So the parent here brings up a specific case of the general problem: losing these channels will indeed impact some people quite dramatically and all customers to a certain degree. Given the backgrounds of many of the people on this site, let's see what we can due to hasten the solution, i.e. removal of the cable companies. Let's make a list here on this post to what current channels are available on the net (with link to a feed), what shows are available on demand, what new, non-tv content is available and should be considered as a replacement. I'm not talking about downloading individual shows via your favorite P2P application, that can be done but provides it's own set of headaches. Let's get a list going here of links to content as easy to use as Youtube. It should ideally be as simple as opening a link and clicking Play.
So the story says they sued Apple among others. Isn't one of the complaints that some people have against the iPhone that it Doesn't have removable storage? That would seem to exempt them from this patent.
What if instead of charging a cell phone through body heat, a battery was charged through a larger heat source. One could run pipes through their driveway (before it was poured obviously) that water is pumped through. That's an average of 57 square meters with an average daily insolation that is between 3 and 8 kW/m^2/day. During the day the driveway heats up considerably, which could then heat up a water tank, say a 50 gallon tank in your garage. The water could be used with this device to generate electricity. If it could be feasibly scaled up to generate 1 to 2 kWh per day (after conversion inefficiencies are accounted for) that's 10 to 20 percent of a household's energy needs that would be generated daily. Some houses in places with snowy winters already have pipes in their driveway as part of a snow melt system. This would be similar but more likely used in warmer climates, the sunbelt states for instance, and taking heat from the driveway rather then giving it.
Isn't that what the Enola Gay did? Granted they were on what they thought was a routine bombing run, and not merely shuffling missiles around from one US base to another...
I would imagine that this problem is either A) a configuration problem on the school's end, or B) will be fixed fairly quickly. I suggest "fixed quickly" because if this is a problem, then all those iPhones Apple is giving to their own employees will crash the Apple campus wireless network too. Plus given all the amazing paid and free press Apple is getting on the iPhone I'm sure they don't want any significant problems arising to generate legitimate bad press about their shiny new product.
See the recent Stevenote section on Quick Look. http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/quick look.html It views spreadsheet and word processing docs. It doesn't edit, but iPhone or its competition, I don't want to edit on something that small. Viewing however could be hugely useful!
Funny enough gas cars weren't popular alternatives to carriages when they first came out. Henry Ford got his start making race cars. I wonder if the Tesla Motors folks are hoping to do the same with electric vs. gas as Ford did with gas vs. horse. Regardless, electric cars are gaining momentum these days (pun intended). (Also, it seems odd that we're still measuring electric motor power in "horse power".)
The infrastructure for gas based cars is already in place. In the US approximately 60-65% of oil is imported. A fivefold reduction in use would bring the US down to 20% of current consumption. This means that we would not need to import fuel anymore, and actually could (theoretically) export as much fuel as we use. The short and long term environmental benefits of the US dropping 80% fuel usage are pretty good too. (Yes this addresses only gasoline powered cars, not fuel equivalents.)
I would love to see electric/compressed air/next hot thing cars too but there are problems. They don't exist in the market yet. Example, I would like to have an electric car, but I live in an apartment: where will I charge it? I'm not going to hang out at a "gas station" for an hour while my car charges. Currently, it is very easy to refuel on gasoline and people know how and where to do it. Having to do it five times less seems like a deal to me no matter what may be on the horizon.
Also, I think a "Civic del Sol" type or Saturn type equivalent that got 100+mpg would sell very well. An Accord equivalent that got 70-80mpg would sell equally well.
For the forseeable future we (the US) will be getting 55-60% of our electricity off of coal and 20% off of nuclear power. This electrical power can, with this compressed air model, be used to power the whole transportation sector, instead of oil. The US is the "middle east of coal". That means more US money staying in the US, less money being pumped into a volitale part of the world that doesn't like us much, more US jobs, more US oversight of the involved companies. As an American this benefits us greatly. It benefits all Americans except for the CEOs of the top 5 or so oil companies. (This applies elsewhere too, but America has the most cars, generates the most pollution from them, and all in all is the biggest oil consumer; though China is close, maybe surpassed the US in the past year or so.)
Additionally one would assume that the air compressors would be run off of electric motors, which allows them to use electricity produced anyway they want. If you wanted to use solar panels at home and plug the car into a small compressor to recharge that would work. If you wanted to goto a service station and buy their compressed air, that would work too. Unlike hydrogen, air compressing equipment is already widespread, hydrogen production isn't there yet. Either way, you're right in that we get less out than we put in, but the transision from oil to will be like that. We are very very unlikely to find something else we can pump out of the ground and use as easily as oil.
We are now transisioning permantly from a primary portable fuel (oil) to a secondary (compressed air, hydrogen, batteries, etc). It seems that these next fuel(s) will be with us for atleast the 100+ years oil has been.
So wasn't it in September that Steve Jobs got on a stage and pointed out that iTMS is now in the top five music sellers in the world? I.E. They were competing and gaining significantly on Walmart and such? And that they were the ONLY digital service that could claim this? I'm confused where these iPods with all this pirated music comes from if one of the top five music sellers in the world sells music that can only be listened to on iPods (and iTunes). Perhaps he would like to sue Apple and have to explain his logic to a judge?
Another example: I saw the end of the recent Escape from Alactraz triathelon. The winner hugged the second place guy, and all of them high fived like the top 10 finishers. Yeah, they all wanted to win, but they all know how hard it is and that it's an accomplishment just to finish. I wish more things were like this. Maybe this is why I don't care for team sports and their fans. Mostly their fans.
A better question to ask: what happens to their "soul"? A few years ago the Catholic church decided that human clones have unique souls and are not part of the orinigal person. So now that we have an exact physical copy of a person (well eventually we will), who gets the soul? I can't wait to see the religious debates over this. In fact any religious debate over a new technology that screws with their worldview is usually entertaining.
Most people believe in an afterlife. If this destroys everything, those people will just get there faster. Some people don't believe in an afterlife. Well, they know that they're going to die some day regardless, so sooner rather then later won't make a difference.:-p
And yet with almost anything but an Apple notebook, you're stuck with Windows. Do you buy a Porsche just to drive it 5mph around the block? No, you buy it because in addition to being shiny on the outside, whats under the hood counts too!
I used to like this idea, making people pass an intelligence test. Not even make it hard, just make it basic. However the more people I meet, and the more smart people in particular the less I like the idea. Most smart people I know are assholes. So rather then an intelligence test I'd like to see a common sense / being nice test. I'll take someone with common sense and who is nice any day over someone who is smart. It's sad, but you'd think that "smart people" would understand this. Being polite and stopping to think something through first is not all that hard to do and will take you much farther then being smart will.
To add to the above: the digital form gives you more flexiablity in delivering the content. You don't necessarily have to be at the same physical location. I mention this, as more and more prisons are going to telepresense of inmates in courtrooms. Rather then bussing them from the prison to courthouse and back, just doing a video confernce via the courthouse and prison. No reason why the same underlying technologies can't be used to desiminate video interviews. Likewise, if you go to court, but forgot one of the videos or needed an additional one the digital form would allow you to retrieve it without leaving the courtroom.
Lastly, newer video codecs allow for compression much greater then MPEG-2 used on DVDs. This means that your archive could use less physical space to store more videos. I believe an additional Ask Slashdot coverd this a few days ago. This also helps protect you against technology obseletion. Rather then being stuck with 10,000 VHS tapes in 2015, just do a batch convert from format A to format B as needed, and then stream the resulting video to the courtroom.
We did! We learned what happens when you take a great idea and make a terrible (the worst possible?) implementation and force it on people, in a one size fits all manner.
Now lets see what we can do to take this idea and make a practical solution with it. I'd recommend first scaling back what it tries to do to just one field and then have it start with only the most routine of tasks. We have years and years to turn it into emacs.
I would add to the above: just using some common sense online and perhaps checking with a knowledgable friend about what is generally safe to click on, on the internet and what isn't. That plus what the parent wrote will take you Much farther in security then running the latest Norton or McAfee product.
As far as I'm concerned supporting "domestic evil" would be better then "foreign evil". We don't import coal like oil, so using coal actually helps our economy. And for any problems that arise with coal, they will all be with bounds of US law and law enforcement. Also it's easier to clean up 100s of large coal power plants then it is to clean up millions of cars.
Yes there are better solutions then coal, but we have over 50% of our power coming from coal, so improving coal will happen quicker then scrapping the system and replacing it with other systems (solar concentrators, tidal, wind, or other low eviroment impact systems). The is no reason we can't do both and enjoy both short term and long term gains. They're not mutually exclusive.
Slashdot Mirror
So the parent here brings up a specific case of the general problem: losing these channels will indeed impact some people quite dramatically and all customers to a certain degree. Given the backgrounds of many of the people on this site, let's see what we can due to hasten the solution, i.e. removal of the cable companies. Let's make a list here on this post to what current channels are available on the net (with link to a feed), what shows are available on demand, what new, non-tv content is available and should be considered as a replacement. I'm not talking about downloading individual shows via your favorite P2P application, that can be done but provides it's own set of headaches. Let's get a list going here of links to content as easy to use as Youtube. It should ideally be as simple as opening a link and clicking Play.
So the story says they sued Apple among others. Isn't one of the complaints that some people have against the iPhone that it Doesn't have removable storage? That would seem to exempt them from this patent.
What if instead of charging a cell phone through body heat, a battery was charged through a larger heat source. One could run pipes through their driveway (before it was poured obviously) that water is pumped through. That's an average of 57 square meters with an average daily insolation that is between 3 and 8 kW/m^2/day. During the day the driveway heats up considerably, which could then heat up a water tank, say a 50 gallon tank in your garage. The water could be used with this device to generate electricity. If it could be feasibly scaled up to generate 1 to 2 kWh per day (after conversion inefficiencies are accounted for) that's 10 to 20 percent of a household's energy needs that would be generated daily. Some houses in places with snowy winters already have pipes in their driveway as part of a snow melt system. This would be similar but more likely used in warmer climates, the sunbelt states for instance, and taking heat from the driveway rather then giving it.
About 8. Thorium is about 24. Non-radioactive badness in coal includes mercury and other heavy metals.
Link.
Isn't that what the Enola Gay did? Granted they were on what they thought was a routine bombing run, and not merely shuffling missiles around from one US base to another...
I would imagine that this problem is either A) a configuration problem on the school's end, or B) will be fixed fairly quickly. I suggest "fixed quickly" because if this is a problem, then all those iPhones Apple is giving to their own employees will crash the Apple campus wireless network too. Plus given all the amazing paid and free press Apple is getting on the iPhone I'm sure they don't want any significant problems arising to generate legitimate bad press about their shiny new product.
See the recent Stevenote section on Quick Look. http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/quick look.html It views spreadsheet and word processing docs. It doesn't edit, but iPhone or its competition, I don't want to edit on something that small. Viewing however could be hugely useful!
Funny enough gas cars weren't popular alternatives to carriages when they first came out. Henry Ford got his start making race cars. I wonder if the Tesla Motors folks are hoping to do the same with electric vs. gas as Ford did with gas vs. horse. Regardless, electric cars are gaining momentum these days (pun intended). (Also, it seems odd that we're still measuring electric motor power in "horse power".)
The infrastructure for gas based cars is already in place. In the US approximately 60-65% of oil is imported. A fivefold reduction in use would bring the US down to 20% of current consumption. This means that we would not need to import fuel anymore, and actually could (theoretically) export as much fuel as we use. The short and long term environmental benefits of the US dropping 80% fuel usage are pretty good too. (Yes this addresses only gasoline powered cars, not fuel equivalents.)
I would love to see electric/compressed air/next hot thing cars too but there are problems. They don't exist in the market yet. Example, I would like to have an electric car, but I live in an apartment: where will I charge it? I'm not going to hang out at a "gas station" for an hour while my car charges. Currently, it is very easy to refuel on gasoline and people know how and where to do it. Having to do it five times less seems like a deal to me no matter what may be on the horizon.
Also, I think a "Civic del Sol" type or Saturn type equivalent that got 100+mpg would sell very well. An Accord equivalent that got 70-80mpg would sell equally well.
Thermodynically you're correct. Enviromentally you're correct. Economically and politically you're wrong.
For the forseeable future we (the US) will be getting 55-60% of our electricity off of coal and 20% off of nuclear power. This electrical power can, with this compressed air model, be used to power the whole transportation sector, instead of oil. The US is the "middle east of coal". That means more US money staying in the US, less money being pumped into a volitale part of the world that doesn't like us much, more US jobs, more US oversight of the involved companies. As an American this benefits us greatly. It benefits all Americans except for the CEOs of the top 5 or so oil companies. (This applies elsewhere too, but America has the most cars, generates the most pollution from them, and all in all is the biggest oil consumer; though China is close, maybe surpassed the US in the past year or so.)
Additionally one would assume that the air compressors would be run off of electric motors, which allows them to use electricity produced anyway they want. If you wanted to use solar panels at home and plug the car into a small compressor to recharge that would work. If you wanted to goto a service station and buy their compressed air, that would work too. Unlike hydrogen, air compressing equipment is already widespread, hydrogen production isn't there yet. Either way, you're right in that we get less out than we put in, but the transision from oil to will be like that. We are very very unlikely to find something else we can pump out of the ground and use as easily as oil.
We are now transisioning permantly from a primary portable fuel (oil) to a secondary (compressed air, hydrogen, batteries, etc). It seems that these next fuel(s) will be with us for atleast the 100+ years oil has been.
So wasn't it in September that Steve Jobs got on a stage and pointed out that iTMS is now in the top five music sellers in the world? I.E. They were competing and gaining significantly on Walmart and such? And that they were the ONLY digital service that could claim this? I'm confused where these iPods with all this pirated music comes from if one of the top five music sellers in the world sells music that can only be listened to on iPods (and iTunes). Perhaps he would like to sue Apple and have to explain his logic to a judge?
Another example: I saw the end of the recent Escape from Alactraz triathelon. The winner hugged the second place guy, and all of them high fived like the top 10 finishers. Yeah, they all wanted to win, but they all know how hard it is and that it's an accomplishment just to finish. I wish more things were like this. Maybe this is why I don't care for team sports and their fans. Mostly their fans.
I think you got it exactly with that summary. Like what, Legend of the Red Dragon, but no overarching fantasy plot, just user created content.
I wonder if when we do discover new inhabitable planets, and a way of getting there, this is the sort of way that the infrastructure will be built.
Do you actually have to get rid of the original? Calvin would have a field day! http://aa.1asphost.com/dlazechk/ch900108.jpg
A better question to ask: what happens to their "soul"? A few years ago the Catholic church decided that human clones have unique souls and are not part of the orinigal person. So now that we have an exact physical copy of a person (well eventually we will), who gets the soul? I can't wait to see the religious debates over this. In fact any religious debate over a new technology that screws with their worldview is usually entertaining.
Wouldn't that be MS Windows on the right, Mac OSX on the left, and Linux in the middle? :-p
So what?
:-p
Most people believe in an afterlife. If this destroys everything, those people will just get there faster. Some people don't believe in an afterlife. Well, they know that they're going to die some day regardless, so sooner rather then later won't make a difference.
And yet with almost anything but an Apple notebook, you're stuck with Windows. Do you buy a Porsche just to drive it 5mph around the block? No, you buy it because in addition to being shiny on the outside, whats under the hood counts too!
I used to like this idea, making people pass an intelligence test. Not even make it hard, just make it basic. However the more people I meet, and the more smart people in particular the less I like the idea. Most smart people I know are assholes. So rather then an intelligence test I'd like to see a common sense / being nice test. I'll take someone with common sense and who is nice any day over someone who is smart. It's sad, but you'd think that "smart people" would understand this. Being polite and stopping to think something through first is not all that hard to do and will take you much farther then being smart will.
To add to the above: the digital form gives you more flexiablity in delivering the content. You don't necessarily have to be at the same physical location. I mention this, as more and more prisons are going to telepresense of inmates in courtrooms. Rather then bussing them from the prison to courthouse and back, just doing a video confernce via the courthouse and prison. No reason why the same underlying technologies can't be used to desiminate video interviews. Likewise, if you go to court, but forgot one of the videos or needed an additional one the digital form would allow you to retrieve it without leaving the courtroom.
Lastly, newer video codecs allow for compression much greater then MPEG-2 used on DVDs. This means that your archive could use less physical space to store more videos. I believe an additional Ask Slashdot coverd this a few days ago. This also helps protect you against technology obseletion. Rather then being stuck with 10,000 VHS tapes in 2015, just do a batch convert from format A to format B as needed, and then stream the resulting video to the courtroom.
We did! We learned what happens when you take a great idea and make a terrible (the worst possible?) implementation and force it on people, in a one size fits all manner.
Now lets see what we can do to take this idea and make a practical solution with it. I'd recommend first scaling back what it tries to do to just one field and then have it start with only the most routine of tasks. We have years and years to turn it into emacs.
I would add to the above: just using some common sense online and perhaps checking with a knowledgable friend about what is generally safe to click on, on the internet and what isn't. That plus what the parent wrote will take you Much farther in security then running the latest Norton or McAfee product.
Sounds like the maze in Zork. Mapping that was a nightmare.
As far as I'm concerned supporting "domestic evil" would be better then "foreign evil". We don't import coal like oil, so using coal actually helps our economy. And for any problems that arise with coal, they will all be with bounds of US law and law enforcement. Also it's easier to clean up 100s of large coal power plants then it is to clean up millions of cars.
Yes there are better solutions then coal, but we have over 50% of our power coming from coal, so improving coal will happen quicker then scrapping the system and replacing it with other systems (solar concentrators, tidal, wind, or other low eviroment impact systems). The is no reason we can't do both and enjoy both short term and long term gains. They're not mutually exclusive.
Anyone want my 4 digit /. id?
:p
I'll take it.