Due to people there being less mobile and the gov't having police state-like control over the population, an outbreak in N. Korea will likely be at least as well-contained as in western nations or better.
Anyways if you wanted to kill N. Koreans by intentionally introducing a virus there (germ warfare), MERS is pretty silly. There are tons of more effective biological agents than that.
I have noticed zero change in the normal day-to-day life here, aside from a much larger presence of people wearing masks over their mouths.
That's pretty silly, the mask thing. It's the people INFECTED with the virus who should be wearing masks, not healthy people trying to avoid the disease. (but then infected people should be quarantined in a hospital and not walking about on the street, so...)
What people should be doing instead is wearing thick, heavy gloves in public places. Almost all flu virus transmissions happen from your hand touching a virus-coated surface and then touching your face with your hand. Wearing gloves means that your skin won't come into contact with the virus, and the thick heavy nature of the gloves means you're not likely to forget the fact that you're wearing gloves and thus will avoid touching your face with them.
I clicked on the link and saw all the pictures. Sadly the Colosseum still looks like a ruin, and the government of Italy has no money to halt the decay let alone a restoration to former glory.
As a Rome Total War player and an aficionado of all things Roman, I would love to see the Colosseum as it was originally. Yes I realize a restoration would cost billions and modern Italy as a PIIG nation cannot afford it. It really speaks to the immense power, wealth and engineering skill of the ancients that they BUILT this thing so long ago.
I still keep hoping that some internet billionaire will take it upon himself as his life achievement to do a full restoration and that I will get to see it before I die. Barring that, I hope someone will do a very high quality rendering of every inch of the original Colosseum that we can navigate freely in Oculus VR. Maybe even host virtual games with thousands of online participants and spectators.
The 3D feature was called "dynamic perspective". The heavy battery drain was not actually from the gpu processing/rendering, it was because the feature needed 4 separate cameras (one on each corner of the phone) that had its own access to the facial recognition software.
Their denial by itself doesn't mean much, since as you say they would deny it if they were responsible or not. However in this case it's quite possible they had nothing to do with it. Cyber criminals living in China != government of PRC
What would the Chinese gov't possibly want with the data stolen from Office of Personnel Management? Use the employee names and social security numbers to make stolen credit card purchases? Commit identity theft and take the employees' tax refund checks?
The type of data stolen here doesn't mesh with the stuff Chinese gov't usually steals: high tech industry data to help their domestic industry, military secrets like plans to the F-22, etc. It seems unlikely they would use up a zero-day exploit to break into a employee database and steal social security numbers.
who used to dictate the placement of every pixel on Amazon website, according to Steve Yegge.
Fire smartphone had 3-D features that required immense processing power (which meant sacrificing battery life and other things) and therefore written off by the engineers as being not practical. But Bezos was in love with the features and he basically said the phone ships with 3-D or you're all fired.
I hear medical breakthroughs like this all the time, where a cheap simple device will replace expensive drugs. Then nothing happens and it's not heard of again.
Is it because A. it doesn't work as well as inventors hoped or has too many side effects, or B. pharma industry silences them by killing them or paying them to hush it up? Help me out here.
I don't know of any country on earth where heroin, methamphetamine etc. can be bought and sold freely among consenting adults. So you probably should say something is wrong with human society.
Shaped charge. You don't need any skill or knowledge, just get a hold of an old Soviet RPG round designed for armor penetration. Those things will penetrate tank armor and kill everyone inside... bulletproof glass would be like nothing. No sniper needed.
Robot science missions are great, but they're not the end goal in space exploration (and they shouldn't be). If all we did was launch Voyager and Mars Rover type missions every few years, there would be no need to develop anything beyond the ULA Atlas rocket. There would be no Saturn V, no Falcon HR etc.
Humans *want* to step on the moon and Mars and other places, so that gives us an incentive to develop the means to get there.
But we have already nullified environmental adaptation with clothing, housing, and agriculture.
Correct. For the past ~2000 years, rise of trade, urban culture and sophisticated economies meant smart people tended to become more successful (wealthy) and breed more children. For example in the Far East nations, surest way for an ordinary person to raise your social status and income was to be really smart and score high on the social service exam which would lead to a government bureaucrat position. With the newfound wealth you could afford to not only start a family, but also a second family. Having second and third wives/concubines and huge families was socially acceptable and actually expected of someone in high position.
The future of human evolution is going to be based on intelligence and social adaptation.
Incorrect. The forces that led to intelligent people breeding more children have stopped completely and reversed course in the 20th century.
How about setting up an earth-made prefab hab inside a Martian cave/lava tube? Then you get the radiation shielding benefits without having to launch or move any regolith.
I would agree that a moon base is more plausible than a Mars base. However, both endeavors are gonna cost a shit ton of money anyways, so why not go for the cool option that offers more future returns?
Also an escape craft to bring you back to Earth is not an issue since people are signing up for a one-way trip. Not necessarily talking about the Mars One thing here, which seems to me like a scam to collect "registration fees" from gullible people. But generally speaking I think a NASA or ESA mission to Mars should be a one-way trip as well. And as we found out recently, there is no shortage of volunteers.
So you scout ahead of time instead of going there blind. And if you find one from a rover rolling on the surface, it obviously does not need considerable earth moving equipment to gain access. And the low gravity on Mars means structural strength is most likely a non-issue, since lava tubes are already plenty strong on earth.
It would also keep us from precious vitamin D. We are currently not meant to live in the dark, while evolution is slow and gradual. Are you proposing that they would evolve faster on Mars than we do here on Earth?
they're talking about high schools, not 6th grade.
The guy teaching programming at my old high school didn't know jack shit. Well okay he knew enough to explain the elementary concepts in the book but he was far, far far from an expert in CS. Usually the job falls on math teachers or science teachers because generally speaking the number of CS grads from a reputable school (not ITT tech) available to teach high school is zero.
Having math teachers teach programming might be OK for getting the kids' feet wet and letting them know that such as thing exists, it might be okay for the average student, but even a slightly above average student such as myself back in the day (yes i was only slightly above average) will be bored to tears. But I suppose in today's world where everyone gets an equal education and no student is allowed to be left behind or get ahead, this may be desirable.
I think the somewhat bright kids are done the most disservice. The super bright Zuckerbergs of the world will just figure stuff out by themselves and do any kind of coding they want. The average and below will be happy to just follow along and get a passing grade. It's the somewhat bright kids who could benefit most from an expert teacher explaining advanced concepts and answering questions and pushing them to higher standards that they wouldn't have had otherwise.
If you play multiplayer online games, latency is a big issue.
If you talk to people over the internet, latency is an issue. Like, you say something in Skype. The person at the other end hears it and replies. By the time you hear the reply, a regime change has taken place and there's a new president in power. Currently internet video chatting over long distances is an unpleasant experience due to the lag.
So let's say the world goes to hell in a handbasket... Civilization burned to the ground. Dog and cats living together, etc.
I hear this a lot from anti-gold people. Yes if the entire world civilization collapses and 98% of humans on earth die, then gold will be worthless. However I would point out that such a scenario has never happened in all of recorded history.
I'm not saying a worldwide apocalypse is impossible... of course it's possible. It's just very unlikely. A far more likely scenario is a local collapse of civilization, like a famine and civil war in Middle East or a governmental collapse/economic ruin in South America or Germany getting frisky again and getting bombed into oblivion by Russians/Americans.
Such local collapses (local SHTF in survivor speak) have occurred many times in history, some quite recently. And in all such cases, gold has never become worthless. In fact gold has been the gold standard of stored wealth.
As long as there is civilization somewhere that people can hope to escape to, gold will be what people will expect to hold value.
- long term biological effects at other than 1G or 0G.
Although we haven't tested the long term effects of living in gravity between 0G and 1G, it's one of those things where we pretty much know what the outcome will be, even if the exact value is unknown.
Like, we know the effect of not getting hit by a punch. We also know the effect of getting hit by a Mike Tyson uppercut. And although no one has been hit by a Justin Bieber punch yet, we can predict that the result will be somewhere between not getting hit by a punch and a Mike Tyson uppercut.
Slashdot Mirror
Due to people there being less mobile and the gov't having police state-like control over the population, an outbreak in N. Korea will likely be at least as well-contained as in western nations or better.
Anyways if you wanted to kill N. Koreans by intentionally introducing a virus there (germ warfare), MERS is pretty silly. There are tons of more effective biological agents than that.
I have noticed zero change in the normal day-to-day life here, aside from a much larger presence of people wearing masks over their mouths.
That's pretty silly, the mask thing. It's the people INFECTED with the virus who should be wearing masks, not healthy people trying to avoid the disease. (but then infected people should be quarantined in a hospital and not walking about on the street, so...)
What people should be doing instead is wearing thick, heavy gloves in public places. Almost all flu virus transmissions happen from your hand touching a virus-coated surface and then touching your face with your hand. Wearing gloves means that your skin won't come into contact with the virus, and the thick heavy nature of the gloves means you're not likely to forget the fact that you're wearing gloves and thus will avoid touching your face with them.
I clicked on the link and saw all the pictures. Sadly the Colosseum still looks like a ruin, and the government of Italy has no money to halt the decay let alone a restoration to former glory.
As a Rome Total War player and an aficionado of all things Roman, I would love to see the Colosseum as it was originally. Yes I realize a restoration would cost billions and modern Italy as a PIIG nation cannot afford it. It really speaks to the immense power, wealth and engineering skill of the ancients that they BUILT this thing so long ago.
I still keep hoping that some internet billionaire will take it upon himself as his life achievement to do a full restoration and that I will get to see it before I die. Barring that, I hope someone will do a very high quality rendering of every inch of the original Colosseum that we can navigate freely in Oculus VR. Maybe even host virtual games with thousands of online participants and spectators.
The 3D feature was called "dynamic perspective". The heavy battery drain was not actually from the gpu processing/rendering, it was because the feature needed 4 separate cameras (one on each corner of the phone) that had its own access to the facial recognition software.
Interesting read: http://www.fastcompany.com/303...
Their denial by itself doesn't mean much, since as you say they would deny it if they were responsible or not. However in this case it's quite possible they had nothing to do with it. Cyber criminals living in China != government of PRC
What would the Chinese gov't possibly want with the data stolen from Office of Personnel Management? Use the employee names and social security numbers to make stolen credit card purchases? Commit identity theft and take the employees' tax refund checks?
The type of data stolen here doesn't mesh with the stuff Chinese gov't usually steals: high tech industry data to help their domestic industry, military secrets like plans to the F-22, etc. It seems unlikely they would use up a zero-day exploit to break into a employee database and steal social security numbers.
who used to dictate the placement of every pixel on Amazon website, according to Steve Yegge.
Fire smartphone had 3-D features that required immense processing power (which meant sacrificing battery life and other things) and therefore written off by the engineers as being not practical. But Bezos was in love with the features and he basically said the phone ships with 3-D or you're all fired.
I can't see the Amazon game ending well.
They're having a hard time trying to restore from 8,000 year old backups (wooly mammoth).... 1 million is way beyond DNA specifications.
Carbon crystal storage is probably most likely to meet 1 million year MTBF requirement
what Tesla was to ipod
by roaming around the body and killing cancer cells.
You heard it here first.
I hear medical breakthroughs like this all the time, where a cheap simple device will replace expensive drugs. Then nothing happens and it's not heard of again.
Is it because A. it doesn't work as well as inventors hoped or has too many side effects, or B. pharma industry silences them by killing them or paying them to hush it up? Help me out here.
I don't know of any country on earth where heroin, methamphetamine etc. can be bought and sold freely among consenting adults. So you probably should say something is wrong with human society.
Shaped charge. You don't need any skill or knowledge, just get a hold of an old Soviet RPG round designed for armor penetration. Those things will penetrate tank armor and kill everyone inside... bulletproof glass would be like nothing. No sniper needed.
Robot science missions are great, but they're not the end goal in space exploration (and they shouldn't be). If all we did was launch Voyager and Mars Rover type missions every few years, there would be no need to develop anything beyond the ULA Atlas rocket. There would be no Saturn V, no Falcon HR etc.
Humans *want* to step on the moon and Mars and other places, so that gives us an incentive to develop the means to get there.
But we have already nullified environmental adaptation with clothing, housing, and agriculture.
Correct. For the past ~2000 years, rise of trade, urban culture and sophisticated economies meant smart people tended to become more successful (wealthy) and breed more children. For example in the Far East nations, surest way for an ordinary person to raise your social status and income was to be really smart and score high on the social service exam which would lead to a government bureaucrat position. With the newfound wealth you could afford to not only start a family, but also a second family. Having second and third wives/concubines and huge families was socially acceptable and actually expected of someone in high position.
The future of human evolution is going to be based on intelligence and social adaptation.
Incorrect. The forces that led to intelligent people breeding more children have stopped completely and reversed course in the 20th century.
How about setting up an earth-made prefab hab inside a Martian cave/lava tube? Then you get the radiation shielding benefits without having to launch or move any regolith.
I would agree that a moon base is more plausible than a Mars base. However, both endeavors are gonna cost a shit ton of money anyways, so why not go for the cool option that offers more future returns?
Also an escape craft to bring you back to Earth is not an issue since people are signing up for a one-way trip. Not necessarily talking about the Mars One thing here, which seems to me like a scam to collect "registration fees" from gullible people. But generally speaking I think a NASA or ESA mission to Mars should be a one-way trip as well. And as we found out recently, there is no shortage of volunteers.
So you scout ahead of time instead of going there blind. And if you find one from a rover rolling on the surface, it obviously does not need considerable earth moving equipment to gain access. And the low gravity on Mars means structural strength is most likely a non-issue, since lava tubes are already plenty strong on earth.
It would also keep us from precious vitamin D. We are currently not meant to live in the dark, while evolution is slow and gradual. Are you proposing that they would evolve faster on Mars than we do here on Earth?
Light bulbs, and vitamin D
they're talking about high schools, not 6th grade.
The guy teaching programming at my old high school didn't know jack shit. Well okay he knew enough to explain the elementary concepts in the book but he was far, far far from an expert in CS. Usually the job falls on math teachers or science teachers because generally speaking the number of CS grads from a reputable school (not ITT tech) available to teach high school is zero.
Having math teachers teach programming might be OK for getting the kids' feet wet and letting them know that such as thing exists, it might be okay for the average student, but even a slightly above average student such as myself back in the day (yes i was only slightly above average) will be bored to tears. But I suppose in today's world where everyone gets an equal education and no student is allowed to be left behind or get ahead, this may be desirable.
I think the somewhat bright kids are done the most disservice. The super bright Zuckerbergs of the world will just figure stuff out by themselves and do any kind of coding they want. The average and below will be happy to just follow along and get a passing grade. It's the somewhat bright kids who could benefit most from an expert teacher explaining advanced concepts and answering questions and pushing them to higher standards that they wouldn't have had otherwise.
If you play multiplayer online games, latency is a big issue.
If you talk to people over the internet, latency is an issue. Like, you say something in Skype. The person at the other end hears it and replies. By the time you hear the reply, a regime change has taken place and there's a new president in power. Currently internet video chatting over long distances is an unpleasant experience due to the lag.
So let's say the world goes to hell in a handbasket... Civilization burned to the ground. Dog and cats living together, etc.
I hear this a lot from anti-gold people. Yes if the entire world civilization collapses and 98% of humans on earth die, then gold will be worthless. However I would point out that such a scenario has never happened in all of recorded history.
I'm not saying a worldwide apocalypse is impossible... of course it's possible. It's just very unlikely. A far more likely scenario is a local collapse of civilization, like a famine and civil war in Middle East or a governmental collapse/economic ruin in South America or Germany getting frisky again and getting bombed into oblivion by Russians/Americans.
Such local collapses (local SHTF in survivor speak) have occurred many times in history, some quite recently. And in all such cases, gold has never become worthless. In fact gold has been the gold standard of stored wealth.
As long as there is civilization somewhere that people can hope to escape to, gold will be what people will expect to hold value.
Rhode Island is supposed to be an island. The rising sea levels are only helping it to achieve its natural state!
- long term biological effects at other than 1G or 0G.
Although we haven't tested the long term effects of living in gravity between 0G and 1G, it's one of those things where we pretty much know what the outcome will be, even if the exact value is unknown.
Like, we know the effect of not getting hit by a punch. We also know the effect of getting hit by a Mike Tyson uppercut. And although no one has been hit by a Justin Bieber punch yet, we can predict that the result will be somewhere between not getting hit by a punch and a Mike Tyson uppercut.
and their website looks like it's from 1995 as well!
I don't recall people of Seattle complaining about how Bill Gates ravaged their city in the 90's...