharks.
"Almost" - craps vs. BJ, Hold 'em
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Geeks and Poker?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Craps actually gives you the best odds to win in most cases. In fact, certain betting combinations can give the bettor almost even odds with the house.
Almost being the key word, and there's no possible source of "extra information" in craps, so it's a great house game. Blackjack used to be the best - you could count cards when you could find a decent 1 or 2 deck game, but now all those are for suckers, as the blackjack always pays 3 to 2 and the dealer hits on soft 17, which really helps the house and makes it basically impossible to get an edge.
That's why I like poker. You don't play the house, you play the other player. If you know what you're doing, you can have far better than the typical less than 1% player edge that's the best case scenario in blackjack.
I went to Vegas recently to play for the first time, and I ended up winning a little. For new players, you have to know when to play - at the low-limit tables, the locals play mornings, and if you're new to poker they'll likely beat you. Weekend nights is a mix of idiots (your prey) and sharks, many of whom are waiting for high-limit tables. If you have a loose high-limit player at your low limit table, trust me - get out. Even if there are 3 total newbies at your table, the "loose" shark will get more of your money than you will of the newbies. I found the best time was afternoons - the locals are gone, and the sharks are still sleeping it off, leaving you and a lot of really stupid people. That's when I did really well. It helps when some moron will take 2-7 unsuited all the way to the river in Hold 'em. It happened to me, it was great. You can't lose.
The sun? We've been harnesting the sun for thousands of years for our energy, why not keep going?
Because we have devices like blenders and DVD players that require more energy than, say, a mortar and pestle.
we know the sun's rays can be converted into heat to turn a turbine
Horribly inefficiently. I know of no full-scale power plant that does this.
we know that the sun's radiation can be converted directly into electrical energy.
A few problems here. First, the energy density of sunlight isn't that high, and even that's only available in generally arid conditions. Also, single-crystal-based Si solar cells require quite a bit of energy to fabricate, so they have a rather long energy break-even point.
There are attempts to change this, namely with Graetzel cell technology that runs on poly-crystalline Si that is cheaper, but research is ongoing for these.
From that alone, we have enough to power ourselves for quite a while..
And no efficient way to harness it. To supply the country with solar energy, we'd have to cover something like half of Arizona with solar cells. This is not currently viable.
Question is, when will everyone be convenced there is a problem, and when they are convenced, how willing will they be to give up their SUV's?
I sympathize with you here - Wy wife and I drive a sensible, 4-cylinder, gas-efficient sedan. We carpool. I hate SUVs for everything they represent, namely careless, pointless consumption to convince their middle-aged owners they really aren't driving minvans/station-wagons. That said, screaming solar/wind/biomass isn't going to get it done, because these technologies won't meet the world's needs now, let alone when the rest of the unindustrialized world decides to get online.
Does this guy know how much energy that goes into mining the Uranium? (Clue: Quite alot)
Do you know how much energy goes into mining U compared to the massive amount of energy liberated from it? Clue: Damn near none. Nuclear is the best energy source we have right now, uneducated NIMBY morons notwithstanding.
We have to forget all the nonsense in mining our energy from the ground, and start putting some research into renewable stuff like plant-oils, wave and wind energy.
And if any of those were viable, we would. Wind and wave are useful in such a small area of the country, it's laughable. As far as plant oils, the production of them is so inefficient that energy prices will have to increase an order of magnitude to make them competitive. You figure out how to get terawatts of energy from marginal technologies like that. Won't work.
Bottom line is, over the short and long term, nuclear's the answer. Fission over the short term and hopefully fusion over long term.
Cancer isn't the only problem that RF can cause. There has been some research suggesting that moderate power RF can increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, permitting proteins to enter the brain that will cause problems.
First, that's at MUCH higher power densities than exist from the radio background that exists from broadcast transmission. Second, those studies look sketchy to me, as the statistical significance (for the ones I've seen) is questionable, particularly given the complete lack of any theory that would establish causality. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but I'm skeptical.
The point here is that destroying your DNA and causing cancer are unlikely to be a problem. A host of other modifications to biological processes are more possible.
Right, and IF these situations exist, they will be a problem for consumer devices, not broadcast. Better shielding will solve the problem, if one even exists.
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring the off-topic political overtones of the parent for a moment, do all US corporations expect the world to pander to them? Seems like a bit of a generality to me. In fact, I can only think of one instance where it was argued that the role of the various US "intellectual property" guardians (ie, copyright) is to enable large corporations.
Yes, our old friends at SCO. Recall when they tried the whole "The GPL is illegal because US copyright laws protect the profit motivation" argument, and got laughed at? And now we have Ken Brown saying that OSS is bad because it will kill the software sector?
*I don my tin-foil hat...*
It's looking more and more likely that Microsoft could be behind this crap, pulling the puppet strings. The arguments are the same. Linux is legally insecure, no company vouches for linux, linux is bad for the software sector, linux is stolen from Unix, linux will rot your brane!. MS is definitely funding SCO, and the AdTI has been verrrry touchy about where their $$$ comes from. I would wager at least even money that MS is behind it.
I know it sounds like the same slashdot ravings, but it's looking more and more like all this could be the voice of MS at work. So my ultimate point is don't assume that this point of view is anything but FUD until further notice.
My point was that designing a single product that is useful in such a wide variety of situations wouldn't require a bunch of Magoo's to screw up. Like I said, maybe the thing's OK...but maybe not. Maybe it's OK for the laptop they tested, but did they test enough? I don't know.
All I'm saying is that it's reasonable to assume that a design team--even a mediocre design team--would be able to envision the kind of glaringly obvious "What about X?" flotsam that gets posted on this sort of topic.
Yeah, but until I'm sure, I'm not risking my $2500 laptop with such a product. Hell, it's on my lap now, and I can't feel it through my clothes where it's actually touching. You're also forgetting the other possibility - that it occurred to them, they realized how hard it would be to thoroughly test, figured it was good enough based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, and just went with it. Just because a potential flaw occurred to them doesn't mean they fixed it. Every company has beancounters whose job it is to make such decisions of cost vs. risk. Also, does the warrantly for this thing cover damage to the laptop caused by excessive heat? The question will have to remain rhetorical until their server recovers.
Do you honestly believe that it is more likely than not that this company developed and released this product without ever considering the internal heat levels of the laptop?
Two points: one, as I mentioned above, it's not whether they considered it but whether such considerations were pursued. Second, there is no such thing as "the" laptop, and that's where the problem lies. If they tested a plastic-case Dell that doesn't use the case for heat transfer as much, that wouldn't apply to my titanium Powerbook that does.
At this level of "design"? Yes, I do indeed think that. If only because the alternative is that they did rigorous stress testing with every possible laptop for which this product could be used. Every laptop has different heat transfer properties, different vent locations, and uses the case to different degrees to ensure proper heat transfer (Apple is the obvious example here).
Is it possible that the material designed to contact the laptop is corrugated enough to still let air through and they did their job? Sure. But it's at least reasonable to question this until it's addressed, which it wasn't on the review and LapLogic's server appears melted. Methinks you're too trusting a consumer.
Put it another way - do you NOT see informercials when watching TV late at night?
Or yet another - if their website can't even survive a good slashdotting...
Sorry if I led anyone to actually believe that - it's a spoof, as described here.
But it's a damned good spoof, and has "gotten" a few people, not to mention the Register and infoworld, as mentioned in the linked article.
I'm not so sure about that - they seemed pretty much into pattern classification and information theory people when they were recruiting here, but I'm not 100% sure.
I'd say the biggest plus of hiring Ph.D.s is that Google has a quantifiable analysis of how "smart" that employee is.
Being a few months away from getting mine, it's changed my tune on how high the bar is for getting a Ph.D. Namely, I realize now how low it is. ;) But seriously, just having the degree means *very* little.
I'd say they're going after people who are, at least, extremely well versed in multivariate statistics and the algebraic transforms generally attendant with such data. And as someone who works with such data, I can tell you how few people in my Ph.D. program can stare at that stuff for more than 5 minutes before their eyes roll back into their skulls.
Check this out
That's what froogle's for. Are you familiar with it? Type in a term and you'll find nothing BUT consumer items. If you're looking for a review site, that's eopinions. And if your complaint is that google should have a dedicated product review site, that fails your other point of them being all things to all people.
Also, I have NEVER typed in the model number of a product, with some reasonable attendant keywords, and NOT found good review info as well as the manufacturer's site. A little google prowess is all that's required. As someone else mentioned, do you have an example of a search that failed? With keywords, please.
But they're too busy making an email application with 9 frames and 200k of Javascript to pay attention to the reason people use them in the first place. It's a little disappointing, I'm an AltaVista alumni and I got to watch them forget about search and do a bunch of useless crap instead, then die. I was hoping Google would be different.
Please, gmail is a wonderful and necessary idea. Most webmail email clients suck - it's impossible to find your messages, either because they're not indexed or because you had to delete them to keep under your tiny limit. A ton of people, myself included, can't wait for gmail.
Also, it's not like they aren't actively fixing the problems with abuse, but it's hard to keep up with the entire spamming world. Recall SearchKing - they killed that effectively. And just because they don't publically detail their changes to PageRank doesn't mean they aren't working on it.
I would expect the PageRanks of the Wikifarms to decrease within a month.
Not for what Google does. This is stuff that generally isn't the material of undergraduate courses, even advanced level. The stuff google is doing is so complex that you need a very strong background to even get to the point that you can use your creativity to solve problems.
There may be a very few people out there who have the background to do what google requires and don't have Ph.D.'s. For their innovation in algorithm design, such people will be rare. At that level, the coding is the easy part.
How about the air filter in your car? And your furnace filter? How about your roof? Your fuel filter? Fuel pump? Wiper blades? And I bet you've never hit 3001 miles before that oil change, right?
I guarantee there is something you've lapsed on, so I'd move out of that glass house.
What pisses me off is how their infection affects me.
Right, because it's reasonable to expect all computer users to become experts to use their machine. Apply that standard to cars and, well, traffic would be great anbd you wouldn't be driving. Blame the company who set up such a ridiculous situation. Or use another OS.
Yet people have time to go out drinking, watch 'The Swan', and masturbate (not necessarily in that order).
I have no idea what the Swan is, or why you have hang ups about drinking and wanking. But if you're trying to imply that people should spend every waking hour performing routine maintenance and leading completely miserable lives...all I can say is you really need to get laid.
And there are reasons that won't work. What if you don't have an always-on connection? What if the virus hits you first (and that's plausible)? What's the lag time between infection and fix? And I imagine you're one of the lucky ones that haven't had MS's "fix" break something else?
It's easy for us to say that, we're computer users who (presumably) know what we're doing. But if one is to condemn non-patchers in that way - I assume you also change your oil every 3000 miles, go to the dentist every 6 months, floss daily, get an annual physical, clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load, eat 6 daily servings of vegetables, rotate your tires every 20,000 miles, have all your car's factory recalls done, change the air filters in your heater monthly, and perform all the other mindless routine maintenance you're supposed to do.
The bottom line is, no one on earth outside the most anal retentive person alive does all that stuff. Not doing any of them could have consequences, but people simply don't have time to do all this shit.
So yes, I do blame microsoft. One shouldn't have to constantly check symantec's web page just to keep your computer usable. Computers are appliances now. They should just work, dammit.
I have no idea why you'd want to do that when even the best machine you can get is toast after 2 years. If you spent $2000 initially and upgraded the important bits every year or so, you would spend less than $5000 and have a machine that is, on average over the 5 year span, far better.
Because God knows there are no shitty programmers in the U.S.
Right. That SCO loss was bad, but the $56.23 in your checking account walking away? Heads rolled over that one.
He makes himself irrelevant by making arguments that are, at best, tangentially related to the subject matter, and in the case of Ken Brown's book, Linux REALLY MEANS Linux - Linus never even claimed to have authored any of the GNU stuff that goes with a typical distro.
First, damn near everything is insured these days. Second, the firms are preying on the unfounded fears of their clients.
No, again, tech stuff is not natural ( technology is man-made ).
Not by definition. And the point is, all of those materials WOULD BE CLASSIFIED as nanotech if they were made. A layer of oil on water is a single molecule thick and extremely regular. A peacock's feather is a natural example of a photonic crystal, aka optical bandgap materials that is transmissive to a specific frequency of light at a given angle (also works as a diffraction grating.
Ultimately, anything small and well-controlled is nanotech. I tried to give real world examples because if I gave real tech examples no one on slashdot would know what the hell I was talking about.
Throwing around these phrases so loosely makes your whole understanding questionable.
Rest assured, as a chemist who develops such materials, I am as close to an expert on the matter as slashdot is likely to see.
No, I'm not. I work in the field.
Nanotechnology as it exists today produces materials which are far smaller than any cell in your body. Whether that cell is a human eukaryotic cell, or a bacterial prokaryotic cells. Nanoparticles, such as carbon buckyballs, are so small that they pass through cell membranes with ease, and your cells cannot regulate how these substances are absorbed.
First, the definition of nanotech goes as high as 200nm, which is about 300 times as large as a bucky, so you're picking extreme definitions. Additionally, at that point, a sodium atom should definitely be regarded as nanotech, as it's much smaller. You see where ridiculous comments like that get. Sodium also passes through cell membranes. Conclusion: it's not the SIZE of something that makes it dangerous, it's the CHEMISTRY of it. That's why these things have to be evaluated case by case.
What you are doing is thinking to yourself that nanotechnology means nothing more than "small technology" which is just stupid. Computer Chips? OIL?? I mean, what the fuck. Use your head.
Blow me. Go look up "Langmuir-Blodgett film and educate yourself.
By the way, "nano" means 10^-9, which is a VERY SMALL number.
Wow, what a concept. The prefix is also to "meter," which is a pretty big thing dipshit.
Buckyballs have already proven themselves to be dangerous to living organisms. What is next?
So has cyanide, does that mean we should outlaws all molecules with 3 atoms? Use your fucking brain.
Btw, I'm a chemist, so you're going to lose this. And sign your fucking posts.
Amen! That was my experience. I read Ken Warren's book (not bad) before playing, and I went with a friend who's pretty damned good - he was up over $1000 on Sat night playing $10/20 when I left, and he gave me some pointers. Like I said, I tried bluffing *once*, realized my error, didn't try again the entire time. And the rest of the time, I played tight aggressive, while being watchful for the inevitability of some retard holding 7-10 hitting his straight on the river.
Also, I wouldn't worry much about "sharks" in a 2-4 or 3-6 table. Not really enough money there to make it worth their time.
When I was there on Saturday night and it was packed, there were enough of them to kill my action. One guy was killing time waiting for a $20-40 table to open up, and the other came with too little cash for $20/40 and was building up his bankroll so he could play normally at that level. They were both better than me, so I bolted. But those guys were only there on Sat night, no other time. Outside of that, the highest caliber of player playing $3-6 was the old-timer local playing at 7 am, as one would expect. And during afternoons? Man, those people were dumb.
Of course you know the old saying..."If you sit down at a poker table and can't pick out the sucker it's you."
Yup. And that's when I left. ;)
I truly mean no offense, but the way you phrase your statement - "*this* new technology" - belies the fact that you (like the insurance companies here) don't know what nanotechnology *is*.
First, nanotech is a very loose definition for anything small. It isn't a technology - it is a very heterogeneous collection of diverse technologies bearing no resemblance to each other except that they have small, well-controlled features. To be described as nanotech, your device must have features or design control on a level below 200 nm. As such, things that are "nanotech" need not even be small, but rather large and very regularly patterned.
As such, each technology needs to be evaluated separately, just as larger technologies would. People in general don't know what nanotech is - and isn't - and in the scientific world, it's just a word to put on grant proposals to impress reviewers.
People are afraid of "nanotech" (whatever it is or isn't) because they don't know what it is. Are there some technologies that have the potential for danger? Of course, and that's true on any size scale.
To make real-world examples, here are some things that would meet the definition of nanotech:
iridescent peacock feathers
crystals of anything, including salt.
A layer of oil on water
living cells
computer chips
When you give examples of this nebulous, fear-inspiring phenomenon, it's hard to be afraid of the concept. Again, trying to deal with "nanotech" as a united whole is a flawed premise from the start,.
Somewhat - but because Vegas is also filled with morons that are interested in poker because of its popularity, there are also lots of fish.
If you play certain hands and avoid dumb, loser hands, you can usually beat anyone at a home game of poker. But in a Casino? I don't like my odds of coming away with any money playing people at a Casino in Vegas.
I did last month, and I'd never played before. I played $3-$6 limit Hold 'em exclusively. At some times of the day, there were decent players, at some times there were sharks like you describe, and at some times there were no sharks and an absolute abundance of the stupidest, math-uninclined, play-any-hand-like-it-was-aces morons. I found afternoons best for that, and it's hard to lose money consistently to those people.
In fact, the idiots call so much you can't bluff. I tried once - I had a nut straight draw and missed it, but there was nothing on the board, I was on the button, and people were all checking on the river so I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) they had nothing. I either bet or raised on the river (can't remember if someone finally bet in front of me), got rid of everyone except one guy who called, and it turned out he had 8's or something equally crappy (compared to my K high or whatever). He was genuinely surprised, and said "I thought you had the straight!" I rolled my eyes and said "So why did you call if you thought you had 8's losing to a straight?" The guy shrugged and said he'd come that far with the 8's... Shit like that pisses you off, but all you have to realize is that 1) you can't bluff all the callers out of the pot in low limit, and 2) when you really do have a hand, you'll get paid well for it.
Personally, I wouldn't know why so many people would play WSOP. I'm sure the majority got in through satellites and such, but still, to me that's like throwing money at a brick wall if you haven't played (and won) in a bunch of tournaments first.
No question. But I think you can make enough to subsidize a vacation if you know what you're doing (I wasn't that good because it was my first time and I played low limit) and keep to a sane limit, while knowing when to play and how to avoid the sharks.
Almost being the key word, and there's no possible source of "extra information" in craps, so it's a great house game. Blackjack used to be the best - you could count cards when you could find a decent 1 or 2 deck game, but now all those are for suckers, as the blackjack always pays 3 to 2 and the dealer hits on soft 17, which really helps the house and makes it basically impossible to get an edge.
That's why I like poker. You don't play the house, you play the other player. If you know what you're doing, you can have far better than the typical less than 1% player edge that's the best case scenario in blackjack.
I went to Vegas recently to play for the first time, and I ended up winning a little. For new players, you have to know when to play - at the low-limit tables, the locals play mornings, and if you're new to poker they'll likely beat you. Weekend nights is a mix of idiots (your prey) and sharks, many of whom are waiting for high-limit tables. If you have a loose high-limit player at your low limit table, trust me - get out. Even if there are 3 total newbies at your table, the "loose" shark will get more of your money than you will of the newbies. I found the best time was afternoons - the locals are gone, and the sharks are still sleeping it off, leaving you and a lot of really stupid people. That's when I did really well. It helps when some moron will take 2-7 unsuited all the way to the river in Hold 'em. It happened to me, it was great. You can't lose.
Because we have devices like blenders and DVD players that require more energy than, say, a mortar and pestle.
we know the sun's rays can be converted into heat to turn a turbine
Horribly inefficiently. I know of no full-scale power plant that does this.
we know that the sun's radiation can be converted directly into electrical energy.
A few problems here. First, the energy density of sunlight isn't that high, and even that's only available in generally arid conditions. Also, single-crystal-based Si solar cells require quite a bit of energy to fabricate, so they have a rather long energy break-even point.
There are attempts to change this, namely with Graetzel cell technology that runs on poly-crystalline Si that is cheaper, but research is ongoing for these.
From that alone, we have enough to power ourselves for quite a while..
And no efficient way to harness it. To supply the country with solar energy, we'd have to cover something like half of Arizona with solar cells. This is not currently viable.
Question is, when will everyone be convenced there is a problem, and when they are convenced, how willing will they be to give up their SUV's?
I sympathize with you here - Wy wife and I drive a sensible, 4-cylinder, gas-efficient sedan. We carpool. I hate SUVs for everything they represent, namely careless, pointless consumption to convince their middle-aged owners they really aren't driving minvans/station-wagons. That said, screaming solar/wind/biomass isn't going to get it done, because these technologies won't meet the world's needs now, let alone when the rest of the unindustrialized world decides to get online.
Do you know how much energy goes into mining U compared to the massive amount of energy liberated from it? Clue: Damn near none. Nuclear is the best energy source we have right now, uneducated NIMBY morons notwithstanding.
We have to forget all the nonsense in mining our energy from the ground, and start putting some research into renewable stuff like plant-oils, wave and wind energy.
And if any of those were viable, we would. Wind and wave are useful in such a small area of the country, it's laughable. As far as plant oils, the production of them is so inefficient that energy prices will have to increase an order of magnitude to make them competitive. You figure out how to get terawatts of energy from marginal technologies like that. Won't work.
Bottom line is, over the short and long term, nuclear's the answer. Fission over the short term and hopefully fusion over long term.
Not by Hare Krishnas.
There are still some bands who "Know what rock-and-roll really means"
who?
bands out there that know the different between country and western music.
The difference lies in whether you lose the truck, the dog, and the woman, or whether the dog comes back.
Not to mention all the wonderfull music that hasn't (yet?) had its day in the sun.
I'm waiting for the return of hair metal, personally.
All facetiousness aside, I completely agree - death to ClearChannel.
First, that's at MUCH higher power densities than exist from the radio background that exists from broadcast transmission. Second, those studies look sketchy to me, as the statistical significance (for the ones I've seen) is questionable, particularly given the complete lack of any theory that would establish causality. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but I'm skeptical.
The point here is that destroying your DNA and causing cancer are unlikely to be a problem. A host of other modifications to biological processes are more possible.
Right, and IF these situations exist, they will be a problem for consumer devices, not broadcast. Better shielding will solve the problem, if one even exists.