Prioritization based on data "type" is clearly much different than prioritization based on source/destination.
While I generally agree that the former is acceptable, I think the VoIP providers would have a legitimate gripe if a big telecom company slowed VoIP packets to a crawl in order to protect their competing telecommunication services.
"The Department of Homeland Security earned a D" Irony?
Yeah, they aggregated a bunch of agencies, personnel and IT systems and then made them collectively less "secure". Let's call it the "Department of Homeland Exposure" or something.
"Illegal War?" I never fully understood how a war could be considered 'illegal' by some folks when Congress, Senate, and the Executive branch all voted for it."
The United States government, following U.S. law, approved the signing of the UN Charter. This charter clearly states that there are only 2 cases in which the use of military force against another nation is justified.
1. In response to attack 2. In the case of an imminent threat of attack.
Iraq just doesn't meet the standard.
Not to mention the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants the power to declare war to the Congress. There was never a formal declaration of war against Iraq(or Afghanistan), and it was therefore illegal for the Executive branch of government to usurp this power. The administration likes to mince words about whether or not the current conflict is a "civil war", but I don't think you will find many people who would argue that the U.S. involvement in Iraq is anything but a "WAR", and therefore illegal for the stated reasons.
Oh, I think the "super hackers(crackers)" are out there. The kid in the above story certainly acquired all the power he needed to cause some serious problems. Fortunately, his activity seems to have been motivated simply by the technical challenge of cracking into systems. Even the genuine criminals tend to be somewhat "focused" in their endeavors. I just don't think we've seen a "super hacker" or any sort of coordinated attack driven by a desire to cause as much general damage and destruction as possible.
"Got one here in Fairbanks, Alaska, on launch day. It was -30F the night of the launch."
Semiconductors can be run at faster clock speeds in low temperature operating environments. Obviously they took all the parts that weren't good enough to operate in a temperate zone and sent them to Alaska.
"My bet it has more to do with states that offer massive tax breaks to businesses for moving in."
I expect that it's a compelling reason, but only AFTER they've substantially narrowed down the selection. Just about every state in the union would roll out the proverbial red carpet for a big construction project and a few hundred good jobs. With so much competition to lure in companies, I doubt that tax breaks are the primary differentiator. i.e. they scratch places with high electricity costs and poor quality of life off the list before they even look at such incentives.
"If the Chinese and Indians are smart enough to deliver the quality of R&D American companies are expecting, they're also probably smart enough to set up their own companies"
Indeed they are. A Duke University study released in (I think 2005) concluded that over the previous decade, about half of the startup companies in Silicon Valley were founded or co-founded by folks from China and/or India.
The story is right on about cost savings as the driving factor. The perception that people in China or India are "smarter" than people in the U.S. stems largely from the fact that we are typically being exposed to the very best people coming from a pool of billions. With that many people, the absolute number that are 2 std. deviations on the right side of the bell curve is still massive.
The most tragic and shocking result of this poll is that ANYONE thinks "The Matrix" is a better sci-fi film than 2001.
A futuristic self-aware supercomputer that goes haywire and kills the crew (raising a multitude of thought-provoking questions about the nature of human and artificial intelligence in the process) is science fiction. A futuristic self-aware supercomputer that takes over the world, and can only be conquered through karate fighting is utterly ridiculous. I fart in the general direction of all the matrix movies.
To each their own I usually say, but I'm a major 2001 fanboy and "The Matrix" is more deserving of a Mystery Science Theater screening than a place on any list of superlative films.
and btw, everyone knows that "The Empire Strikes Back" was the best movie in the Star Wars series.
I'm surprised by your total dismissal of the idea. ? First of all, I think the "video games" portion was just an example. That aside,
It's absolutely true that using pulsing lights in particular ways can stimulate epileptic seizures. Doctors often do this during an EEG so that they can map the brain activity of the patient during the seizure. If lights can be used to stimulate neuron activity, the idea that light might be used to inhibit neuron activity doesn't seem like that much of a stretch, at least to me.
I realize that TFA is talking about exposing brain tissue directly to light, but I'm curious as to why you're so vehement in thinking that shining lights in the eyes could not have some sort of dampening effect on seizure activity?
That way we can reduce the demand for power and conserve the remaining uranium.
At the same time, we kick a few million tons of sand and dust into the atmosphere thus blotting out the sun and cooling the planet(originally suggested on Futurama)
I don't watch Viacom's crap on MTV, CBS or Nickelodeon and I wouldn't care one bit if they disappeared from the Internet entirely.
YouTube depends on Viacom?? more like "YouTube a threat to Viacom"
ALL of the big media companies are scared of the Internet because it is breaking the monopoly they have on the flow of information and eroding their customer base of both viewers and advertisers. This has less to do with content than it does with undermining the emerging competitor at all costs.
"If you would take the time to re-read my posting . .."
It was not my intent to single you out, which is why I said "these posts". I also wasn't reading them in any particular order. I just selected a particular post for a reply to issue a collective retort to the general tone of the discussion.
Re this vs. other printers: "I'm not sure why you'd expect this to be any different."
It looks like Silverbrook's business plan is to sell/license "the technology" (software, print heads and control chips) to other companies. I don't even see that they're interested in selling ink, much less service contracts. Therefore it makes no sense to me that they would come to market with an inferior technology. Who would license it if there wasn't a compelling value proposition?
Some sort of disruptive technology in printing is long overdue. I think this looks very interesting, and possibly revolutionary. Perhaps my optimism is unwarranted, but I was rolling my eyes every time I read a post suggesting that this new technology would have more problems than the technology currently on the market.
I wondered the same thing, but I think the designers must have solved this.
I doubt that it's related to the ink's chemical properties. My guess is that having so many thousand tiny heads spraying the ink provides significant air exposure. Seems like a fine mist originating from many point sources would dry faster than a big stream coming from a large head moving back and forth.
How do all of these "It's going to clog" comments keep getting modded "Insightful"? Duh!
Now, there's always a reason for skepticism when it comes to press releases in the tech industry. To suggest that the engineers who designed an inkjet printer didn't think of "clogging" as a major potential issue is ludicrous. I don't have several years and a pile of venture capital to figure it out, but I'm sure that they've engineered around this. Do you think their business plan is to hype a fancy new printer technology and sell a few thousand printers before everyone knows that the things are just going to clog up?
You software geeks just aren't giving the hardware geeks the benefit of the doubt.
Indeed. I'm sure they've thought through 99.9% of the problems the experts on this board are suggesting. The company is just NOT going to develop and announce a new product/technology without massive amounts of testing and de-bugging, and they're sure as hell not going to just forget about all of the KNOWN problems with current ink-jet products.
"You're looking at 40 cents per millilitre . . . still ripping you off."
That sounds extremely cynical. Are you suggesting that being "ripped off" by paying $1.50 -> $3.50 perl ml is somehow better, or that people should just stop printing things to avoid getting screwed? You think gasoline is a better deal than ink? Try using it to print a photo(now THAT would be cool).
The whole point is the cost savings vs. competing products, not some philosophical discussion about what the cost of ink should be in an ideal world or the cost of ink vs. that of gas, milk or blood.
"Bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and pelicans were nearly wiped out because of DDT . .."
Those results were because of the mis-use, or actually OVER-use of DDT. This discussion always touches a sore spot with me because the "DDT==BAD" crowd never stop to think about how and in what concentrations the chemical was being used when the serious environmental consequences were discovered. There are dozens, if not hundreds of chemicals in commercial use that would be equally harmful if dumped into the environment in the same concentrations.
"Oh, this kind of "scare", "precautionary principle" actually led to DDT being banned in the world, while it had almost crushed malaria in Africa."
I don't see this as the same kind of debate, but I'm with you on DDT. The quintessential case of reactionary emotional responses overwhelming a logical cost-benefit analysis. For a while it was "DDT=good" so everybody decided they should use it to bathe their children and spray a 4" deep layer on every square inch of farmland. Then we discover that the stuff is having major environmental repurcussions and it's suddenly "DDT=bad" so it must be totally banned. Forget a pragmatic approach that might balance the incredible usefulness of the stuff with the potential for environmental damage.
Spraying it over hundreds of acres of farmland? Not a good idea.
Applying a light solution to indoor living spaces for mosquito control? Totally sensible with unparalleled effectiveness and = risk to humans vs. other pesticides.
Bringing back DDT for targeted applications is orders of magnitude more intelligent than releasing a GM insect into the environment.
" . . . researchers found that their Ubermosquito had developed a capability of transmitting AIDS now."
That was my first thought. I think that the risk of introducing GM PLANTS into the environment was unacceptable. Insects takes it to an entirely new level.
Haven't we learned enough from observations about invasive species to realize that randomly introducing a new organism into an ecosystem can have potentially devastating consequences? A mosquito that transmits AIDS is the nightmare scenario. What if it's resistant to pesticides? What if it is no longer appetizing to its natural predators?
"The biosphere is in a perpetual state of unbalance!"
I'm obviously not suggesting that there is a "balance" in the biosphere where everything is going to remain perpetually constant. There is definitely an equilibrium however which provides a certain inertia when it comes to change.
"There is a constant churn of species . . . "
Only if you're considering a timeline of hundreds or thousands of years. An event such as the emergence of a new and unique species is the culmination of an incredibly long slow process, and evolution doesn't happen in a vacuum. i.e. The wolf population isn't going to remain constant and unchanged while successive generations of rabbits have fur that is increasingly fluorescent green.
I say "mutant freak genes" simply because they did not occur in a system where there are pressures and counter-pressures to regulate the rate and degree of change. These GM species never "evolved" in the presence of natural predators nor did they proliferate in an environment of limited resources. There are countless examples of "new" plants and animals being introduced into localized ecosystems(i.e. by transport over long distance) and raising hell in their new surroundings. Introducing a new "GM" species could easily have similar or more disastrous consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Prioritization based on data "type" is clearly much different than prioritization based on source/destination.
While I generally agree that the former is acceptable, I think the VoIP providers would have a legitimate gripe if a big telecom company slowed VoIP packets to a crawl in order to protect their competing telecommunication services.
"The Department of Homeland Security earned a D" Irony?
Yeah, they aggregated a bunch of agencies, personnel and IT systems and then made them collectively less "secure". Let's call it the "Department of Homeland Exposure" or something.
"Illegal War?" I never fully understood how a war could be considered 'illegal' by some folks when Congress, Senate, and the Executive branch all voted for it."
The United States government, following U.S. law, approved the signing of the UN Charter. This charter clearly states that there are only 2 cases in which the use of military force against another nation is justified.
1. In response to attack
2. In the case of an imminent threat of attack.
Iraq just doesn't meet the standard.
Not to mention the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants the power to declare war to the Congress. There was never a formal declaration of war against Iraq(or Afghanistan), and it was therefore illegal for the Executive branch of government to usurp this power. The administration likes to mince words about whether or not the current conflict is a "civil war", but I don't think you will find many people who would argue that the U.S. involvement in Iraq is anything but a "WAR", and therefore illegal for the stated reasons.
http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5722
Oh, I think the "super hackers(crackers)" are out there. The kid in the above story certainly acquired all the power he needed to cause some serious problems. Fortunately, his activity seems to have been motivated simply by the technical challenge of cracking into systems. Even the genuine criminals tend to be somewhat "focused" in their endeavors. I just don't think we've seen a "super hacker" or any sort of coordinated attack driven by a desire to cause as much general damage and destruction as possible.
"Got one here in Fairbanks, Alaska, on launch day. It was -30F the night of the launch."
Semiconductors can be run at faster clock speeds in low temperature operating environments. Obviously they took all the parts that weren't good enough to operate in a temperate zone and sent them to Alaska.
"My bet it has more to do with states that offer massive tax breaks to businesses for moving in."
I expect that it's a compelling reason, but only AFTER they've substantially narrowed down the selection. Just about every state in the union would roll out the proverbial red carpet for a big construction project and a few hundred good jobs. With so much competition to lure in companies, I doubt that tax breaks are the primary differentiator. i.e. they scratch places with high electricity costs and poor quality of life off the list before they even look at such incentives.
"If the Chinese and Indians are smart enough to deliver the quality of R&D American companies are expecting, they're also probably smart enough to set up their own companies"
Indeed they are. A Duke University study released in (I think 2005) concluded that over the previous decade, about half of the startup companies in Silicon Valley were founded or co-founded by folks from China and/or India.
The story is right on about cost savings as the driving factor. The perception that people in China or India are "smarter" than people in the U.S. stems largely from the fact that we are typically being exposed to the very best people coming from a pool of billions. With that many people, the absolute number that are 2 std. deviations on the right side of the bell curve is still massive.
"To serve Pamela Jones . . . that will be our reward."
The most tragic and shocking result of this poll is that ANYONE thinks "The Matrix" is a better sci-fi film than 2001.
A futuristic self-aware supercomputer that goes haywire and kills the crew (raising a multitude of thought-provoking questions about the nature of human and artificial intelligence in the process) is science fiction. A futuristic self-aware supercomputer that takes over the world, and can only be conquered through karate fighting is utterly ridiculous. I fart in the general direction of all the matrix movies.
To each their own I usually say, but I'm a major 2001 fanboy and "The Matrix" is more deserving of a Mystery Science Theater screening than a place on any list of superlative films.
and btw, everyone knows that "The Empire Strikes Back" was the best movie in the Star Wars series.
I'm surprised by your total dismissal of the idea. ? First of all, I think the "video games" portion was just an example. That aside,
It's absolutely true that using pulsing lights in particular ways can stimulate epileptic seizures. Doctors often do this during an EEG so that they can map the brain activity of the patient during the seizure. If lights can be used to stimulate neuron activity, the idea that light might be used to inhibit neuron activity doesn't seem like that much of a stretch, at least to me.
I realize that TFA is talking about exposing brain tissue directly to light, but I'm curious as to why you're so vehement in thinking that shining lights in the eyes could not have some sort of dampening effect on seizure activity?
That way we can reduce the demand for power and conserve the remaining uranium.
At the same time, we kick a few million tons of sand and dust into the atmosphere thus blotting out the sun and cooling the planet(originally suggested on Futurama)
I don't watch Viacom's crap on MTV, CBS or Nickelodeon and I wouldn't care one bit if they disappeared from the Internet entirely.
YouTube depends on Viacom?? more like "YouTube a threat to Viacom"
ALL of the big media companies are scared of the Internet because it is breaking the monopoly they have on the flow of information and eroding their customer base of both viewers and advertisers. This has less to do with content than it does with undermining the emerging competitor at all costs.
OK, if you're still reading, and have access to US Patents, check out: US6857726 (Kia Silverbrook)
"This invention concerns a printhead capping mechanism for preventing evaporation of ink from a printhead when it is not in use"
The thing is 69 pages long, and from a cursory inspection, it seems like this is among the 1% of patents that actually describe something novel.
"If you would take the time to re-read my posting . . ."
It was not my intent to single you out, which is why I said "these posts". I also wasn't reading them in any particular order. I just selected a particular post for a reply to issue a collective retort to the general tone of the discussion.
Re this vs. other printers: "I'm not sure why you'd expect this to be any different."
It looks like Silverbrook's business plan is to sell/license "the technology" (software, print heads and control chips) to other companies. I don't even see that they're interested in selling ink, much less service contracts. Therefore it makes no sense to me that they would come to market with an inferior technology. Who would license it if there wasn't a compelling value proposition?
Some sort of disruptive technology in printing is long overdue. I think this looks very interesting, and possibly revolutionary. Perhaps my optimism is unwarranted, but I was rolling my eyes every time I read a post suggesting that this new technology would have more problems than the technology currently on the market.
I wondered the same thing, but I think the designers must have solved this.
I doubt that it's related to the ink's chemical properties. My guess is that having so many thousand tiny heads spraying the ink provides significant air exposure. Seems like a fine mist originating from many point sources would dry faster than a big stream coming from a large head moving back and forth.
http://www.memjet.com/media.aspx
(I was having trouble with the original link. This one's working right now)
How do all of these "It's going to clog" comments keep getting modded "Insightful"? Duh!
Now, there's always a reason for skepticism when it comes to press releases in the tech industry. To suggest that the engineers who designed an inkjet printer didn't think of "clogging" as a major potential issue is ludicrous. I don't have several years and a pile of venture capital to figure it out, but I'm sure that they've engineered around this. Do you think their business plan is to hype a fancy new printer technology and sell a few thousand printers before everyone knows that the things are just going to clog up?
You software geeks just aren't giving the hardware geeks the benefit of the doubt.
"I'm sure they have thought this through..."
Indeed. I'm sure they've thought through 99.9% of the problems the experts on this board are suggesting. The company is just NOT going to develop and announce a new product/technology without massive amounts of testing and de-bugging, and they're sure as hell not going to just forget about all of the KNOWN problems with current ink-jet products.
This isn't a piece of software folks.
"You're looking at 40 cents per millilitre . . . still ripping you off."
That sounds extremely cynical. Are you suggesting that being "ripped off" by paying $1.50 -> $3.50 perl ml is somehow better, or that people should just stop printing things to avoid getting screwed? You think gasoline is a better deal than ink? Try using it to print a photo(now THAT would be cool).
The whole point is the cost savings vs. competing products, not some philosophical discussion about what the cost of ink should be in an ideal world or the cost of ink vs. that of gas, milk or blood.
" . . .that would generate no profit . . ."
Not so fast. If a long-distance carrier had the guts to actually do that, I'd switch over to them the next business day and become an instant fanboy.
Insightful++
."
"Bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and pelicans were nearly wiped out because of DDT . .
Those results were because of the mis-use, or actually OVER-use of DDT. This discussion always touches a sore spot with me because the "DDT==BAD" crowd never stop to think about how and in what concentrations the chemical was being used when the serious environmental consequences were discovered. There are dozens, if not hundreds of chemicals in commercial use that would be equally harmful if dumped into the environment in the same concentrations.
That being said "GM Mosquito==BAD"
"Oh, this kind of "scare", "precautionary principle" actually led to DDT being banned in the world, while it had almost crushed malaria in Africa."
I don't see this as the same kind of debate, but I'm with you on DDT. The quintessential case of reactionary emotional responses overwhelming a logical cost-benefit analysis. For a while it was "DDT=good" so everybody decided they should use it to bathe their children and spray a 4" deep layer on every square inch of farmland. Then we discover that the stuff is having major environmental repurcussions and it's suddenly "DDT=bad" so it must be totally banned. Forget a pragmatic approach that might balance the incredible usefulness of the stuff with the potential for environmental damage.
Spraying it over hundreds of acres of farmland? Not a good idea.
Applying a light solution to indoor living spaces for mosquito control? Totally sensible with unparalleled effectiveness and = risk to humans vs. other pesticides.
Bringing back DDT for targeted applications is orders of magnitude more intelligent than releasing a GM insect into the environment.
" . . . researchers found that their Ubermosquito had developed a capability of transmitting AIDS now."
That was my first thought. I think that the risk of introducing GM PLANTS into the environment was unacceptable. Insects takes it to an entirely new level.
Haven't we learned enough from observations about invasive species to realize that randomly introducing a new organism into an ecosystem can have potentially devastating consequences? A mosquito that transmits AIDS is the nightmare scenario. What if it's resistant to pesticides? What if it is no longer appetizing to its natural predators?
Law of unintended consequences.
"We found that by hyper-accelerating the bodies, we could turn dead flesh into living tissue."
"The biosphere is in a perpetual state of unbalance!"
I'm obviously not suggesting that there is a "balance" in the biosphere where everything is going to remain perpetually constant. There is definitely an equilibrium however which provides a certain inertia when it comes to change.
"There is a constant churn of species . . . "
Only if you're considering a timeline of hundreds or thousands of years. An event such as the emergence of a new and unique species is the culmination of an incredibly long slow process, and evolution doesn't happen in a vacuum. i.e. The wolf population isn't going to remain constant and unchanged while successive generations of rabbits have fur that is increasingly fluorescent green.
I say "mutant freak genes" simply because they did not occur in a system where there are pressures and counter-pressures to regulate the rate and degree of change. These GM species never "evolved" in the presence of natural predators nor did they proliferate in an environment of limited resources. There are countless examples of "new" plants and animals being introduced into localized ecosystems(i.e. by transport over long distance) and raising hell in their new surroundings. Introducing a new "GM" species could easily have similar or more disastrous consequences.