Don't be silly. Mobile phones are great, but they'll never replace having physical lines to the home. Why? Because however much spectrum there is over-the-air, you can multiply that by orders of magnitude by simply laying lots of lines which each get their own 'private instance' of the spectrum. Massive parallelism. If *everyone* got rid of the cable/dsl/dialup Internet today, and everyone tried to use mobile broadband for their web browsing, playing WoW, watching videos from netflix, hulu, amazon, youtube, etc, I believe the mobile operators networks would completely shut down under the burden.
Look at how much problem AT&T has had with their network and the iPhone causing too much bandwidth demand. Now put everyones' computers on that network and watch the bandwidth demands jump by at least 10x (maybe 1000x for all I know).
As some other posters have mentioned, I suspect what the FCC has in mind, at least initially, is only to begin to replace the 'backend' infrastructure connecting phone companies together. I don't think users will see a change to the "last mile" for a long, long time. As you said, it's simple, robust, and the equipment that end-users have to buy is cheap (most phones cost less than $150, some as cheap as like $10). I expect that what we'll see (and I believe most phone cos, basically already do this) is that your 'analog' telephone line, when it reaches the phone office, is connected to what amounts to an ATA (analog telephone adapter) which then digitizes the voice and sends it on digitally (I think all of the major nationals in the U.S.A. like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc do this, and have since about 1985 or something). I think this mostly is about changing the digital protocols which the phone companies use to interconnect to each other (not sure about that, but that seems to be the most logical assumption; guess time will tell).
I *could* potentially see at some point in the future, going all IP, even to the last mile (if they do this, they should start mandating the use of IPv6 for last mile connections, seems like). But, in order to do this, we need to rethink broadband cabling a little bit. What I mean by that is, with the exception of DSL-over-twisted-pair, none of the currently deployed broadband technologies supports running power alongside the data lines.
It seems to me (and has seemed this way for a number of years), that the FCC could provide a truly useful bit of regulation by coming up with a standard for "Communications power) that all digital communications lines are required (at some point, obviously there will be a transition period - possibly quite lengthy) to carry.
I don't believe there's any reason, for example, that Coaxial cables couldn't be manufactured such that, in addition to the current center conductor and outer conductor (which carry the data signal), they would have additional 'rings' of outer conductors designed to carry some DC power for powering phones and other devices. Since telephone lines have already been carrying such power for years, I imagine the 'standard' for power would be the same as is used on telephone lines (although, perhaps, maybe it would be appropriate to think about higher voltage/amperage for modern devices).
Fiber optic cables could maybe have some conductor rings constructed coaxially around the optical waveguide in the 'center' of the optical coax, or maybe you just run some conductors alongside of the fiber without bothering to construct them coaxially - have them bonded together with insulator, like normal 3-conductor power cords are, or something.
Basically, the biggest complaint I hear with regards to the idea of replacing analog telephony in the home with digital telephony is that people are afraid the phone won't work if there's no power. Why not provide some useful power along with the data line? Is that really such a hard engineering problem? Heck, once the broadband connection enters the home, we already have Power-over-Ethernet as a standard, so the power from the ISP can just go into your Ethernet switch and power the switch and any telephony equipment attached to the switch.
Wait, so your 'decimal point' looks almost exactly like a commonly used notation for multiplication? When I was in elementary school, they used something which resembles a lowercase x for the multiplication operator, but it was adjusted 1/2 way up the letter-height. Then, when I was in junior high/high school, I was taught to use a small dot, 1/2 way up the height of the letters/numbers, to represent the multiplication operator. I believe the reason for using the dot was that when doing algebra/trig/calculus, where the letter x is often used as a variable, people might confuse the multiplication operator for the variable x (or vice versa).
So, what you're describing as a 'decimal point', I would most likely confuse for multiplication of two numbers. Great.
Why can't we come up with a standard, universal notation for mathematics which is understood exactly the same by everyone on the planet? This isn't normal spoken language, this is mathematics, and it needs to be universal. *sigh*. I don't really care what symbol/notation we use (so this isn't a "everyone should do it my way" rant; this is a "I don't care what it is, but lets figure out ONE way to do it, and everyone do it - I'm willing to change, JUST PICK SOMETHING".
Unless they either force the character to a particular name, or, as with Mass Effect, let you pick a first name, but only ever use the last name in dialogue (i.e., everyone is "Commander Shepherd" regardless of what you pick as a first name, which, as far as I can tell, is only ever used to identify which set of game saves you are currently using).
"why not develop a browser that cannot be censored"
This is one of those things that *sounds* good, but I suspect that in practice, is rather implausible. Even if, technologically, you could do something like a browser which uses TOR or something similar to get around the firewall, anyone in China using it would probably be at risk of being thrown in prison or beaten or something, using it. Now, if they want to take that risk, more power to them. I suspect, people being people, that most Chinese would rather use the 'censored' browser, and take advantage of what limited freedom of communication that gives them, than to risk severe penalties for using a 'contraband' browser.
For browser vendors like Opera, I really feel like, even with capitulation with the "Great Firewall", they are still helping people. Why? If Opera didn't create the "Chinese" version of Opera Mini, it is entirely likely that China would completely block their rendering servers, and then people wouldn't be able to see *any websites at all* with Opera (although, that's a good argument for why you shouldn't use remote rendering, from a purely technological point of view; give me a real browser). But, be that as it may, even censored Web access is, I think, probably better for freedom and human rights than no web access at all, because I'm sure the government can't censor 100% of 'unapproved' speech 100% of the time, and even if they could, history shows us that people are remarkably good at 'working the system', to get speech past the censors which is either borderline, or coded, or has multiple levels of meaning.
Would Opera really serve people in China better, by not participating in China at all? Possibly. It's a tough call. One that I'm perfectly willing to leave to the Opera management and employees. Sure, maybe they are only interested in making a few Yuan, but I'll leave them the benefit of the doubt in this case.
I think the argument about an OSHA violation might be a little silly, but. . . I wonder if they could reasonably argue that the residues from Cigarette smoke are user-caused damage, like spilling a drink or soup or household cleaning solvents into the computer?
I mean a warranty cannot explicitely state every type of possible user-caused damage to the device, but I think most people would agree that it is reasonable for a company to void the warranty if you did something stupid that damaged the machine. Seems like smoking near a computer, and clogging it up with tar, should fall into that category, shouldn't it?
I have a serious problem, though, with the Class action system in our country today. The things you list are indeed the 'benefits' of the class action, but I've seen too many class action settlements in which the 'compensation' not only was worth only about $5, but it wasn't even $5 *cash*. I've seriously received mailing (one about a Verizon Wireless class action) where the 'compensation' was a *coupon*. That's right, to get my 'share' of the settlement, I'd have to *spend more money* with the party which ripped me off in the first place.
I fail to see how a $5-10 coupon/credit or similar 'compensation' is in any form a justice. If they hadn't engaged in the behavior for which they were sued in the first place, I'd have had that 5 bucks as CASH IN MY POCKET to do whatever I wanted with, but with the settlement, I'm forced to spend that $5 (and you can't get *anything* for $5 with a cell phone company, so in reality, I'd have to spend substantially more) with that company. Basically, the lawsuit settlement *rewarded Verizon for misconduct*.
Of course, the lawyers made a lot of money in legal fees for that case. So, I rather think the Grandparent has a very legitimate point - the lawyers almost always make a lot of money, while the class members *often* get screwed.
"Perhaps. But the kicker here is that the Xbox 360 is unable to be used on any other network."
Which is why I don't own one.
Nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy an XBox. I'm a PC gamer because I appreciate the freedom to use the FULL INTERNET, and not be locked down to some service like XBox Live. When the orig. XBox was first coming out with online functionality, I thought "Oh, cool. Consoles are finally catching up to what PCs have been able to do for 5 or 6 years now. Better late than never, I guess". Then I read that even though it used the Internet, it would only connect to Microsoft's servers, and I thought, "That's just like Microsoft - use an Internet connection which can connect to the whole world, but then lock you to connecting to 1 server."
Seriously, people need to start taking responsibility for their buying decisions. You know what Microsoft and Apple are like, yet people moan and whine about how they lock what their users can do with the XBox or iPhone. If you don't like the restrictions the seller is putting on you, just don't buy what they are selling. If enough people do that, the problem will fix itself. But, too many people want to run to the government after the fact and complain.
Do I think this is kind of bone-headed on the part of Microsoft? Yes, I do. But, I agree that it's their network, and they can basically set the terms of use for it. Caveat emptor.
"And the fact that it won't look at what's on the clipboard, and use those dimensions when I go to file->new."
In older versions of the GIMP, if you wanted to create a new image from the Clipboard, you could go to "File->Acquire->From Clipboard" (granted, not the *most* obvious place to find it, but it does make some sense). In more recent versions of the GIMP, they've tried to improve upon that, so you go to "File->Create->From Clipboard". I suppose maybe there might be a 'more intuitive' way to do that, but that seems pretty reasonable to me.
What version of GIMP are you using, something from like 1998?
1) Make selection 2) Open "Image" menu in main menubar 3) Click "Crop to Selection"
You're done. That seems pretty easy and straight forward to me, and sounds almost identical to what you described. It's the way I've been cropping images for as long as I can remember in GIMP. I'm sure there's *always* a harder way you can find to do something, but that doesn't mean it's the way you are intended to.
Seems to me that the problem with that is that the 'new recording', while it does have a second copyright, is still subject to the original copyright because it is a derivative work, right? So, the record company *might* hold the copyright on the derivative, but without permission from the primary copyright holder, they have no right to distribute the derivative work, I think? IANAL, so if I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
Actually, I have in the past wondered the same thing, so I tried to see if I could find an answer. I don't really know for sure, but from what I could find, it seems like the answer is:
1) Helium is pretty inert, and basically won't react with any other elements to form any dangerous compounds (I think, not entirely sure about this, but that seems to be the answer)
2) Helium, apparently, won't generally hurt organic life (again, because it is so inert), although, of course, large quantities in a confined space could suffocate you.
But,
3) Helium naturally rises to the very top of the atmosphere, where there is apparently a naturally occuring layer of helium, and the helium layer up there has, from what I can tell, no adverse effects like global warming, and that helium gradually leaches off into space anyhow.
And finally, and possibly most importantly,
4) Fusion power is expected to consume very small quantities of hydrogen, and produce very small quantities of helium. I found the following bit on the ITER.org website:
Some of the key features of fusion make it an attractive option as part of a future energy mix. Fusion fuels are abundantly available and inherently safe. Only tiny amounts of Deuterium and Tritium are necessary to fuel the fusion reaction: just a few grams are present in the plasma at any one time.
In fact, a fusion reaction is about four million times more energetic than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas. While a 1 000 MW coal-fired power plant requires 2.7 million tons of coal per year, a fusion plant of the kind envisioned for the second half of this century will only require 250 kilos of fuel per year, half of it Deuterium, half of it Tritium.
In addition, fusion emits no pollution or greenhouse gases. Its major by-product is Helium: an inert, non-toxic gas.
So, even if there are hundreds of these around the world, eventually, it sounds like combined, they'd only maybe exhaust a ton or two of helium every year? I might be wrong, but I bet much more Helium is released from other sources - I've seen it mentioned that helium is naturally released all the time from the Earth's crust due to decay of something, maybe radon(?), and it sounds like the balloon and flowers industry releases many times the amount of Helium every year than would be released by fusion plants.;-)
"Reprocessing can last us for a time but it requires more infrastructure and time to put in place."
The various estimates I've seen indicate that Reprocessing can last us a *very long* time (hundreds of years, possibly thousands of years). In the meantime, we should be working on solar (both terrestrial and space), wind, etc, and Fusion. Once we can make the leap to fusion, we don't really need any more Uranium (or only relatively small quantities) - fusion just needs water, and most countries on Earth have access to large supplies of water (of course, there are some land-locked semi-arid nations without access to much water, but you don't even really need *much* water for fusion, just some). The water doesn't even need to be fresh water, I believe - places like Israel, Palestine, Southern California, where fresh water is in short supply, still have access to lots of salt water from the Mediterranean (or other Seas/Oceans, for other countries in similar situations).
Heck, once we've unlocked fusion, you could potentially create Fusion-powered desalination plants that could solve the fresh water crises in lots of places like that - instead of using the energy to create electricity, use it to desalinate ocean water; or maybe do both simultaneously (could you create an efficient electric plant, I wonder, which uses the heat energy to boil off water from salt water, generating fresh steam, run the fresh steam through your electric turbines, condense the steam into fresh water, and pump that fresh water out of the electric plant into a water treatment plant for clorination, softening, etc)?
According to Wikipedia, the earth receives 174 Petawatts of power from the Sun, naturally (So, in Sci notation, 1.74 * 10^17). You are talking about "importing" an additional 1 Gigawatt of solar power per satellite ( 1 * 10^9), which works out to an addition of.000000575 (rounded) percent more energy per second into the Earth system, per 1 GW satellite.
I believe the theory is that by reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emessions, you will increase (eventually - it takes awhile for greenhouse gasses to be pulled out of the atmosphere by plants and other lifeforms, and other natural processes) the rate at which energy *leaves* the atmosphere, back into space, by a far greater amount than you are importing. So, you trade an extremely small (percentage wise) increase in additional energy entering the system, for, hopefully, a much larger increase in energy leaving the system. Oh, btw, I didn't even include in this analysis Geothermal energy entering the atmosphere (mainly because I couldn't quickly find any source of a figure of how much energy the earth radiates [and what escapes from volcanoes, vents, etc], but I think we can presume that, while probably not as large as the energy from the Sun, there is still a substantial amount of energy entering the atmosphere from the Earth).
I really truly believe that at least *part* of the explanation of this also goes to the old "Security Theater" idea - maybe you can't actually *make* the public safer, but the Iraqi military can say "we spent 1 Million on bomb-detecting equipment" (or whatever the value is). Who cares that the bomb detecting equipment is useless? People, most of whom (in any society - even the the "First World" nations) are more than willing to believe flim-flam claims (or feel inadequate to question the claims of others, at least, and so accept the word of those others), will then feel 'safer' knowing that the military is using 'bomb detectors' to stop bombs.
Of course, as the recent car-bombings in Iraq have shown, these 'bomb detectors' aren't getting the job done. Hopefully, as people keep dieing from bomb blasts, someone in the government will look for *real* solutions instead of quackery.
I honestly don't think sentences should be either longer or shorter based on genetics. While a genetic understanding of a pre-disposition to aggression might be useful in helping to determine treatment/counselling for the convict, it is injust to add extra years beyond what is reasonable for a given crime, just because of a person's genetic makeup, and it's equally unjust to shorten it because of the genetics.
While I generally agree with most of what you say, I do have a couple points of disagreement. . .
"Prison has two purposes: removing dangerous people from society until they are no longer a threat. .."
We can never really say for sure if someone is still a threat or not. At least in the U.S., recidivism rates are pretty high, which suggests that we have really no idea whether someone is a threat or not. Until such time as we can figure out better ways to determine if people are still a threat or not, we can say that this is not really a purpose of prison. Generally speaking, prison sentences are supposed to in some way be determined by the crime. The worse the crime, the longer the incarceration, in general. So, basically, I think we could say prison's purpose is remove dangerous people from society for a long time, but not "until they are no longer a threat", since we really have no means of determining that.
I don't have a Kindle, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the concept is, the Kindle isn't a 'general purpose' Internet device, like a smart phone - that is, I don't think you can really just browse the web, stream audio and video from youtube, hulu, or whatever. Basically, the data connection on the Kindle is special-purpose - for downloading Kindle eBooks/eZines/eNewspapers, which are a) relatively small, and b) the price of the 3G network bandwidth for the download is essentially bundled in the price of the content you purchase.
So, Amazon, I think, worked out a deal with carriers in different countries to pay for the cost of the downloads, by sharing the revenue generated by the content purchases with the network operators(granted, there is also some activity, like the user browsing the amazon kindle 'store', which doesn't directly generate revenue, but which is recovered by the user purchases).
In such a business model, the individual users are probably generating, collectively, much less bandwidth-use per device (on average) than your average smart-phone user, so the costs to the 3G network operator are relatively small. Any users who are using a lot more bandwidth than the average user are also paying a lot more for content than the average user, so the high-use users pay for themselves (as do the low-use users).
I could very easily see Nintendo working out such a deal with network operators if the only thing the online connectivity is used for is browsing the Nintendo store to find and purchase games/DLC, and then download the games after purchase. If, however, the Nintendo device allows web browsing and online play against/with other Nintendo users, then I have a harder time seeing that business model succeed (because the users, then, aren't necessarily paying indirectly for all the network bandwidth they use).
How is it that the author can say Microsoft's money is being used for this project? If you rob me of money, and then I sue you and the court *gives me back my money*, and then I buy something with it, I'm not buying it with *your* money, I'm buying it with *my* money (or, in this case, L.A. Taxpayers' money).
According to the court, it apparently never was Microsoft's money to begin with. (One could endlessly argue about Monopolies, and whether Microsoft really is a monopoly, and whether the court award was correct, but that's tangential to my argument, so I don't want to get into that - my point is, even if it *was* Microsoft's money before the lawsuit, it is no longer their money afterwords).
The thing I love about Slashdot is that, apparently, no one actually reads the articles. TFA said that the carbon is being used as part of a PUMP to evacuate the waste helium (and some hydrogen, as well as dust created from the walls of the chamber gradually deteriorating from neutron bombardment) from the chamber and maintain vaccuum. They didn't say they were using this as shielding.
I'm not dictating any such thing. I'm not advocating government wage fixing or anything like that. But, we all, when thinking about making any investment, or selling or buying goods, have to come up with a rational basis of what something *should* be worth in the market.
When economists talk about economics, I often hear them talk about efficient pricing and such concepts. There is, generally, an idea even among the most free-market libertarians that there is a price that things are worth.
On an individual level, it's something all of us do frequently. Most of us, anyhow, when we go shopping for just about anything, whether it's food, clothes, household items, or housing, we consider what the price of a thing *should* be when we decide whether the price the seller is asking is reasonable or not.
If the education costs more than you will ever hope to make back (i.e. has a negative ROI), or you only ever break even, then education is not economically rational, and becomes a 'luxury' that only the rich can afford.
The price that anything *should* be worth is a price at which both buyer and seller get some amount of positive value from the transaction. Of course, market economics don't always allow us to buy and sell things at the price they *should* be at, but in the long run, prices usually end up being somewhere near the price they should be.
Maybe money isn't the sole motivator. Did it ever occur to you that maybe there are students that really want to go into science, but because of the job prospects (or perceived lack thereof), don't think they can *afford* to go into science?
I mean, if you think you are going to give up 6 years of your life/potential income [well, you can still work while in school, perhaps, but probably not make as much income as you could if you were working full-time + overtime at a job for those years], and spend $60,000 (plus interest, so probably closer to $100,000), say, to get a Masters in Science, and then you think you will only make 40,000-60,000/yr, you might not think you can afford that. I have a cousin, only has a high school education, works for a road construction/repair company. On the one hand, he has to work a lot of overtime, but on the other hand, I think he's making in that same $40,000-60,000/yr range [maybe more]. He's been doing that basically since he graduated from high school, and never had to take out any student loans. So, the way I see it, someone in his position potentially comes up about $300,000 ahead (on graduation day) of the guy who went to school for 6 years and took out those loans.
That's the reality of education. In order to justify the expense, you need to make good money after graduation - such people should probably be starting at $70,000-$90,000 yr almost straight out of school, with raises every year which outpaces inflation, just to allow them to recover that "lost" $300,000 over the course of say the first 10 years of their employement, and then continue to make that kind of money after that so they come out *ahead* of the people who didn't go to school.
But, it sounds like, from the article, that's not happening, so while students might be attracted to science, they may just feel that they can't sacrifice their financial future in order to benefit corporations who aren't willing to give them reasonable compensation for their education.
Sounds like your company needs a decent lawyer. There are such things as 'contracts', e.g. we pay for your education, and you agree to work for us for a minimum of 3 years (or maybe 5 years) after graduation, or else reimburse the company on a pro-rated basis for the educational benefit (so if your school bills were 25,000, and you agreed to work 5 years, but quit after 2, you'd owe them 15,000). I suppose, though, that if they required you to sign something like that, maybe no one would sign up?
Slashdot articles are essentially just links to 'real' articles by other authors/publishers. So, if there are a number of Slashdot articles about a topic, wouldn't that tend to indicate that someone (possibly multiple someones) in "The Industry" are writing about this? Granted, there's always the possibility of Cherry Picking - that is, if the/. Eds. *are* biased, they can 'overrepresent' the articles, but honestly, 4 articles in a year doesn't strike me exactly as cherry picking - just covering what various IT journalists are writing.
"Yes, if your primary concern is 'how do I share my mobile internet connection with others,'"
Well, if that's not your primary concern, why bother with a Wifi router? It's just something else to go wrong (e.g. local interference in the Wifi channels). If I have no desire to share my cellular internet connection, wouldn't it be a lot simpler to use an ExpressCard or USB dongle to connect to the cellular network?
Now, if you want to share the connection, I actually do like the idea of something like the MiFi. Why? Because the problem with using someone's computer as a router is that, when it works, it works fine, but if the laptop crashes, or the user just wants to turn it off, or for whatever reason the laptop needs to go out of service, everyone else loses their network connection. With something like the Mifi, while it's possible that something could go wrong with the Mifi, dedicated hardware *usually* is more reliable than someone's PC/laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be silly. Mobile phones are great, but they'll never replace having physical lines to the home. Why? Because however much spectrum there is over-the-air, you can multiply that by orders of magnitude by simply laying lots of lines which each get their own 'private instance' of the spectrum. Massive parallelism. If *everyone* got rid of the cable/dsl/dialup Internet today, and everyone tried to use mobile broadband for their web browsing, playing WoW, watching videos from netflix, hulu, amazon, youtube, etc, I believe the mobile operators networks would completely shut down under the burden.
Look at how much problem AT&T has had with their network and the iPhone causing too much bandwidth demand. Now put everyones' computers on that network and watch the bandwidth demands jump by at least 10x (maybe 1000x for all I know).
As some other posters have mentioned, I suspect what the FCC has in mind, at least initially, is only to begin to replace the 'backend' infrastructure connecting phone companies together. I don't think users will see a change to the "last mile" for a long, long time. As you said, it's simple, robust, and the equipment that end-users have to buy is cheap (most phones cost less than $150, some as cheap as like $10). I expect that what we'll see (and I believe most phone cos, basically already do this) is that your 'analog' telephone line, when it reaches the phone office, is connected to what amounts to an ATA (analog telephone adapter) which then digitizes the voice and sends it on digitally (I think all of the major nationals in the U.S.A. like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc do this, and have since about 1985 or something). I think this mostly is about changing the digital protocols which the phone companies use to interconnect to each other (not sure about that, but that seems to be the most logical assumption; guess time will tell).
I *could* potentially see at some point in the future, going all IP, even to the last mile (if they do this, they should start mandating the use of IPv6 for last mile connections, seems like). But, in order to do this, we need to rethink broadband cabling a little bit. What I mean by that is, with the exception of DSL-over-twisted-pair, none of the currently deployed broadband technologies supports running power alongside the data lines.
It seems to me (and has seemed this way for a number of years), that the FCC could provide a truly useful bit of regulation by coming up with a standard for "Communications power) that all digital communications lines are required (at some point, obviously there will be a transition period - possibly quite lengthy) to carry.
I don't believe there's any reason, for example, that Coaxial cables couldn't be manufactured such that, in addition to the current center conductor and outer conductor (which carry the data signal), they would have additional 'rings' of outer conductors designed to carry some DC power for powering phones and other devices. Since telephone lines have already been carrying such power for years, I imagine the 'standard' for power would be the same as is used on telephone lines (although, perhaps, maybe it would be appropriate to think about higher voltage/amperage for modern devices).
Fiber optic cables could maybe have some conductor rings constructed coaxially around the optical waveguide in the 'center' of the optical coax, or maybe you just run some conductors alongside of the fiber without bothering to construct them coaxially - have them bonded together with insulator, like normal 3-conductor power cords are, or something.
Basically, the biggest complaint I hear with regards to the idea of replacing analog telephony in the home with digital telephony is that people are afraid the phone won't work if there's no power. Why not provide some useful power along with the data line? Is that really such a hard engineering problem? Heck, once the broadband connection enters the home, we already have Power-over-Ethernet as a standard, so the power from the ISP can just go into your Ethernet switch and power the switch and any telephony equipment attached to the switch.
Wait, so your 'decimal point' looks almost exactly like a commonly used notation for multiplication? When I was in elementary school, they used something which resembles a lowercase x for the multiplication operator, but it was adjusted 1/2 way up the letter-height. Then, when I was in junior high/high school, I was taught to use a small dot, 1/2 way up the height of the letters/numbers, to represent the multiplication operator. I believe the reason for using the dot was that when doing algebra/trig/calculus, where the letter x is often used as a variable, people might confuse the multiplication operator for the variable x (or vice versa).
So, what you're describing as a 'decimal point', I would most likely confuse for multiplication of two numbers. Great.
Why can't we come up with a standard, universal notation for mathematics which is understood exactly the same by everyone on the planet? This isn't normal spoken language, this is mathematics, and it needs to be universal. *sigh*. I don't really care what symbol/notation we use (so this isn't a "everyone should do it my way" rant; this is a "I don't care what it is, but lets figure out ONE way to do it, and everyone do it - I'm willing to change, JUST PICK SOMETHING".
Unless they either force the character to a particular name, or, as with Mass Effect, let you pick a first name, but only ever use the last name in dialogue (i.e., everyone is "Commander Shepherd" regardless of what you pick as a first name, which, as far as I can tell, is only ever used to identify which set of game saves you are currently using).
"why not develop a browser that cannot be censored"
This is one of those things that *sounds* good, but I suspect that in practice, is rather implausible. Even if, technologically, you could do something like a browser which uses TOR or something similar to get around the firewall, anyone in China using it would probably be at risk of being thrown in prison or beaten or something, using it. Now, if they want to take that risk, more power to them. I suspect, people being people, that most Chinese would rather use the 'censored' browser, and take advantage of what limited freedom of communication that gives them, than to risk severe penalties for using a 'contraband' browser.
For browser vendors like Opera, I really feel like, even with capitulation with the "Great Firewall", they are still helping people. Why? If Opera didn't create the "Chinese" version of Opera Mini, it is entirely likely that China would completely block their rendering servers, and then people wouldn't be able to see *any websites at all* with Opera (although, that's a good argument for why you shouldn't use remote rendering, from a purely technological point of view; give me a real browser). But, be that as it may, even censored Web access is, I think, probably better for freedom and human rights than no web access at all, because I'm sure the government can't censor 100% of 'unapproved' speech 100% of the time, and even if they could, history shows us that people are remarkably good at 'working the system', to get speech past the censors which is either borderline, or coded, or has multiple levels of meaning.
Would Opera really serve people in China better, by not participating in China at all? Possibly. It's a tough call. One that I'm perfectly willing to leave to the Opera management and employees. Sure, maybe they are only interested in making a few Yuan, but I'll leave them the benefit of the doubt in this case.
I think the argument about an OSHA violation might be a little silly, but. . . I wonder if they could reasonably argue that the residues from Cigarette smoke are user-caused damage, like spilling a drink or soup or household cleaning solvents into the computer?
I mean a warranty cannot explicitely state every type of possible user-caused damage to the device, but I think most people would agree that it is reasonable for a company to void the warranty if you did something stupid that damaged the machine. Seems like smoking near a computer, and clogging it up with tar, should fall into that category, shouldn't it?
I have a serious problem, though, with the Class action system in our country today. The things you list are indeed the 'benefits' of the class action, but I've seen too many class action settlements in which the 'compensation' not only was worth only about $5, but it wasn't even $5 *cash*. I've seriously received mailing (one about a Verizon Wireless class action) where the 'compensation' was a *coupon*. That's right, to get my 'share' of the settlement, I'd have to *spend more money* with the party which ripped me off in the first place.
I fail to see how a $5-10 coupon/credit or similar 'compensation' is in any form a justice. If they hadn't engaged in the behavior for which they were sued in the first place, I'd have had that 5 bucks as CASH IN MY POCKET to do whatever I wanted with, but with the settlement, I'm forced to spend that $5 (and you can't get *anything* for $5 with a cell phone company, so in reality, I'd have to spend substantially more) with that company. Basically, the lawsuit settlement *rewarded Verizon for misconduct*.
Of course, the lawyers made a lot of money in legal fees for that case. So, I rather think the Grandparent has a very legitimate point - the lawyers almost always make a lot of money, while the class members *often* get screwed.
"Perhaps. But the kicker here is that the Xbox 360 is unable to be used on any other network."
Which is why I don't own one.
Nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy an XBox. I'm a PC gamer because I appreciate the freedom to use the FULL INTERNET, and not be locked down to some service like XBox Live. When the orig. XBox was first coming out with online functionality, I thought "Oh, cool. Consoles are finally catching up to what PCs have been able to do for 5 or 6 years now. Better late than never, I guess". Then I read that even though it used the Internet, it would only connect to Microsoft's servers, and I thought, "That's just like Microsoft - use an Internet connection which can connect to the whole world, but then lock you to connecting to 1 server."
Seriously, people need to start taking responsibility for their buying decisions. You know what Microsoft and Apple are like, yet people moan and whine about how they lock what their users can do with the XBox or iPhone. If you don't like the restrictions the seller is putting on you, just don't buy what they are selling. If enough people do that, the problem will fix itself. But, too many people want to run to the government after the fact and complain.
Do I think this is kind of bone-headed on the part of Microsoft? Yes, I do. But, I agree that it's their network, and they can basically set the terms of use for it. Caveat emptor.
"And the fact that it won't look at what's on the clipboard, and use those dimensions when I go to file->new."
In older versions of the GIMP, if you wanted to create a new image from the Clipboard, you could go to "File->Acquire->From Clipboard" (granted, not the *most* obvious place to find it, but it does make some sense). In more recent versions of the GIMP, they've tried to improve upon that, so you go to "File->Create->From Clipboard". I suppose maybe there might be a 'more intuitive' way to do that, but that seems pretty reasonable to me.
What version of GIMP are you using, something from like 1998?
1) Make selection
2) Open "Image" menu in main menubar
3) Click "Crop to Selection"
You're done. That seems pretty easy and straight forward to me, and sounds almost identical to what you described. It's the way I've been cropping images for as long as I can remember in GIMP. I'm sure there's *always* a harder way you can find to do something, but that doesn't mean it's the way you are intended to.
Seems to me that the problem with that is that the 'new recording', while it does have a second copyright, is still subject to the original copyright because it is a derivative work, right? So, the record company *might* hold the copyright on the derivative, but without permission from the primary copyright holder, they have no right to distribute the derivative work, I think? IANAL, so if I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
Actually, I have in the past wondered the same thing, so I tried to see if I could find an answer. I don't really know for sure, but from what I could find, it seems like the answer is:
1) Helium is pretty inert, and basically won't react with any other elements to form any dangerous compounds (I think, not entirely sure about this, but that seems to be the answer)
2) Helium, apparently, won't generally hurt organic life (again, because it is so inert), although, of course, large quantities in a confined space could suffocate you.
But,
3) Helium naturally rises to the very top of the atmosphere, where there is apparently a naturally occuring layer of helium, and the helium layer up there has, from what I can tell, no adverse effects like global warming, and that helium gradually leaches off into space anyhow.
And finally, and possibly most importantly,
4) Fusion power is expected to consume very small quantities of hydrogen, and produce very small quantities of helium. I found the following bit on the ITER.org website:
So, even if there are hundreds of these around the world, eventually, it sounds like combined, they'd only maybe exhaust a ton or two of helium every year? I might be wrong, but I bet much more Helium is released from other sources - I've seen it mentioned that helium is naturally released all the time from the Earth's crust due to decay of something, maybe radon(?), and it sounds like the balloon and flowers industry releases many times the amount of Helium every year than would be released by fusion plants. ;-)
"Reprocessing can last us for a time but it requires more infrastructure and time to put in place."
The various estimates I've seen indicate that Reprocessing can last us a *very long* time (hundreds of years, possibly thousands of years). In the meantime, we should be working on solar (both terrestrial and space), wind, etc, and Fusion. Once we can make the leap to fusion, we don't really need any more Uranium (or only relatively small quantities) - fusion just needs water, and most countries on Earth have access to large supplies of water (of course, there are some land-locked semi-arid nations without access to much water, but you don't even really need *much* water for fusion, just some). The water doesn't even need to be fresh water, I believe - places like Israel, Palestine, Southern California, where fresh water is in short supply, still have access to lots of salt water from the Mediterranean (or other Seas/Oceans, for other countries in similar situations).
Heck, once we've unlocked fusion, you could potentially create Fusion-powered desalination plants that could solve the fresh water crises in lots of places like that - instead of using the energy to create electricity, use it to desalinate ocean water; or maybe do both simultaneously (could you create an efficient electric plant, I wonder, which uses the heat energy to boil off water from salt water, generating fresh steam, run the fresh steam through your electric turbines, condense the steam into fresh water, and pump that fresh water out of the electric plant into a water treatment plant for clorination, softening, etc)?
According to Wikipedia, the earth receives 174 Petawatts of power from the Sun, naturally (So, in Sci notation, 1.74 * 10^17). You are talking about "importing" an additional 1 Gigawatt of solar power per satellite ( 1 * 10^9), which works out to an addition of .000000575 (rounded) percent more energy per second into the Earth system, per 1 GW satellite.
I believe the theory is that by reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emessions, you will increase (eventually - it takes awhile for greenhouse gasses to be pulled out of the atmosphere by plants and other lifeforms, and other natural processes) the rate at which energy *leaves* the atmosphere, back into space, by a far greater amount than you are importing. So, you trade an extremely small (percentage wise) increase in additional energy entering the system, for, hopefully, a much larger increase in energy leaving the system. Oh, btw, I didn't even include in this analysis Geothermal energy entering the atmosphere (mainly because I couldn't quickly find any source of a figure of how much energy the earth radiates [and what escapes from volcanoes, vents, etc], but I think we can presume that, while probably not as large as the energy from the Sun, there is still a substantial amount of energy entering the atmosphere from the Earth).
I really truly believe that at least *part* of the explanation of this also goes to the old "Security Theater" idea - maybe you can't actually *make* the public safer, but the Iraqi military can say "we spent 1 Million on bomb-detecting equipment" (or whatever the value is). Who cares that the bomb detecting equipment is useless? People, most of whom (in any society - even the the "First World" nations) are more than willing to believe flim-flam claims (or feel inadequate to question the claims of others, at least, and so accept the word of those others), will then feel 'safer' knowing that the military is using 'bomb detectors' to stop bombs.
Of course, as the recent car-bombings in Iraq have shown, these 'bomb detectors' aren't getting the job done. Hopefully, as people keep dieing from bomb blasts, someone in the government will look for *real* solutions instead of quackery.
Oh, forgot my second point.
I honestly don't think sentences should be either longer or shorter based on genetics. While a genetic understanding of a pre-disposition to aggression might be useful in helping to determine treatment/counselling for the convict, it is injust to add extra years beyond what is reasonable for a given crime, just because of a person's genetic makeup, and it's equally unjust to shorten it because of the genetics.
While I generally agree with most of what you say, I do have a couple points of disagreement. . .
"Prison has two purposes: removing dangerous people from society until they are no longer a threat. . ."
We can never really say for sure if someone is still a threat or not. At least in the U.S., recidivism rates are pretty high, which suggests that we have really no idea whether someone is a threat or not. Until such time as we can figure out better ways to determine if people are still a threat or not, we can say that this is not really a purpose of prison. Generally speaking, prison sentences are supposed to in some way be determined by the crime. The worse the crime, the longer the incarceration, in general. So, basically, I think we could say prison's purpose is remove dangerous people from society for a long time, but not "until they are no longer a threat", since we really have no means of determining that.
I don't have a Kindle, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the concept is, the Kindle isn't a 'general purpose' Internet device, like a smart phone - that is, I don't think you can really just browse the web, stream audio and video from youtube, hulu, or whatever. Basically, the data connection on the Kindle is special-purpose - for downloading Kindle eBooks/eZines/eNewspapers, which are a) relatively small, and b) the price of the 3G network bandwidth for the download is essentially bundled in the price of the content you purchase.
So, Amazon, I think, worked out a deal with carriers in different countries to pay for the cost of the downloads, by sharing the revenue generated by the content purchases with the network operators(granted, there is also some activity, like the user browsing the amazon kindle 'store', which doesn't directly generate revenue, but which is recovered by the user purchases).
In such a business model, the individual users are probably generating, collectively, much less bandwidth-use per device (on average) than your average smart-phone user, so the costs to the 3G network operator are relatively small. Any users who are using a lot more bandwidth than the average user are also paying a lot more for content than the average user, so the high-use users pay for themselves (as do the low-use users).
I could very easily see Nintendo working out such a deal with network operators if the only thing the online connectivity is used for is browsing the Nintendo store to find and purchase games/DLC, and then download the games after purchase. If, however, the Nintendo device allows web browsing and online play against/with other Nintendo users, then I have a harder time seeing that business model succeed (because the users, then, aren't necessarily paying indirectly for all the network bandwidth they use).
How is it that the author can say Microsoft's money is being used for this project? If you rob me of money, and then I sue you and the court *gives me back my money*, and then I buy something with it, I'm not buying it with *your* money, I'm buying it with *my* money (or, in this case, L.A. Taxpayers' money).
According to the court, it apparently never was Microsoft's money to begin with. (One could endlessly argue about Monopolies, and whether Microsoft really is a monopoly, and whether the court award was correct, but that's tangential to my argument, so I don't want to get into that - my point is, even if it *was* Microsoft's money before the lawsuit, it is no longer their money afterwords).
The thing I love about Slashdot is that, apparently, no one actually reads the articles. TFA said that the carbon is being used as part of a PUMP to evacuate the waste helium (and some hydrogen, as well as dust created from the walls of the chamber gradually deteriorating from neutron bombardment) from the chamber and maintain vaccuum. They didn't say they were using this as shielding.
I'm not dictating any such thing. I'm not advocating government wage fixing or anything like that. But, we all, when thinking about making any investment, or selling or buying goods, have to come up with a rational basis of what something *should* be worth in the market.
When economists talk about economics, I often hear them talk about efficient pricing and such concepts. There is, generally, an idea even among the most free-market libertarians that there is a price that things are worth.
On an individual level, it's something all of us do frequently. Most of us, anyhow, when we go shopping for just about anything, whether it's food, clothes, household items, or housing, we consider what the price of a thing *should* be when we decide whether the price the seller is asking is reasonable or not.
If the education costs more than you will ever hope to make back (i.e. has a negative ROI), or you only ever break even, then education is not economically rational, and becomes a 'luxury' that only the rich can afford.
The price that anything *should* be worth is a price at which both buyer and seller get some amount of positive value from the transaction. Of course, market economics don't always allow us to buy and sell things at the price they *should* be at, but in the long run, prices usually end up being somewhere near the price they should be.
Maybe money isn't the sole motivator. Did it ever occur to you that maybe there are students that really want to go into science, but because of the job prospects (or perceived lack thereof), don't think they can *afford* to go into science?
I mean, if you think you are going to give up 6 years of your life/potential income [well, you can still work while in school, perhaps, but probably not make as much income as you could if you were working full-time + overtime at a job for those years], and spend $60,000 (plus interest, so probably closer to $100,000), say, to get a Masters in Science, and then you think you will only make 40,000-60,000/yr, you might not think you can afford that. I have a cousin, only has a high school education, works for a road construction/repair company. On the one hand, he has to work a lot of overtime, but on the other hand, I think he's making in that same $40,000-60,000/yr range [maybe more]. He's been doing that basically since he graduated from high school, and never had to take out any student loans. So, the way I see it, someone in his position potentially comes up about $300,000 ahead (on graduation day) of the guy who went to school for 6 years and took out those loans.
That's the reality of education. In order to justify the expense, you need to make good money after graduation - such people should probably be starting at $70,000-$90,000 yr almost straight out of school, with raises every year which outpaces inflation, just to allow them to recover that "lost" $300,000 over the course of say the first 10 years of their employement, and then continue to make that kind of money after that so they come out *ahead* of the people who didn't go to school.
But, it sounds like, from the article, that's not happening, so while students might be attracted to science, they may just feel that they can't sacrifice their financial future in order to benefit corporations who aren't willing to give them reasonable compensation for their education.
Sounds like your company needs a decent lawyer. There are such things as 'contracts', e.g. we pay for your education, and you agree to work for us for a minimum of 3 years (or maybe 5 years) after graduation, or else reimburse the company on a pro-rated basis for the educational benefit (so if your school bills were 25,000, and you agreed to work 5 years, but quit after 2, you'd owe them 15,000). I suppose, though, that if they required you to sign something like that, maybe no one would sign up?
Slashdot articles are essentially just links to 'real' articles by other authors/publishers. So, if there are a number of Slashdot articles about a topic, wouldn't that tend to indicate that someone (possibly multiple someones) in "The Industry" are writing about this? Granted, there's always the possibility of Cherry Picking - that is, if the /. Eds. *are* biased, they can 'overrepresent' the articles, but honestly, 4 articles in a year doesn't strike me exactly as cherry picking - just covering what various IT journalists are writing.
"Yes, if your primary concern is 'how do I share my mobile internet connection with others,'"
Well, if that's not your primary concern, why bother with a Wifi router? It's just something else to go wrong (e.g. local interference in the Wifi channels). If I have no desire to share my cellular internet connection, wouldn't it be a lot simpler to use an ExpressCard or USB dongle to connect to the cellular network?
Now, if you want to share the connection, I actually do like the idea of something like the MiFi. Why? Because the problem with using someone's computer as a router is that, when it works, it works fine, but if the laptop crashes, or the user just wants to turn it off, or for whatever reason the laptop needs to go out of service, everyone else loses their network connection. With something like the Mifi, while it's possible that something could go wrong with the Mifi, dedicated hardware *usually* is more reliable than someone's PC/laptop.