I feel like Zooomr's use of OpenID alone is reason to celebrate. I mean so far OpenID has been used by, uhm, LiveJournal...and that's just about it. It's a really underrated technology.
I'm wondering what sort of internet access this actually is. Wi-Fi? Anyway, this seems a little silly; it seems like he could run some co-ax and position a smaller antenna so that it's not being obscured by the church. Or how about just asking the church if he can put a small antenna in their steeple and re-broadcast it (either in its original form or with wi-fi or something)? I'm sure they'd be fine with that. I'd only put a tower up like this if it came with other benefits (maybe if I decided to put a TV and radio antenna on it also).
How would you feel if China had invented the internet and you had to use only Chinese characters in domain names? Wouldn't you expect the US to either develop their own system, or demand that China include Roman letters in their DNS?
We need to thank the NY Times for doing this. They might be unpopular here at slashdot for their 'evil' online registration, but they've stood up for the public's right to know what their government is doing many times before. Hello? Pentagon Papers?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
ICANN needs to get off their high horse immediately.
Wrong. Just about every manual of style and usage says that the first time you mention someone's name in a news piece, you use their full name, and after that, their last name only (or use Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr/etc).
Remember when GM and Ford used to positively dominate the US car market, until the Japanese came in during the 70s? Datsun absolutely destroyed muscle car sales, and Honda made the econobox a reality.
Fast forward today, and now we have Dell, the GM of cars (ubiquitous despite questionable styling and quality), with nowhere to go but down, in the face of Chinese manufacturers like Lenovo who have inherited IBM's great tech, and have the workforce and facilities to make new machines for rock bottom prices.
As a Mac user, I tend to find super-cheap computers just disgusting, but I can't help but look at Lenovo's upcoming N100 with envious eyes.
There's an old saying. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Proclaiming "don't panic! The problem will solve itself, gradually!" Is comforting, but I honestly think that mindset is going to lead many people to just avoid, say, buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle; on a widespread scale, it'll actually cause a dramatic decrease in oil use, not a gentle one. If Joe Sixpack will pay $50,000 for a vehicle to do a job that a $15,000 vehicle could do, on the same line of reasoning I'm sure he'll be willing to spend $5 on gasoline too. He'll bitch and complain, but he'll keep driving his gas guzzler.
The author also seems to support simple extrapolation by stating that "By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age"
That's certainly overstating it a bit, but on the other hand, most people seem to be of the mindset that 'oh this peak oil thing was just something someone made up. Don't believe the hype!' They think it's like Y2K. Scary...until it really happens and it turns out it wasn't so bad after all....
I really, really, really, wish that was the case. But I'm afraid it just isn't. A lot of people are living in fantasy land right now and assuming that any spike in oil prices is going to be like the 1970s. But after a point, it won't just come back down. Extrapolation works rather well in this case because there's no real reason to believe that the world's oil consumption is going to dramatically decrease, and considering that oil-producing countries are basically operating on the same fields they always have been (because there just aren't very many new ones). Oil price fluctuates because of the rest of the supply chain, not because there are new wells being drilled and others shut down all the time. Relatively speaking, it's a fairly predictable economy.
I suppose I'll feed the troll and assume you're being sarcastic, trying to point out that (nearly) everyone uses oil. I agree. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that the US government has what amounts to no real plan to get the nation off heavy oil consumption besides a few buzzwords in slick-sounding speeches.
I tend to agree. Here in middle America there's a hell of a lot of land that could go toward production of E85. Most cars out there now can run on it with only trivial modifications (making sure there's no aluminium in the fuel line and adjusting the timing belt). Our infrastructure can easily adapt to it. In fact, there's a good chance you're already putting E10 in your car right now.
Ethanol is a hell of a lot closer than the far-fetched hydrogen economy proposed by the US's current executive administration.
Actually I don't think so. Artificially causing spikes in oil price just causes more people to seek other energy sources, causing demand for oil to decrease. Then again, our infrastructure is almost hopelessly dependent on oil, so I suppose there would be a demand either way. Anyway, I don't think this kind of production decrease is really that calculated. Occam's razor; we know we're running frighteningly low on oil (virtually guaranteed depletion in our lifetimes). This naturally causes more difficult/expensive, and thus, lower production. Or, on the other hand, do you really think it's a grand OPEC conspiracy to get the whole world to pay more for oil, that just happens to correspond with overwhelming geologic evidence that we simply don't have an unlimited supply of oil?
If this is true, it's extremely important news to practically everyone on the planet. With a 3% discrepency in what we produce and we consume (and presumably that discrepency will grow for a while), it's essential that we begin to displace oil with other energy sources. Essential. We are completely screwing ourselves otherwise. I mean right now, I'm sitting here reading slashdot instead of writing a paper that's due tomorrow. That's a really bad idea. But sacrificing what literally powers our lifestyle and existence as we know it is doubtlessly a whole lot worse.
And the scary part is, we've procrastinated for so long, I'm not so sure that we'll find a suitable replacement in time, at least not before there are widespread disruptions in global energy supply.
Slashdot Mirror
Python.
Actually beta.zooomr.com IS the site. Zooomr.com has just always redirected there.
I feel like Zooomr's use of OpenID alone is reason to celebrate. I mean so far OpenID has been used by, uhm, LiveJournal...and that's just about it. It's a really underrated technology.
Of course there is.
I'm wondering what sort of internet access this actually is. Wi-Fi? Anyway, this seems a little silly; it seems like he could run some co-ax and position a smaller antenna so that it's not being obscured by the church. Or how about just asking the church if he can put a small antenna in their steeple and re-broadcast it (either in its original form or with wi-fi or something)? I'm sure they'd be fine with that. I'd only put a tower up like this if it came with other benefits (maybe if I decided to put a TV and radio antenna on it also).
Some day they will standardize battery form factor
Uh, like AA, AAA, C, D, etc.?
widescreen 16:9 display with rectangular pixels and a 4:3 resolution
What you've just described is impossible. Think about it. With rectangular pixels at a 4:3 resolution, the screen is going to be 4:3, not 16:9.
How would you feel if China had invented the internet and you had to use only Chinese characters in domain names? Wouldn't you expect the US to either develop their own system, or demand that China include Roman letters in their DNS?
We need to thank the NY Times for doing this. They might be unpopular here at slashdot for their 'evil' online registration, but they've stood up for the public's right to know what their government is doing many times before. Hello? Pentagon Papers?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
ICANN needs to get off their high horse immediately.
Wrong. Just about every manual of style and usage says that the first time you mention someone's name in a news piece, you use their full name, and after that, their last name only (or use Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr/etc).
Nothing to see here, move along.
Remember when GM and Ford used to positively dominate the US car market, until the Japanese came in during the 70s? Datsun absolutely destroyed muscle car sales, and Honda made the econobox a reality.
Fast forward today, and now we have Dell, the GM of cars (ubiquitous despite questionable styling and quality), with nowhere to go but down, in the face of Chinese manufacturers like Lenovo who have inherited IBM's great tech, and have the workforce and facilities to make new machines for rock bottom prices.
As a Mac user, I tend to find super-cheap computers just disgusting, but I can't help but look at Lenovo's upcoming N100 with envious eyes.
How about their workstations run Mac OS X, so that's the platform on which the software for which they're looking runs?
IAC, YMMV with HD-DVD on your HDTV. IMNSHO, DRM and DMCA from the MPAA is DDSOS.
Uh, how about prosecution.
20mbit down 1mbit up connection with 20 gig download a month
Pricing like that is just completely silly. Using that 20Mbps, I'd reach my monthly quota in just over two hours.
On the other hand, there are other ways of making ethanol besides corn.
There's an old saying. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Proclaiming "don't panic! The problem will solve itself, gradually!" Is comforting, but I honestly think that mindset is going to lead many people to just avoid, say, buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle; on a widespread scale, it'll actually cause a dramatic decrease in oil use, not a gentle one. If Joe Sixpack will pay $50,000 for a vehicle to do a job that a $15,000 vehicle could do, on the same line of reasoning I'm sure he'll be willing to spend $5 on gasoline too. He'll bitch and complain, but he'll keep driving his gas guzzler.
The author also seems to support simple extrapolation by stating that "By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age"
That's certainly overstating it a bit, but on the other hand, most people seem to be of the mindset that 'oh this peak oil thing was just something someone made up. Don't believe the hype!' They think it's like Y2K. Scary...until it really happens and it turns out it wasn't so bad after all....
I really, really, really, wish that was the case. But I'm afraid it just isn't. A lot of people are living in fantasy land right now and assuming that any spike in oil prices is going to be like the 1970s. But after a point, it won't just come back down. Extrapolation works rather well in this case because there's no real reason to believe that the world's oil consumption is going to dramatically decrease, and considering that oil-producing countries are basically operating on the same fields they always have been (because there just aren't very many new ones). Oil price fluctuates because of the rest of the supply chain, not because there are new wells being drilled and others shut down all the time. Relatively speaking, it's a fairly predictable economy.
I suppose I'll feed the troll and assume you're being sarcastic, trying to point out that (nearly) everyone uses oil. I agree. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that the US government has what amounts to no real plan to get the nation off heavy oil consumption besides a few buzzwords in slick-sounding speeches.
I tend to agree. Here in middle America there's a hell of a lot of land that could go toward production of E85. Most cars out there now can run on it with only trivial modifications (making sure there's no aluminium in the fuel line and adjusting the timing belt). Our infrastructure can easily adapt to it. In fact, there's a good chance you're already putting E10 in your car right now.
Ethanol is a hell of a lot closer than the far-fetched hydrogen economy proposed by the US's current executive administration.
Actually I don't think so. Artificially causing spikes in oil price just causes more people to seek other energy sources, causing demand for oil to decrease. Then again, our infrastructure is almost hopelessly dependent on oil, so I suppose there would be a demand either way. Anyway, I don't think this kind of production decrease is really that calculated. Occam's razor; we know we're running frighteningly low on oil (virtually guaranteed depletion in our lifetimes). This naturally causes more difficult/expensive, and thus, lower production. Or, on the other hand, do you really think it's a grand OPEC conspiracy to get the whole world to pay more for oil, that just happens to correspond with overwhelming geologic evidence that we simply don't have an unlimited supply of oil?
If this is true, it's extremely important news to practically everyone on the planet. With a 3% discrepency in what we produce and we consume (and presumably that discrepency will grow for a while), it's essential that we begin to displace oil with other energy sources. Essential. We are completely screwing ourselves otherwise. I mean right now, I'm sitting here reading slashdot instead of writing a paper that's due tomorrow. That's a really bad idea. But sacrificing what literally powers our lifestyle and existence as we know it is doubtlessly a whole lot worse.
And the scary part is, we've procrastinated for so long, I'm not so sure that we'll find a suitable replacement in time, at least not before there are widespread disruptions in global energy supply.
1. switch psiphon to listen on port 80
2. never give up
Interestingly, Roland didn't link to his own blog this time. A first?