patentable. Drug companies are not interested in cures anyway, they are interested in "treatments". AIDS is a real panacea for them.... they won't cure you, but you need a cocktail to keep on going. That's a lot of patents and money for them on one disease. Real research on cures can only come from universities and government funded research, because disease is a financial weight on the economy of a country (either because access to drugs is subsidized or because of lack of income and hospitalization costs of its citizens, or more likely a combination of both). There is an intrinsic conflict of interest in allowing research to be done by pharmaceutical companies. Their job should be merely to produce drugs. Let the research be handled by those for whom it is economically advantageous to eradicate the disease, not prolong it in an eternal drug-dependent life-style. Much has been said about software patents on slashdot, but pharmaceutical patents are also non-desirable patents.
The book does touch that point. Actually this novel and its sequel "The Shattered Sphere" would make a great mini series. Let's hope they haven't found us already and are just sleeping in the solar system.;)
U. S. intelligence agencies believe China performed a successful anti-satellite (asat) weapons test at more than 500 mi. altitude Jan. 11 destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile.
I don't own a game console, but if I were to buy one it would be the Wii. Not only for the price, but for being what it's supposed to be... a dedicated game console. It seems to me that all the novelty gizmos added to the PS3, and XBox have little to do with enhancing the gaming experience. Granted, I'm not a gamer so I haven't paid much attention to it, but I did get the feeling everytime I heard about their specs, that it was all about making them more versatile... giving them more uses beyond being game consoles. That just drives the price up, and doesn't really improve game experience. Now, the Wii introduces that wickedly awesome sounding new controller. That is ALL about improving gaming experience. And it's cheaper to boot. If I wanted a dedicated game console... that's what I would choose. I already have a computer to handle the flexible multimedia/networking experience.
I'm happy for Nintendo. They have their niche, as opposed to their two evil rivals who just want to control everybody else's niche markets.
Yea... I could see lots of potential as field computers for engineering purposes. The ability to charge it via the crank itself is a good option in necessity. The size and form and apparently weight is great. You don't need top of the line laptops for the purposes I have in mind... but handhelds are just too darn small. This would be the perfect solution.
True, but I honestly had never heard of a canned meat named spam until a year and a half ago when I decide to find out where the name of SPAM (unsollicited e-mail) came from. Most of the people I know who never used the net, didn't know what SPAM was period.
True enough. There is still some things where it is useful though. A few months ago, I was wishing for something like that, as I was teaching a class and sent all the TAs a spreadsheet for them to fill in when they corrected each assignment.... I thought that having done the work for them it'd be easy enough to just have them share the file every time they added stuff. I was dreaming of course. The files were shared how they pleased... I only got a copy from each of them at the end of the class... given that some students signed up late it was up to each T.A. to decide where they were going to stick the name. Some decided that the end was the right place to put the new additions while others thought they should immediately be inserted in alphabetical order. And not all of them could spell correctly the name of the new students. Needless to say, that there was a lot of reconciliation to be done before the final compilation of grades could be made. In that case, a google spreadhseet, at its current level of features would have been exactly perfect. I was wishing for something like it... then just as the class ended google came up with its deployment. Oh, well. Next time, if I ever teach a class again, I'll make sure to use it. I didn't need a very sofisticated spreadsheet then. Just something that could produce an output.
Actually, I think the best indicator that there was indeed a moon landing... it was the cold war, the soviets were undoubtedly tracking the vehicle and all communications between earth and the moon, if for no other reason than to gloat officially if something went wrong. The fact that they didn't claim there was no moon landing back then is probably a good indication that there actually was one.
I like the competition in the graphics as well as CPU sector.... now it's either one combo, or the other combo? No more mix and match? I hate the current trend in mergers and super big stores etc, etc. In the end, it always means less choice for the consumer. I can only hope that new competitors will come out of the woodwork, somehow. I know, I know, but a guy can dream, right?
Your point of view is a bit narrow minded. First of all it's not really about going to the moon, I think. It's about establishing a permanent human presence outside of earth. Why you may ask? Well, there are many answers to that and many will find many better ones than I can.
Stephen Hawkins would probably argue that it is good for the survival of mankind. Who knows what could befall our planet? Others would say that it may be the stepping stone in the expansion of life... humans at this stage would play a role similar to the first fish to climb out of the water and walk onland.... Some are already seeing potential mining advantages (I don't see a goal in itself, but it certainly an incentive to structure the evolution of the process).
Personally, the greatest advantage that I see, is that we will need to figure out how to survive there, on a permanent basis. Because I don't think it has a point if there is no follow up, no permanent presence that is to be established. How is it important? Becasue it will present all sorts of new propblems to be solved. Things that we won't even consider before then. Necessity is the mother of invention. Creating situations that create new needs is a key to scientific progress.
Why did our distant ancestors decide to leave the confines of their familiar valley to explore the next one? They probably could see the next valley from a high point, and the odds are good that it looked pretty much like what they knew. Maybe they could have lived better had they stayed in their old valley.... and controlled their population. But then again, the next volcanic eruption could have wiped out the entire human species. Maybe they wouldn't have needed to figure out how to tame rivers and learn agriculture. Some may argue that we would be better off it they hadn't... maybe. But very likely we wouldn't have been pondering it over the web.
It's not because we cannot foresee the need that exploration is needless. Much of the technology that we use today, particularly computer algorithms, are based on intellectual ideas dating back centuries, long before any practical use could have been perceived.
And space exploration has already provided numerous technological breakthroughs because of the new needs that had to be filled. Surviving in barren and lifeless (as far as we know) worlds may provide invaluable insight in how to increase our survival ods on earth. And many things we may not even think of, until they are discovered because of the new needs uncovered.
Yeah I think they miss the point of advertising. There is only so many peopl at any givent time that will actually watch your commercial and maybe be moved to buy your product based on it. If I use the fast forward feature of the device, I'm not likely to be one of those people at that time. Commercials that work are commercials that are not force fed. If you force me to watch your commercials, then you've lost me as a potential client... I will only feel resentment that will spill over to the products being advertised. Good commercial target audiences are willing commercial target audiences. Besides, I still have the option of going to the washroom and not watching the commercial. I completely resent the control that these people want to exercise on the consumer. It is the consumer's right to decide to watch a commercial or not. Whatever means makes it easier for the consumer to skip the commercial is none of the publiciser's or channel's business. If I want to change channer during a commercial, then I should be able to. If I want to go to the washroom it's my business? Are they also going to develop technology that prevents me from changing channel or going to the washroom during commercials? Good luck to them in keeping an audience.
The mainstream doesn't need to be technically literate. My aunt isn't technically literate. She's using Linux becaue it came preinstalled (by me of course) on her computer. She uses it just as easily (or clunkily) as she did her old Win98 computer. The point is, as long as there is someone to do the hard part of installing the OS.
Resolution of the photographs has nothing to do with this my friend. My cousin used to completely choke my mailbox with e-mails containing a couple of multi-megabyte pictures. So, I showed her how to use the gimp to reduce the resolution, and even wrote a image magick script for her to downsize an entire folder worth of pictures to manageable sizes. My mistake. Now she chokes my mailbox with e-mails containing 50+ low resolution pictures...
The point of the story, is that it won't increase the problem, just that people will e-mail you a lower number of pictures because it will take them so long to upload them even on high speed. Upload speed is the key in making your life worse. Now this is not the case for browsing webpages... there the number of people being able to upload pics without making previous thumbnails will make navigation more hazardous.
Seems stupid to me. Criminals are STILL going to encrypt their data anyways (what's one more law broken). All this ensures is that some corrupt government employees will make millions selling encryption keys on the black market. And YES there are at EVERY level of every government and private organisation corrupt and criminal elements. You only need one such person to compromise EVERYONE's encryption keys. What's more, I'm willing to bet that the government will store these keys in unencrypted harddrives that will be stolen at the first opportunity.
I disagree. The idea behind an Open Format is that I can use the program that I choose to produce it. It would be ludicrous to pretend that most people aren't using Word today. We should be happy that this plugin exists as it makes it more likely that people will use ODF. Once ODF is well established, then people will see that they can choose whatever software they want to create such documents. In the long run it benefits the user and other office suites (not just OO.o)
Another thing that'd be nice... porting UQM as a mod for the VegaStrike Engine. Keep all the goodie storyplot but do VS space battles. The VS engine seems well adapted to UQM. I know, I know, lots of work for someone.
True. The minimum amount of headaches involves installing windows first then your proper OS afterwards, to install the boot loader thingie. Windows gets rid of all that when installed after. It rewrites the boot sector (without consulting the user to my knowledge).
I make a point of going to stores where I know they sell only PCs with windows on them. I go over the capabilities of the system etc... Once the sales rep is certain that he's got a sale, I ask him if I can get a system without OS. The standard response is "you can install whatever you want to replace what's there". Once ask if I get away without paying the MS tax and they say no, I just say "too bad.. that seemed like a really cool system" and walk away. The point being, if the computer stores don't realize that they are LOSING sales, they are not going to change their habits. I know that by myself I don't make much of an impact, but if others follow suit, then these people will beging getting a feel of the negative impact of such policies. If you just don't go there because you know they don't sell systems without windows, they don't get the reinforcing feedback that people will actually NOT buy the system under these conditions.
Well, I know nothing at all about advanced physics since my background only includes the high-school level Newtonian physics. Still, from what I have been reading on Slashdot and similar sites, using EM fields to generate gravity fields seems to be linked to Burkhard Heim theory. Is this a correct assumption. Is this experiment an indication that his work is slowly being accepted in more conventional physics cirles? A clarification by a knowledgeable slashdotter might benefit everyone here.
Slashdot Mirror
patentable. Drug companies are not interested in cures anyway, they are interested in "treatments". AIDS is a real panacea for them.... they won't cure you, but you need a cocktail to keep on going. That's a lot of patents and money for them on one disease. Real research on cures can only come from universities and government funded research, because disease is a financial weight on the economy of a country (either because access to drugs is subsidized or because of lack of income and hospitalization costs of its citizens, or more likely a combination of both). There is an intrinsic conflict of interest in allowing research to be done by pharmaceutical companies. Their job should be merely to produce drugs. Let the research be handled by those for whom it is economically advantageous to eradicate the disease, not prolong it in an eternal drug-dependent life-style. Much has been said about software patents on slashdot, but pharmaceutical patents are also non-desirable patents.
The book does touch that point. Actually this novel and its sequel "The Shattered Sphere" would make a great mini series. Let's hope they haven't found us already and are just sleeping in the solar system. ;)
Title: China Tests Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon
First Paragraph of TFA:
U. S. intelligence agencies believe China performed a successful anti-satellite (asat) weapons test at more than 500 mi. altitude Jan. 11 destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile.
They should have gone with iPone thus linking the pod and the phone in the "i" world.
I don't own a game console, but if I were to buy one it would be the Wii. Not only for the price, but for being what it's supposed to be... a dedicated game console. It seems to me that all the novelty gizmos added to the PS3, and XBox have little to do with enhancing the gaming experience. Granted, I'm not a gamer so I haven't paid much attention to it, but I did get the feeling everytime I heard about their specs, that it was all about making them more versatile... giving them more uses beyond being game consoles. That just drives the price up, and doesn't really improve game experience. Now, the Wii introduces that wickedly awesome sounding new controller. That is ALL about improving gaming experience. And it's cheaper to boot. If I wanted a dedicated game console... that's what I would choose. I already have a computer to handle the flexible multimedia/networking experience. I'm happy for Nintendo. They have their niche, as opposed to their two evil rivals who just want to control everybody else's niche markets.
Yea... I could see lots of potential as field computers for engineering purposes. The ability to charge it via the crank itself is a good option in necessity. The size and form and apparently weight is great. You don't need top of the line laptops for the purposes I have in mind... but handhelds are just too darn small. This would be the perfect solution.
True, but I honestly had never heard of a canned meat named spam until a year and a half ago when I decide to find out where the name of SPAM (unsollicited e-mail) came from. Most of the people I know who never used the net, didn't know what SPAM was period.
True enough. There is still some things where it is useful though. A few months ago, I was wishing for something like that, as I was teaching a class and sent all the TAs a spreadsheet for them to fill in when they corrected each assignment.... I thought that having done the work for them it'd be easy enough to just have them share the file every time they added stuff. I was dreaming of course. The files were shared how they pleased... I only got a copy from each of them at the end of the class... given that some students signed up late it was up to each T.A. to decide where they were going to stick the name. Some decided that the end was the right place to put the new additions while others thought they should immediately be inserted in alphabetical order. And not all of them could spell correctly the name of the new students. Needless to say, that there was a lot of reconciliation to be done before the final compilation of grades could be made. In that case, a google spreadhseet, at its current level of features would have been exactly perfect. I was wishing for something like it... then just as the class ended google came up with its deployment. Oh, well. Next time, if I ever teach a class again, I'll make sure to use it. I didn't need a very sofisticated spreadsheet then. Just something that could produce an output.
I agree. It seems like a bad movie to me. No amount of hype would make me interested in it.
Actually, I think the best indicator that there was indeed a moon landing... it was the cold war, the soviets were undoubtedly tracking the vehicle and all communications between earth and the moon, if for no other reason than to gloat officially if something went wrong. The fact that they didn't claim there was no moon landing back then is probably a good indication that there actually was one.
most of the people I know use yy/mm/dd (in Canada still)
I like the competition in the graphics as well as CPU sector.... now it's either one combo, or the other combo? No more mix and match? I hate the current trend in mergers and super big stores etc, etc. In the end, it always means less choice for the consumer. I can only hope that new competitors will come out of the woodwork, somehow. I know, I know, but a guy can dream, right?
Your point of view is a bit narrow minded. First of all it's not really about going to the moon, I think. It's about establishing a permanent human presence outside of earth. Why you may ask? Well, there are many answers to that and many will find many better ones than I can.
Stephen Hawkins would probably argue that it is good for the survival of mankind. Who knows what could befall our planet? Others would say that it may be the stepping stone in the expansion of life... humans at this stage would play a role similar to the first fish to climb out of the water and walk onland.... Some are already seeing potential mining advantages (I don't see a goal in itself, but it certainly an incentive to structure the evolution of the process).
Personally, the greatest advantage that I see, is that we will need to figure out how to survive there, on a permanent basis. Because I don't think it has a point if there is no follow up, no permanent presence that is to be established. How is it important? Becasue it will present all sorts of new propblems to be solved. Things that we won't even consider before then. Necessity is the mother of invention. Creating situations that create new needs is a key to scientific progress.
Why did our distant ancestors decide to leave the confines of their familiar valley to explore the next one? They probably could see the next valley from a high point, and the odds are good that it looked pretty much like what they knew. Maybe they could have lived better had they stayed in their old valley.... and controlled their population. But then again, the next volcanic eruption could have wiped out the entire human species. Maybe they wouldn't have needed to figure out how to tame rivers and learn agriculture. Some may argue that we would be better off it they hadn't... maybe. But very likely we wouldn't have been pondering it over the web.
It's not because we cannot foresee the need that exploration is needless. Much of the technology that we use today, particularly computer algorithms, are based on intellectual ideas dating back centuries, long before any practical use could have been perceived.
And space exploration has already provided numerous technological breakthroughs because of the new needs that had to be filled. Surviving in barren and lifeless (as far as we know) worlds may provide invaluable insight in how to increase our survival ods on earth. And many things we may not even think of, until they are discovered because of the new needs uncovered.
Yeah I think they miss the point of advertising. There is only so many peopl at any givent time that will actually watch your commercial and maybe be moved to buy your product based on it. If I use the fast forward feature of the device, I'm not likely to be one of those people at that time. Commercials that work are commercials that are not force fed. If you force me to watch your commercials, then you've lost me as a potential client... I will only feel resentment that will spill over to the products being advertised. Good commercial target audiences are willing commercial target audiences. Besides, I still have the option of going to the washroom and not watching the commercial. I completely resent the control that these people want to exercise on the consumer. It is the consumer's right to decide to watch a commercial or not. Whatever means makes it easier for the consumer to skip the commercial is none of the publiciser's or channel's business. If I want to change channer during a commercial, then I should be able to. If I want to go to the washroom it's my business? Are they also going to develop technology that prevents me from changing channel or going to the washroom during commercials? Good luck to them in keeping an audience.
The mainstream doesn't need to be technically literate. My aunt isn't technically literate. She's using Linux becaue it came preinstalled (by me of course) on her computer. She uses it just as easily (or clunkily) as she did her old Win98 computer. The point is, as long as there is someone to do the hard part of installing the OS.
Resolution of the photographs has nothing to do with this my friend. My cousin used to completely choke my mailbox with e-mails containing a couple of multi-megabyte pictures. So, I showed her how to use the gimp to reduce the resolution, and even wrote a image magick script for her to downsize an entire folder worth of pictures to manageable sizes. My mistake. Now she chokes my mailbox with e-mails containing 50+ low resolution pictures... The point of the story, is that it won't increase the problem, just that people will e-mail you a lower number of pictures because it will take them so long to upload them even on high speed. Upload speed is the key in making your life worse. Now this is not the case for browsing webpages... there the number of people being able to upload pics without making previous thumbnails will make navigation more hazardous.
Seems stupid to me. Criminals are STILL going to encrypt their data anyways (what's one more law broken). All this ensures is that some corrupt government employees will make millions selling encryption keys on the black market. And YES there are at EVERY level of every government and private organisation corrupt and criminal elements. You only need one such person to compromise EVERYONE's encryption keys. What's more, I'm willing to bet that the government will store these keys in unencrypted harddrives that will be stolen at the first opportunity.
I don't understand what these features have to do with a document format. Don't they have to do with the application handling the files?
Apparently not. Just testing my luck was I.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooo-word-filter
I disagree. The idea behind an Open Format is that I can use the program that I choose to produce it. It would be ludicrous to pretend that most people aren't using Word today. We should be happy that this plugin exists as it makes it more likely that people will use ODF. Once ODF is well established, then people will see that they can choose whatever software they want to create such documents. In the long run it benefits the user and other office suites (not just OO.o)
Another thing that'd be nice... porting UQM as a mod for the VegaStrike Engine. Keep all the goodie storyplot but do VS space battles. The VS engine seems well adapted to UQM. I know, I know, lots of work for someone.
True. The minimum amount of headaches involves installing windows first then your proper OS afterwards, to install the boot loader thingie. Windows gets rid of all that when installed after. It rewrites the boot sector (without consulting the user to my knowledge).
I make a point of going to stores where I know they sell only PCs with windows on them. I go over the capabilities of the system etc... Once the sales rep is certain that he's got a sale, I ask him if I can get a system without OS. The standard response is "you can install whatever you want to replace what's there". Once ask if I get away without paying the MS tax and they say no, I just say "too bad.. that seemed like a really cool system" and walk away. The point being, if the computer stores don't realize that they are LOSING sales, they are not going to change their habits. I know that by myself I don't make much of an impact, but if others follow suit, then these people will beging getting a feel of the negative impact of such policies. If you just don't go there because you know they don't sell systems without windows, they don't get the reinforcing feedback that people will actually NOT buy the system under these conditions.
Well, I know nothing at all about advanced physics since my background only includes the high-school level Newtonian physics. Still, from what I have been reading on Slashdot and similar sites, using EM fields to generate gravity fields seems to be linked to Burkhard Heim theory. Is this a correct assumption. Is this experiment an indication that his work is slowly being accepted in more conventional physics cirles? A clarification by a knowledgeable slashdotter might benefit everyone here.