Of course, to be even remotely effective it will have to be opaque to visible and infrared AND using it will have to be common enough that:
* lots of "uninteresting" people are wearing them at "interesting" events, and * there are enough opaque-to-iR-and-visible light tents and shelters that it is common for the spooks to "lose tracking" when you go under the shade with other people and not be able to tell who is who when you lgo back out.
I don't see that first condition being met anytime soon - not unless wide-brim hats come back into fashion.
I adapt faster and easier because nothing "new" is really actually new. It's a rehash of an older thing passed off as new.
While this is true for many things, there really is a lot of "new" or at least "newly ubiquitous" which make the effect of "most people know how to deal with it" new.
There is also a lot of "basically the same old thing but it's so much better/faster/different now that for practical purposes, it's new."
An example is texting an image. If I call you and ask you to take a selfie and text it to me, I can reasonably expect to have it within 5 minutes.
25 years ago, if I said "take a picture and text it to me" you'd look at me funny. Sure, you might be able to take a picture with one of those low-quality digital cameras that costs over $1000 back then, or take a picture with a film camera, get it developed in the 1-hour lab, then scan the print into your computer, but how would you get it to me? The closest thing was either by modem direct to my PC, by email (yes, they had standardized photo formats and email attachments in 1991) or by uploading to a BBS, ftp site, or by hosting it on one of the very early web sites. But none of this was anywhere close to "instant."
Now, if I say "take a picture and text it to me" or even "email me a picture" you might be able to send it to me while we are still talking on the phone. That immediacy is what is, for most of us at least, "new" and what makes it "much more useful" than "take a picture and email it to me, I'll call you in a few hours when I get it so we can discuss it."
I'm mad because I can't control the universe with them.
I'm not upset that they can't control the universe - I just think they stretch the truth too much in their advertising. I understand that advertisers are known to stretch the truth a bit, and I might give them a pass if they only controlled a galaxy cluster, but heck, the ones I've used can't even control this planet let alone this galaxy. Geesh.
I'm left to wonder if in some specific galaxy far, far, away, things get louder when I press the "volume up" button.
Now, those "multi-entertainment-device remote controls" that let me control most or all of my entertainment devices, those I don't have any problems with, at least not with respect to their marketing claims.
I try to keep abreast of all of the new languages and paradigms, but somehow I missed out on this new one called "thing" (note the all-lowercase, that's probably a trademarked capitalization, like iPhone or something).
Please help me keep up my education and submit a story about this new "thing" language or paradigm or whatever it is. I watch the firehose, I'll mod it up for you as long as it doesn't look like binspam.
Okay, algebra, math, CERN, tenuous but I'll give it a pass. Throw in "the case against" and "rethinking our earlier observations at CERN" and it's a definite maybe.
Er, other than "scientific data is as exciting to me as porn is to some politicians" and "CERN gets public funds and the word 'public' is in the title" I'm just not seeing it. Either you fail outright or fail for being too subtle with the "I-love-science/politicos-get-off-on-porn" angle.
Er, um, no. Yes, I know bullets go at high velocities (but not THAT high!) and it's the impact they make when they hit the target that counts, but no. Fail.
There are two common-sense readings, and the court took one of them.
The other common-sense reading is that the employee was only authorized to access the device to do things that complied with company policy, and that her authorization to accessed it was implicitly suspended during the time she was violating company policy.
Since the court went the way they went, expect some companies in Oregon to go back and spell out very clearly that when you are using company equipment in violation of company policy, your authorization to use the equipment is immediately suspended for the duration of your out-of-policy use and, as a result, you are violating Oregon state law and that the company reserves the right to press charges.
Personally, I think the court made the right decision, because 1) it's very easy for companies to "work around it" by modifying their policies, and 2) the court's ruling prevents "gotcha" situations where the law was ambiguous and, prior to a judge ruling on the issue to remove the ambiguity, a reasonable person could read the law as not applying.
If so, then a doctor should be able to prescribe it for off-label use. Insurance companies and government-funded clinics may not be able to pay for the drugs and it's possible that government-paid medical professionals may not be allowed to talk about off-label use of medications on pain of being fired (I say "may" because I don't know if this is the case or not), but as long as it's been through the FDA approval process for some use, most doctors should be able to prescribe it for just about any use.
It's why we have so many Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs
While I live in a part of the world with very few " Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs" I do have a word for the Marxists:
Government regulation has its good and bad points. You need balance. Telling companies "you can't lay off people" is the same as telling companies "think twice before hiring people, because you won't be able to shed them quickly without dissolving your company." On the other hand, no regulation of layoffs at all creates an environment which fosters sudden spikes in the unemployment rate and the societal problems that go with it.
Some countries have strong-enough labor unions or somewhat-labor-friendly governments that try to "thread the needle" by not outlawing layoffs completely but by putting in some "friction" that make layoffs somewhat less attractive to businesses and which mitigate some of the social costs, such as by requiring several months' notice and/or several months' severance pay for large-scale layoffs or requiring companies that lay people off to provide them job-retraining or pay into an outside fund that will cover job-retraining costs.
I'm thinking about that scene in one of the Men In Black movies where the newbie agent picks up a relatively small "fits in the palm of your hand-sized" alien ray gun and fires it, causing massive damage.
Tinting prescription glasses adds tens of dollars to the cost of a pair of glasses every time you buy a new pair, plus the several-hundred-dollar one-time cost of buying a new pair when you would've kept your existing pair for a few more years but for the need for tinting.
The social stigma of wearing glasses associated with being mentally ill will vary from "no stigma, with comments of 'cool glasses dude'" to very strong, depending on the person's unique social environment. In most western cultures the stigma will be low to non-existent.
Compare with maintenance medications which can range from fairly cheap (off-patent drugs) to very expensive and which have side-effects ranging from none to severe, depending on the drug and the individual person.
Even if glasses don't eliminate the need for drugs and other non-drug therapies, if they can reduce the need for them this can be good for patients and, by lowering medical costs overall, good for society.
That train left a long while ago. It's the economy, stupid. And the stupid economy needs to grow. GROW! GROW! More! Exponential functions are grand!
If you'd thrown in
"We need to make the economy HUGE, I tell you HUGE, and trust me folks, it's gonna be HUGE under my plan. I understand the economy, and only my exponential functions can grow it. It's gonna be HUGE I tell you. Trust me."
Energy density (I assume you mean energy produced in a given amount of time with a given surface area, e.g. watts/square centimeter) isn't the only factor that counts.
How you intend to use or store the energy is also a factor.
Pure solar typically produces either heat (sterling engine) or DC power (typical solar cell) as its direct output. Some solar devices include add-ons to convert that energy into battery storage, mechanical energy, AC power, fuel, or some other form of energy.
This device appears to produce useful chemicals (hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide gas) as its direct output.
The decision of which is "better FOR YOU" needs to include the question "what form do you want the energy to be in, and what's the best way to get from sunlight to that form?"
Unless you want one of the "direct outputs" listed above, you are probably looking at using a multi-step process and the "energy density" of the first step is no longer the only factor.
If you do want one of the "direct outputs" listed above (DC power, heat, or CO+H2) , you probably will go with the technology that gives it to you directly unless there's a cheaper, but possibly more-complicated, process to get what you want (maybe you want CO+H2 but your investor or the agency that funds your grants will give you money for "proven technologies" but not for "novel or unproven ones" making the cost of traditional solar much cheaper FOR YOU).
And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
I'm not the poster you are talking to, but I will give a reason why useful patent-unencumbered things may never make it to market, and by extension, why a competitor may want to buy up the rights to promising technology and put it on the shelf, knowing that economic forces alone will keep it from seeing the light of day even after the patents expire:
Many technologies are "partially researched" or "completely researched but still millions of dollars away from going to market for the first time." Maybe the device or drug or whatever requires expensive government approval, or maybe there are other "up front costs" that will be the burden of only the first company that brings it to market.
Without patent protection, it's a hard sell to investors if they know that 1) the first company to bring this to market will have $MILLIONS more in costs than any other company who brings it to market, and 2) without a patent, the "exclusivity window" will be very short: Just the time it takes for some other company to smell money and ramp up production.
This is one reason why some non-FDA-approved or "FDA-listed-as-schedule-1-because-nobody-has-shown-the-FDA-there-is-any-medical-use-for-it" drugs which are off-patent or patent-ineligible never make it to market: The cost of FDA approval is borne by the company that wants to bring it to market first, but once it's approved it can be copied fairly quickly.
Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use) and ibogaine as a treatment for opiate addictions.
Chutulu for President - Why vote for the lesser evil?
I'm voting Saxon, because he IS the lesser evil compared to anyone on my ballot with half-a-snowball's-chance-in-hell of winning the election.
---- Seriously, I vote in a "non-competitive" U.S. state so I'll probably vote 3rd-party or leave the "presidential elector slate" (aka President/Vice President) spot blank just to "send a message." If by some miracle my state becomes competitive I will have to choose the "least undesirable/most tolerable" of the viable candidates in my state. Unfortunately, in my state, write-ins for being (intelligent or otherwise) not eligible to hold the office do not count. Also, unfortunately, votes for no-intelligent beings who are eligible to hold office DO count if they filed the proper paperwork. Sigh.
Where you can grow plants and get bio-diesel, plants are in competition with this device.
Where you can't grow plants efficiently or at all - like Mars or my apartment balcony (they keep dying because I keep forgetting to water them), this may be interesting if it's better than other sunlight-to-energy systems.
Slashdot Mirror
think the office deserves respect
Fuck that. The office deserves intense scrutiny.
The best way to show respect for the office is to scrutinize the office-holder and of course his or her staff.
This goes no matter what party is in power or what person hold the office.
For events like these, I drag out ye olde Motorola from the Reagan administration and leave the iPhone at home.
Fixing other typos is left as an exercise for the reader.
... on the tingoil hat.
Of course, to be even remotely effective it will have to be opaque to visible and infrared AND using it will have to be common enough that:
* lots of "uninteresting" people are wearing them at "interesting" events, and
* there are enough opaque-to-iR-and-visible light tents and shelters that it is common for the spooks to "lose tracking" when you go under the shade with other people and not be able to tell who is who when you lgo back out.
I don't see that first condition being met anytime soon - not unless wide-brim hats come back into fashion.
I adapt faster and easier because nothing "new" is really actually new. It's a rehash of an older thing passed off as new.
While this is true for many things, there really is a lot of "new" or at least "newly ubiquitous" which make the effect of "most people know how to deal with it" new.
There is also a lot of "basically the same old thing but it's so much better/faster/different now that for practical purposes, it's new."
An example is texting an image. If I call you and ask you to take a selfie and text it to me, I can reasonably expect to have it within 5 minutes.
25 years ago, if I said "take a picture and text it to me" you'd look at me funny. Sure, you might be able to take a picture with one of those low-quality digital cameras that costs over $1000 back then, or take a picture with a film camera, get it developed in the 1-hour lab, then scan the print into your computer, but how would you get it to me? The closest thing was either by modem direct to my PC, by email (yes, they had standardized photo formats and email attachments in 1991) or by uploading to a BBS, ftp site, or by hosting it on one of the very early web sites. But none of this was anywhere close to "instant."
Now, if I say "take a picture and text it to me" or even "email me a picture" you might be able to send it to me while we are still talking on the phone. That immediacy is what is, for most of us at least, "new" and what makes it "much more useful" than "take a picture and email it to me, I'll call you in a few hours when I get it so we can discuss it."
I'm mad because I can't control the universe with them.
I'm not upset that they can't control the universe - I just think they stretch the truth too much in their advertising. I understand that advertisers are known to stretch the truth a bit, and I might give them a pass if they only controlled a galaxy cluster, but heck, the ones I've used can't even control this planet let alone this galaxy. Geesh.
I'm left to wonder if in some specific galaxy far, far, away, things get louder when I press the "volume up" button.
Now, those "multi-entertainment-device remote controls" that let me control most or all of my entertainment devices, those I don't have any problems with, at least not with respect to their marketing claims.
They learned in thing
I try to keep abreast of all of the new languages and paradigms, but somehow I missed out on this new one called "thing" (note the all-lowercase, that's probably a trademarked capitalization, like iPhone or something).
Please help me keep up my education and submit a story about this new "thing" language or paradigm or whatever it is. I watch the firehose, I'll mod it up for you as long as it doesn't look like binspam.
#1: The Case Against Algebra
Okay, algebra, math, CERN, tenuous but I'll give it a pass. Throw in "the case against" and "rethinking our earlier observations at CERN" and it's a definite maybe.
#2: Bill Nye: Climate Change Denial Is 'Running Out of Steam,' Thanks To Millennials
The "we/they were wrong" angle is much weaker here, weak fail.
#3: Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It's 'Very Likely' The Universe Is A Simulation
Er, no. Fail.
#4: Utah Governor: 'Porn Is a Public Health Crisis'
Er, other than "scientific data is as exciting to me as porn is to some politicians" and "CERN gets public funds and the word 'public' is in the title" I'm just not seeing it. Either you fail outright or fail for being too subtle with the "I-love-science/politicos-get-off-on-porn" angle.
#5: Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90%
Er, um, no. Yes, I know bullets go at high velocities (but not THAT high!) and it's the impact they make when they hit the target that counts, but no. Fail.
Maybe Slashdot's next related-links AI will outperform its existing AI.
By the way, anyone know what's up with the "sdsrc=popbyskidbtmprev" at the end of the "related suggestion" links?
There are two common-sense readings, and the court took one of them.
The other common-sense reading is that the employee was only authorized to access the device to do things that complied with company policy, and that her authorization to accessed it was implicitly suspended during the time she was violating company policy.
Since the court went the way they went, expect some companies in Oregon to go back and spell out very clearly that when you are using company equipment in violation of company policy, your authorization to use the equipment is immediately suspended for the duration of your out-of-policy use and, as a result, you are violating Oregon state law and that the company reserves the right to press charges.
Personally, I think the court made the right decision, because 1) it's very easy for companies to "work around it" by modifying their policies, and 2) the court's ruling prevents "gotcha" situations where the law was ambiguous and, prior to a judge ruling on the issue to remove the ambiguity, a reasonable person could read the law as not applying.
accidentally including dangerous memory bugs in their code
Good, now I can be assured that all of my dangerous memory bugs in my code are intentional.
... to get a waterproof i-Device case.
Sometimes clichés deserve their status.
Which cliché did you mean?
This one:
The Nigerian scammer was actually Nigerian?
Or the one in the parent-poster's signature:
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET AROUND THE LAMENESS FILTER??
According to Prince Mike, CowboyNeal is running the Kickstarter.
Nigeria has an anti-fraud agency, like Casablanca (in the movie of the same name) had a police department.
Is Salvinorin A FDA-approved for any use?
If so, then a doctor should be able to prescribe it for off-label use. Insurance companies and government-funded clinics may not be able to pay for the drugs and it's possible that government-paid medical professionals may not be allowed to talk about off-label use of medications on pain of being fired (I say "may" because I don't know if this is the case or not), but as long as it's been through the FDA approval process for some use, most doctors should be able to prescribe it for just about any use.
It's why we have so many Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs
While I live in a part of the world with very few " Marxists complaining that the Government should force businesses to provide jobs and disallow lay-offs" I do have a word for the Marxists:
Government regulation has its good and bad points. You need balance. Telling companies "you can't lay off people" is the same as telling companies "think twice before hiring people, because you won't be able to shed them quickly without dissolving your company." On the other hand, no regulation of layoffs at all creates an environment which fosters sudden spikes in the unemployment rate and the societal problems that go with it.
Some countries have strong-enough labor unions or somewhat-labor-friendly governments that try to "thread the needle" by not outlawing layoffs completely but by putting in some "friction" that make layoffs somewhat less attractive to businesses and which mitigate some of the social costs, such as by requiring several months' notice and/or several months' severance pay for large-scale layoffs or requiring companies that lay people off to provide them job-retraining or pay into an outside fund that will cover job-retraining costs.
I'm thinking about that scene in one of the Men In Black movies where the newbie agent picks up a relatively small "fits in the palm of your hand-sized" alien ray gun and fires it, causing massive damage.
Over-the-counter tinted sunglasses are cheap.
Tinting prescription glasses adds tens of dollars to the cost of a pair of glasses every time you buy a new pair, plus the several-hundred-dollar one-time cost of buying a new pair when you would've kept your existing pair for a few more years but for the need for tinting.
The social stigma of wearing glasses associated with being mentally ill will vary from "no stigma, with comments of 'cool glasses dude'" to very strong, depending on the person's unique social environment. In most western cultures the stigma will be low to non-existent.
Compare with maintenance medications which can range from fairly cheap (off-patent drugs) to very expensive and which have side-effects ranging from none to severe, depending on the drug and the individual person.
Even if glasses don't eliminate the need for drugs and other non-drug therapies, if they can reduce the need for them this can be good for patients and, by lowering medical costs overall, good for society.
Plus, they look cool.
Headline at link provided by Deadstick reads: British press freak out - Inept media believes naval 5-inch guns are literally 5-inch guns
When a man says he has a "5 inch gun" and mean it literally, well, that is a bit small but still within human anatomical norms.
That train left a long while ago. It's the economy, stupid. And the stupid economy needs to grow. GROW! GROW! More! Exponential functions are grand!
If you'd thrown in
"We need to make the economy HUGE, I tell you HUGE, and trust me folks, it's gonna be HUGE under my plan. I understand the economy, and only my exponential functions can grow it. It's gonna be HUGE I tell you. Trust me."
I would've given you an A.
Energy density (I assume you mean energy produced in a given amount of time with a given surface area, e.g. watts/square centimeter) isn't the only factor that counts.
How you intend to use or store the energy is also a factor.
Pure solar typically produces either heat (sterling engine) or DC power (typical solar cell) as its direct output. Some solar devices include add-ons to convert that energy into battery storage, mechanical energy, AC power, fuel, or some other form of energy.
This device appears to produce useful chemicals (hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide gas) as its direct output.
The decision of which is "better FOR YOU" needs to include the question "what form do you want the energy to be in, and what's the best way to get from sunlight to that form?"
Unless you want one of the "direct outputs" listed above, you are probably looking at using a multi-step process and the "energy density" of the first step is no longer the only factor.
If you do want one of the "direct outputs" listed above (DC power, heat, or CO+H2) , you probably will go with the technology that gives it to you directly unless there's a cheaper, but possibly more-complicated, process to get what you want (maybe you want CO+H2 but your investor or the agency that funds your grants will give you money for "proven technologies" but not for "novel or unproven ones" making the cost of traditional solar much cheaper FOR YOU).
And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
I'm not the poster you are talking to, but I will give a reason why useful patent-unencumbered things may never make it to market, and by extension, why a competitor may want to buy up the rights to promising technology and put it on the shelf, knowing that economic forces alone will keep it from seeing the light of day even after the patents expire:
Many technologies are "partially researched" or "completely researched but still millions of dollars away from going to market for the first time." Maybe the device or drug or whatever requires expensive government approval, or maybe there are other "up front costs" that will be the burden of only the first company that brings it to market.
Without patent protection, it's a hard sell to investors if they know that 1) the first company to bring this to market will have $MILLIONS more in costs than any other company who brings it to market, and 2) without a patent, the "exclusivity window" will be very short: Just the time it takes for some other company to smell money and ramp up production.
This is one reason why some non-FDA-approved or "FDA-listed-as-schedule-1-because-nobody-has-shown-the-FDA-there-is-any-medical-use-for-it" drugs which are off-patent or patent-ineligible never make it to market: The cost of FDA approval is borne by the company that wants to bring it to market first, but once it's approved it can be copied fairly quickly.
Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use) and ibogaine as a treatment for opiate addictions.
Re: your "sig" line:
Chutulu for President - Why vote for the lesser evil?
I'm voting Saxon, because he IS the lesser evil compared to anyone on my ballot with half-a-snowball's-chance-in-hell of winning the election.
----
Seriously, I vote in a "non-competitive" U.S. state so I'll probably vote 3rd-party or leave the "presidential elector slate" (aka President/Vice President) spot blank just to "send a message." If by some miracle my state becomes competitive I will have to choose the "least undesirable/most tolerable" of the viable candidates in my state. Unfortunately, in my state, write-ins for being (intelligent or otherwise) not eligible to hold the office do not count. Also, unfortunately, votes for no-intelligent beings who are eligible to hold office DO count if they filed the proper paperwork. Sigh.
On mars? Yes much better than a tree.
Yes!
Where you can grow plants and get bio-diesel, plants are in competition with this device.
Where you can't grow plants efficiently or at all - like Mars or my apartment balcony (they keep dying because I keep forgetting to water them), this may be interesting if it's better than other sunlight-to-energy systems.
And this is news???