true, but also i don't think limiting consumer broadband speeds is a sound method of combating the DDoS problems.
i'm sure 1Gbps up/down sounds ridiculous to many Americans, but it probably doesn't sound so absurd to Japanese consumers. i assume that if they've decided to make such an upgrade to consumer level broadband speed, then they're probably making equivalent increases to business connections. it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that bandwidth costs will decrease over time. this is just an indication that Japan is ahead of the curve right now.
i mean, you're not going to give a home user a 1 Gbps connection if the ISP can't handle that. and if the ISP can handle all home users having 1 Gbps then they can surely handle much bigger pipes for business/enterprise users.
so maybe it's time for the U.S. to stop dicking around, wasting resources on packet shaping/bandwidth throttling (you know, spend money on actually increasing broadband speeds?) unless we want to be left in the dust. if we started increasing our network capacity to handle 1 Gbps home connections, then we won't have to worry about being DDoSed by 1 Gbps botnets.
nah, the thinking right now is 3 Mbps (burst) should be enough for everyone.
ISPs want consumers to conform their usage to the service provider's business model--overselling and artificially manipulate internet usage through bandwidth caps, packet shaping, etc.
those crazy Japanese actually think that supply should try to meet demand, rather than the other way around? what madness is this?
i would have agreed with you when i first read that article yesterday, but i couldn't understand why the Chinese government would lie about a launch that they already spent so much time and money preparing for, and were clearly going to carry out.
it wasn't until some other slashdotters remarked that this could have simply been a prepped news story, which is a common practice in mainstream media, and that the transcripts were probably holder text--still a bad idea i think, but at least understandable.
and it should be noted that this time there was live video footage. and it would be a pretty stupid thing to try to fake a space mission. i mean, cheating in the olympics, or any other sports, is something that you can get away with (and i have no doubt that plenty of countries have gotten away with on many occasions), but faking a space mission is more along the lines of lying about achieving cold fusion. there's just simply no way you can deceive people about that for more than a few weeks or months at most. so unless they plan on being ridiculed by the world later, it would be a very stupid thing to do.
in other words, giving consumers less control over the system they purchased, and handing that control over to corporate industries.
so i guess i'm just leasing the computer i paid $2-3 grand for. i guess that's about right as that's pretty much how DVDs, CDs, downloadable music, ebooks, etc. already work.
well, think about it this way. imagine you're just looking at the wireless infrastructure for California, and it's being rolled out by commercial telecoms without any central planning.
major urban areas like Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, etc. would be the most profitable local markets, so those places would end up being serviced by all of the service providers. but people living up in the mountains, in more rural areas, or in small towns like those that sit right along Highway 395, etc. would get no coverage at all. i mean, who wants to spend the money to bring wireless access to areas with marginal returns?
as bandwidth usage goes up, and wireless infrastructure becomes more integrated into our society, we will also need to look at using our full radio spectrum for wireless networking. at that point maximizing efficiency will be a major issue. and that just isn't achievable with all the carriers competing for the same markets and without any kind of central planning.
yea, but aside from rare situations, like if you race your car, need to get out of a ditch, are climbing up a steep hill, or emergencies, you really shouldn't be driving like that.
obviously, you wouldn't want to make it so that it impedes the driver, but offer just enough resistance to give the driver some feedback on their fuel efficiency. i think if the system is calibrated correctly and designed to disengage itself when you shift into lower gears and need more torque, it would be a very useful feature.
communications networks, like other societal infrastructure, are natural monopolies. that's the way in which they function the most efficiently.
i know a lot of people seem to think that competition and consumer choice are the end and the ultimate for everything from breakfast cereal to health care. but that's just not true for things like wireless networks. if you take the same amount of resources as multiple competing (redundant) networks and put them all into a single network infrastructure, you would have better connectivity, network performance, and probably network capacity as well.
so the best model would probably be to set up municipal wi-fi networks using the white space spectrum and simply have the telecoms provide a routing service. it would still allow cellphone users to have handsets not tied to any particular carrier, but rather the handset would connect to the local wi-fi access point and then select from the fastest VoIP service (like Skype) for each call.
i appreciate Google's proposal, which actually offers a compromise between municipal wi-fi and the current subscription model, but i just don't see the telecoms giving up their tight grip on wireless communication. they would lose their lucrative data plans which charge extortionate rates for basic internet access. if the telecoms were smart, they would work with google on realizing a these commercial open wireless networks, otherwise when the public/consumers finally get fed up with their abuse of tax-subsidized infrastructure, they'll simply adopt municipal wi-fi and create a public wireless infrastructure to replace closed telephone networks.
well, it's pretty easy to tell when you're driving inefficiently. whenever you repeatedly brake and accelerate you're wasting fuel. when you hear your engine revving loudly as you accelerate you're wasting gas. when you're engine is revving past your vehicle's acceleration capability you're wasting even more gas for vanishing returns.
what automakers really need to do is display your fuel consumption in dollar signs. show exactly how much money you've put in the tank, and let the driver watch that money evaporate as they continue to accelerate towards a red light.
but these would still be stop gap measures. what we really need is to stop using obsolete technology. Internal Combustion Engines are inherently inefficient and shouldn't be used in transportation vehicles anymore. there's no reason for us not to be driving electric cars by now. the EV1 came out over a decade ago and was hugely successful despite GM's every attempt at sabotaging the vehicle. if they'd been smart they would have taken advantage of their head start and dominated the new market rather than killing the project off against the outcry from consumers.
while i'm not sure whether this tech is real or just snake oil, according to the article:
The results of the laboratory and road tests verifying that this simple device can boost gas mileage was published in Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal published by the American Chemical Society.
so that rules out the possibility that the increased efficiency is due to driver behavior. and i also see no reason why Temple University would want to make false announcements. this doesn't seem like the water4gas crap you see all over the internet. i mean, there may have been scams similar to this tech, but unless you can logically refute the science behind it, there's no reason to dismiss this news offhand. i mean, a lot of scams are based on sound scientific principles that technology simply doesn't exist to exploit yet.
that said, i think internal combustion engines are an anachronism at this point, and we should really be focusing on phasing them out for more modern technology--like electric motors. even if we want to continue to exploit fossil fuels as an energy source, it would be far more efficient to have electric vehicles on the road and simply generate the electricity at coal plants.
if we actually invested money and resources towards developing electric vehicles, then the primary obstacles (power storage & infrastructure) could easily be overcome within a couple of years. so far we've just lacked the willpower to make this happen.
yea, i think Adobe did the smart/sensible thing by leaving the stream unencrypted to boost download speeds. performance and speed are major considerations for streaming media.
like you said, you ultimately have to give the user access to the unencrypted data so that they can view the content. so if they had done what the author suggests they should have done, then they would have just ended up with a streaming technology that's slower & wastes more bandwidth, and the DRM scheme still would have been easily bypassed by hackers.
it's pointless to apply DRM to web content, as it is with offline content. it's always amusing to see website developers try to prevent visitors from saving images from the site--which is especially annoying when they use JavaScript to disable right-clicking, as if that'll stop anyone from saving an image to disc when it's already on their hard drive. these petty tactics simply insult visitors to the site and create a major annoyance for anyone who simply wants to access a command from the context menu. but i guess driving visitors away and decreasing the traffic to your site would reduce the chance of people steeling your precious lossy, lo-res jpeg images.
i don't know, speech recognition software seems to be in pretty high demand. i know a lot of companies prefer to use it for customer support rather than key inputs or live support staff. and a lot of people like using speech-activated speed dial on their cellphones.
also, it might be easier to have a talking AI rather than set up a bunch of computer terminals for interactive assistance. sure, it's easier to just type on a keyboard and read text from a screen if you're dealing with computer applications, but if you're trying to design an interactive system to provider visitors with info about your campus or building then a talking AI would be more natural/convenient.
if you visit the forums of popular gaming sites like IGN or Gamespot, you've probably seen moderators crack down on discussions of modding, emulation, CFW, or homebrew development.
i can understand if they don't allow users to discuss warez/piracy or other illegal activites because of potential liability issues. but the problem is they also try to lump console modding, custom firmware, and homebrew development together with piracy & illegal file sharing.
i found this out when i posted to a discussion about a PSX game and mentioned that i was running it on my PSP via PopStation. my post was immediately censored and i was given a warning about my TOS violation.
all i'd written in the post was that i wished this title were available on the PSN store so that i didn't have to convert it into a POPS file myself. there was no mention of any illegal activity or even file sharing, so i decided to check out the IGN message board's TOS. however, the TOS simply forbids the discussion of criminal activities and copyright infringement--though the IGN TOS considers ROMs and emulators a form of copyright infringement.
i had to explain to the mods that using PopStation to play a PSX game is not illegal and the PopStation i referred to was the PSX emulator Sony included in newer versions of the official PSP firmware. furthermore, there is nothing illegal about ripping a PSX disc and converting it to a POPS eboot file. that is fully within my fair use rights, just as ripping a music CD into MP3s or movie DVD into XviD vidoes is considered fair use. it's only the illegal distribution of MP3s, that is forbidden. so long as i don't share those files with others, i am not breaking the law.
but this kind of deliberate corporate posturing has been going on for so long, and is so prevalent, that the public has started to buy into the attitude that any kind of fair use outside of what's sanctioned by corporate industries is illegal or taboo, and must be discussed in secrecy. that's why these days you even get members of the public sticking up for corporate interests and equivocating MP3, P2P, file sharing, homebrew, modding/CFW, etc. with piracy.
i guess if we're conditioned to think that way then it'll be much easier to lobby for legislation that tosses out fair use altogether--or legislation to allow ISPs to filter internet traffic to combat P2P filesharing.
sometimes it really seems like people are just here to serve the economy rather than the other way around. that's why i'm always baffled when governments pursue policies that are supposed to "strengthen the economy" but which run against public interest.
personally, gaming laptops hold no appeal to me, but i've seen countless other great products fail because they were the victim of poor marketing. it's sad when marketing/advertising determines the success of a product rather than its technological/practical merits.
it's even worse when market analysts (so-called "industry analysts") determine the path of technological progress rather than scientists, engineers, or the actual public consumers that such consumer technology is supposed to benefit.
while i'm a little too scientifically-illiterate to understand some of the other explanations that have been given, the use of a universal laser + universal spectrometer does make sense to me. i believe photovoltaic materials only react to a certain frequency range, and then its current output only reflects the intensity of the light, not the frequency or spectrum of light being absorbed, so that wouldn't be useful for this application.
i don't know how small a compact spectrograph can be made, but couldn't the spectrograph results give you the mixture of compounds and their precise ratios of the test material, and then just run that through a database for various biological or chemical agents?
and if scientists can use spectroscopic analysis with stars that are lightyears away, then why couldn't the same technique used in astronomy be applied here? is it just because there's too much background noise when you're trying to analyze microscopic samples or is this a completely different matter?
if people are willing to type on the qwerty keyboards on smartphones, then i'm sure a mini-notebook is plenty ergonomically functional.
you prefer mid-sized notebooks, personally? well of course. that's probably what most people prefer as well. that's why they're the mid-size.
but it's not inconceivable that someone might need/want something a little bigger or a little smaller than your personal preference.
personally, i'm looking to get a tablet. i don't do any gaming, but as a graphic designer i need a larger screen than most casual computer users. so it makes sense for me to look for something that's on the larger end of the scale. or do you think that everyone should just have the same sized laptop regardless of what their needs are?
don't be afraid to venture out of your solipsistic universe once in a while.
well, the problem here is that "profit"--at least financial ones--are a form of immediate return/benefit, whereas things like environmentalism, altruism, and other progressive ideas are looking at long-term interests and long-term benefits. often times immediate personal interests conflict with the long-term interests of society. that's why making the world a better place isn't generally a financially profitable proposition.
but that's a very shortsighted and selfish way of looking at things. i mean, if there's widespread poverty, societal inequity, then crime goes up, and other social issues also arise. so you may be able to make a ton of money in the short-term, but if there's social instability and severe environmental degradation, then are you really better off than if you hadn't only pursued short-term interests?
if it's just down to detecting the frequency of the light emitted, couldn't some sort of photovoltaic or photoelectric sensor be designed so that you wouldn't have to chemically engineer receptors for different kinds of surfaces, but rather just program the software to identify the surface material?
hey, he created it in 1989, he just didn't release it until 1993!
i was just talking about the early alpha. =P
Re:Is it ok to keep kids off the internet these da
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harm-reduction doesn't mean "no rules." it just means taking a more rational approach to protecting your children rather than a strict abstinence only approach.
you are not going to be able to prevent a primary school student from ever using the internet. likewise, you can't expect your child to go through high school without being exposed to drugs. so instead of trying to shield your children from these things completely, it would be wiser to take a more realistic approach.
also, when you don't differentiate between different levels of risk, you're sending a bad signal to your child. if you treat smoking a joint the same as smoking meth, you probably won't deter your child from smoking weed, but you'll make them more likely to not make a distinction between the two drugs--since you don't either.
this is the same reason why many girls in high school whose parents are extremely overbearing and overprotective end up being more promiscuous and sexually active than most of their peers. in my experience, girls whose parents are the most strict (won't let them date boys, or even let them hang out with any male friends) are the ones that typically turn out to be nymphos.
Re:Is it ok to keep kids off the internet these da
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Good Email For Kids?
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then that's not harm reduction. at least not in the case of primary school aged children. i mean, if you're going to let them download porn then why bother to monitor it? so you can watch porn with them?
the correct analogy would be to allow your kids to access the internet at home, rather than forbidding them from using the internet and having them go somewhere else to use it (just as the GP posted). that is similar to allowing your kids to drink at home rather than having them do it elsewhere behind your back.
the benefits are, if your kids run into stuff they don't understand and shouldn't be exposed to--like porn or hate sites--you can address the issue when it arises and prevent further harm from being done.
similarly, if your kids drink at home, they don't have to drink & drive (nor do their friends, as you can drive them home), and you can also stop any other stupid behavior that can arise from drinking--thus preventing serious harm from falling on your kids.
of course, there are still rules that your children have to follow. harm reduction is just opposed to the abstinence-only approach. it facilitates trust and honesty between parent and child. and because of this trust and mutual respect, your child is more likely to obey the rules you set for them (like not drinking and driving, or not doing more addictive substances like cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.)
Re:Is it ok to keep kids off the internet these da
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Good Email For Kids?
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Would you rather have your kid to another kids house and get on when no parents are online?
Would you rather have your kid sneak on when you're not around?
heh, that reminds me of some parents' attitude towards their children smoking weed/drinking. not that i disagree with either, it's just amusing that this sort of harm-reduction philosophy makes perfect sense when you apply it to other risky behaviors but parents still have such a hard time grasping it in regards to drug use.
Slashdot Mirror
true, but also i don't think limiting consumer broadband speeds is a sound method of combating the DDoS problems.
i'm sure 1Gbps up/down sounds ridiculous to many Americans, but it probably doesn't sound so absurd to Japanese consumers. i assume that if they've decided to make such an upgrade to consumer level broadband speed, then they're probably making equivalent increases to business connections. it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that bandwidth costs will decrease over time. this is just an indication that Japan is ahead of the curve right now.
i mean, you're not going to give a home user a 1 Gbps connection if the ISP can't handle that. and if the ISP can handle all home users having 1 Gbps then they can surely handle much bigger pipes for business/enterprise users.
so maybe it's time for the U.S. to stop dicking around, wasting resources on packet shaping/bandwidth throttling (you know, spend money on actually increasing broadband speeds?) unless we want to be left in the dust. if we started increasing our network capacity to handle 1 Gbps home connections, then we won't have to worry about being DDoSed by 1 Gbps botnets.
nah, the thinking right now is 3 Mbps (burst) should be enough for everyone.
ISPs want consumers to conform their usage to the service provider's business model--overselling and artificially manipulate internet usage through bandwidth caps, packet shaping, etc.
those crazy Japanese actually think that supply should try to meet demand, rather than the other way around? what madness is this?
i would have agreed with you when i first read that article yesterday, but i couldn't understand why the Chinese government would lie about a launch that they already spent so much time and money preparing for, and were clearly going to carry out.
it wasn't until some other slashdotters remarked that this could have simply been a prepped news story, which is a common practice in mainstream media, and that the transcripts were probably holder text--still a bad idea i think, but at least understandable.
and it should be noted that this time there was live video footage. and it would be a pretty stupid thing to try to fake a space mission. i mean, cheating in the olympics, or any other sports, is something that you can get away with (and i have no doubt that plenty of countries have gotten away with on many occasions), but faking a space mission is more along the lines of lying about achieving cold fusion. there's just simply no way you can deceive people about that for more than a few weeks or months at most. so unless they plan on being ridiculed by the world later, it would be a very stupid thing to do.
in other words, giving consumers less control over the system they purchased, and handing that control over to corporate industries.
so i guess i'm just leasing the computer i paid $2-3 grand for. i guess that's about right as that's pretty much how DVDs, CDs, downloadable music, ebooks, etc. already work.
well, think about it this way. imagine you're just looking at the wireless infrastructure for California, and it's being rolled out by commercial telecoms without any central planning.
major urban areas like Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, etc. would be the most profitable local markets, so those places would end up being serviced by all of the service providers. but people living up in the mountains, in more rural areas, or in small towns like those that sit right along Highway 395, etc. would get no coverage at all. i mean, who wants to spend the money to bring wireless access to areas with marginal returns?
as bandwidth usage goes up, and wireless infrastructure becomes more integrated into our society, we will also need to look at using our full radio spectrum for wireless networking. at that point maximizing efficiency will be a major issue. and that just isn't achievable with all the carriers competing for the same markets and without any kind of central planning.
yea, but aside from rare situations, like if you race your car, need to get out of a ditch, are climbing up a steep hill, or emergencies, you really shouldn't be driving like that.
obviously, you wouldn't want to make it so that it impedes the driver, but offer just enough resistance to give the driver some feedback on their fuel efficiency. i think if the system is calibrated correctly and designed to disengage itself when you shift into lower gears and need more torque, it would be a very useful feature.
communications networks, like other societal infrastructure, are natural monopolies. that's the way in which they function the most efficiently.
i know a lot of people seem to think that competition and consumer choice are the end and the ultimate for everything from breakfast cereal to health care. but that's just not true for things like wireless networks. if you take the same amount of resources as multiple competing (redundant) networks and put them all into a single network infrastructure, you would have better connectivity, network performance, and probably network capacity as well.
so the best model would probably be to set up municipal wi-fi networks using the white space spectrum and simply have the telecoms provide a routing service. it would still allow cellphone users to have handsets not tied to any particular carrier, but rather the handset would connect to the local wi-fi access point and then select from the fastest VoIP service (like Skype) for each call.
i appreciate Google's proposal, which actually offers a compromise between municipal wi-fi and the current subscription model, but i just don't see the telecoms giving up their tight grip on wireless communication. they would lose their lucrative data plans which charge extortionate rates for basic internet access. if the telecoms were smart, they would work with google on realizing a these commercial open wireless networks, otherwise when the public/consumers finally get fed up with their abuse of tax-subsidized infrastructure, they'll simply adopt municipal wi-fi and create a public wireless infrastructure to replace closed telephone networks.
well, it's pretty easy to tell when you're driving inefficiently. whenever you repeatedly brake and accelerate you're wasting fuel. when you hear your engine revving loudly as you accelerate you're wasting gas. when you're engine is revving past your vehicle's acceleration capability you're wasting even more gas for vanishing returns.
what automakers really need to do is display your fuel consumption in dollar signs. show exactly how much money you've put in the tank, and let the driver watch that money evaporate as they continue to accelerate towards a red light.
but these would still be stop gap measures. what we really need is to stop using obsolete technology. Internal Combustion Engines are inherently inefficient and shouldn't be used in transportation vehicles anymore. there's no reason for us not to be driving electric cars by now. the EV1 came out over a decade ago and was hugely successful despite GM's every attempt at sabotaging the vehicle. if they'd been smart they would have taken advantage of their head start and dominated the new market rather than killing the project off against the outcry from consumers.
while i'm not sure whether this tech is real or just snake oil, according to the article:
so that rules out the possibility that the increased efficiency is due to driver behavior. and i also see no reason why Temple University would want to make false announcements. this doesn't seem like the water4gas crap you see all over the internet. i mean, there may have been scams similar to this tech, but unless you can logically refute the science behind it, there's no reason to dismiss this news offhand. i mean, a lot of scams are based on sound scientific principles that technology simply doesn't exist to exploit yet.
that said, i think internal combustion engines are an anachronism at this point, and we should really be focusing on phasing them out for more modern technology--like electric motors. even if we want to continue to exploit fossil fuels as an energy source, it would be far more efficient to have electric vehicles on the road and simply generate the electricity at coal plants.
if we actually invested money and resources towards developing electric vehicles, then the primary obstacles (power storage & infrastructure) could easily be overcome within a couple of years. so far we've just lacked the willpower to make this happen.
hey, i know the best security method if you don't want people having unfettered access to your video content--don't stream it over the internet.
yea, i think Adobe did the smart/sensible thing by leaving the stream unencrypted to boost download speeds. performance and speed are major considerations for streaming media.
like you said, you ultimately have to give the user access to the unencrypted data so that they can view the content. so if they had done what the author suggests they should have done, then they would have just ended up with a streaming technology that's slower & wastes more bandwidth, and the DRM scheme still would have been easily bypassed by hackers.
it's pointless to apply DRM to web content, as it is with offline content. it's always amusing to see website developers try to prevent visitors from saving images from the site--which is especially annoying when they use JavaScript to disable right-clicking, as if that'll stop anyone from saving an image to disc when it's already on their hard drive. these petty tactics simply insult visitors to the site and create a major annoyance for anyone who simply wants to access a command from the context menu. but i guess driving visitors away and decreasing the traffic to your site would reduce the chance of people steeling your precious lossy, lo-res jpeg images.
i don't know, speech recognition software seems to be in pretty high demand. i know a lot of companies prefer to use it for customer support rather than key inputs or live support staff. and a lot of people like using speech-activated speed dial on their cellphones.
also, it might be easier to have a talking AI rather than set up a bunch of computer terminals for interactive assistance. sure, it's easier to just type on a keyboard and read text from a screen if you're dealing with computer applications, but if you're trying to design an interactive system to provider visitors with info about your campus or building then a talking AI would be more natural/convenient.
if you visit the forums of popular gaming sites like IGN or Gamespot, you've probably seen moderators crack down on discussions of modding, emulation, CFW, or homebrew development.
i can understand if they don't allow users to discuss warez/piracy or other illegal activites because of potential liability issues. but the problem is they also try to lump console modding, custom firmware, and homebrew development together with piracy & illegal file sharing.
i found this out when i posted to a discussion about a PSX game and mentioned that i was running it on my PSP via PopStation. my post was immediately censored and i was given a warning about my TOS violation.
all i'd written in the post was that i wished this title were available on the PSN store so that i didn't have to convert it into a POPS file myself. there was no mention of any illegal activity or even file sharing, so i decided to check out the IGN message board's TOS. however, the TOS simply forbids the discussion of criminal activities and copyright infringement--though the IGN TOS considers ROMs and emulators a form of copyright infringement.
i had to explain to the mods that using PopStation to play a PSX game is not illegal and the PopStation i referred to was the PSX emulator Sony included in newer versions of the official PSP firmware. furthermore, there is nothing illegal about ripping a PSX disc and converting it to a POPS eboot file. that is fully within my fair use rights, just as ripping a music CD into MP3s or movie DVD into XviD vidoes is considered fair use. it's only the illegal distribution of MP3s, that is forbidden. so long as i don't share those files with others, i am not breaking the law.
but this kind of deliberate corporate posturing has been going on for so long, and is so prevalent, that the public has started to buy into the attitude that any kind of fair use outside of what's sanctioned by corporate industries is illegal or taboo, and must be discussed in secrecy. that's why these days you even get members of the public sticking up for corporate interests and equivocating MP3, P2P, file sharing, homebrew, modding/CFW, etc. with piracy.
i guess if we're conditioned to think that way then it'll be much easier to lobby for legislation that tosses out fair use altogether--or legislation to allow ISPs to filter internet traffic to combat P2P filesharing.
sometimes it really seems like people are just here to serve the economy rather than the other way around. that's why i'm always baffled when governments pursue policies that are supposed to "strengthen the economy" but which run against public interest.
personally, gaming laptops hold no appeal to me, but i've seen countless other great products fail because they were the victim of poor marketing. it's sad when marketing/advertising determines the success of a product rather than its technological/practical merits.
it's even worse when market analysts (so-called "industry analysts") determine the path of technological progress rather than scientists, engineers, or the actual public consumers that such consumer technology is supposed to benefit.
while i'm a little too scientifically-illiterate to understand some of the other explanations that have been given, the use of a universal laser + universal spectrometer does make sense to me. i believe photovoltaic materials only react to a certain frequency range, and then its current output only reflects the intensity of the light, not the frequency or spectrum of light being absorbed, so that wouldn't be useful for this application.
i don't know how small a compact spectrograph can be made, but couldn't the spectrograph results give you the mixture of compounds and their precise ratios of the test material, and then just run that through a database for various biological or chemical agents?
and if scientists can use spectroscopic analysis with stars that are lightyears away, then why couldn't the same technique used in astronomy be applied here? is it just because there's too much background noise when you're trying to analyze microscopic samples or is this a completely different matter?
if people are willing to type on the qwerty keyboards on smartphones, then i'm sure a mini-notebook is plenty ergonomically functional.
you prefer mid-sized notebooks, personally? well of course. that's probably what most people prefer as well. that's why they're the mid-size.
but it's not inconceivable that someone might need/want something a little bigger or a little smaller than your personal preference.
personally, i'm looking to get a tablet. i don't do any gaming, but as a graphic designer i need a larger screen than most casual computer users. so it makes sense for me to look for something that's on the larger end of the scale. or do you think that everyone should just have the same sized laptop regardless of what their needs are?
don't be afraid to venture out of your solipsistic universe once in a while.
oh, you mean like a desk?
hey, that's a feature.
free brazilian bikini wax with each gaming session.
well, the problem here is that "profit"--at least financial ones--are a form of immediate return/benefit, whereas things like environmentalism, altruism, and other progressive ideas are looking at long-term interests and long-term benefits. often times immediate personal interests conflict with the long-term interests of society. that's why making the world a better place isn't generally a financially profitable proposition.
but that's a very shortsighted and selfish way of looking at things. i mean, if there's widespread poverty, societal inequity, then crime goes up, and other social issues also arise. so you may be able to make a ton of money in the short-term, but if there's social instability and severe environmental degradation, then are you really better off than if you hadn't only pursued short-term interests?
it's not a tricorder. you need to lay the perforated metal sheet against the surface you want to scan with it.
if it's just down to detecting the frequency of the light emitted, couldn't some sort of photovoltaic or photoelectric sensor be designed so that you wouldn't have to chemically engineer receptors for different kinds of surfaces, but rather just program the software to identify the surface material?
hey, he created it in 1989, he just didn't release it until 1993!
i was just talking about the early alpha. =P
harm-reduction doesn't mean "no rules." it just means taking a more rational approach to protecting your children rather than a strict abstinence only approach.
you are not going to be able to prevent a primary school student from ever using the internet. likewise, you can't expect your child to go through high school without being exposed to drugs. so instead of trying to shield your children from these things completely, it would be wiser to take a more realistic approach.
also, when you don't differentiate between different levels of risk, you're sending a bad signal to your child. if you treat smoking a joint the same as smoking meth, you probably won't deter your child from smoking weed, but you'll make them more likely to not make a distinction between the two drugs--since you don't either.
this is the same reason why many girls in high school whose parents are extremely overbearing and overprotective end up being more promiscuous and sexually active than most of their peers. in my experience, girls whose parents are the most strict (won't let them date boys, or even let them hang out with any male friends) are the ones that typically turn out to be nymphos.
then that's not harm reduction. at least not in the case of primary school aged children. i mean, if you're going to let them download porn then why bother to monitor it? so you can watch porn with them?
the correct analogy would be to allow your kids to access the internet at home, rather than forbidding them from using the internet and having them go somewhere else to use it (just as the GP posted). that is similar to allowing your kids to drink at home rather than having them do it elsewhere behind your back.
the benefits are, if your kids run into stuff they don't understand and shouldn't be exposed to--like porn or hate sites--you can address the issue when it arises and prevent further harm from being done.
similarly, if your kids drink at home, they don't have to drink & drive (nor do their friends, as you can drive them home), and you can also stop any other stupid behavior that can arise from drinking--thus preventing serious harm from falling on your kids.
of course, there are still rules that your children have to follow. harm reduction is just opposed to the abstinence-only approach. it facilitates trust and honesty between parent and child. and because of this trust and mutual respect, your child is more likely to obey the rules you set for them (like not drinking and driving, or not doing more addictive substances like cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.)
heh, that reminds me of some parents' attitude towards their children smoking weed/drinking. not that i disagree with either, it's just amusing that this sort of harm-reduction philosophy makes perfect sense when you apply it to other risky behaviors but parents still have such a hard time grasping it in regards to drug use.