Well, that may sound surprising, but there are many other countries where votes are still cast in the form of papers with names on them, that are later counted by candidate citizens... Like we do in France for instance. Here there indeed have been a fashion for voting machines half a dozen years ago, but there are less and less; the trend was clearly to more traditional paper at the last president elect in May.
France is the place where the (in)famous experiment was done of blastocyte degranulation, supposedly demonstrating homeopathy, which then (of course) could not be duplicated anywhere else in the world, while its acceptance in the science review Nature costed its head to the director there.
France indeed is special because there is a big factory (I don't dare say "lab") that produces tons of homeopathic products, and is visibly very profitable since it finances the above kind of research.
So, up to now, as a French I thought I was among the most stupid in the world, but in fact it's nothing funny to discover brits are in the same boat...
This is very significant, too bad I don't have mod points. Still, it somehow opens the way to thinking these ads I block would have been for products I don't buy... So it may allow me dreaming that's Coca-cola drinkers paying for this site while I don't drink coca...
It's funny that you consider laptops so much opposed to appliances. To me, with the rise of iOS, 'walled' tablets in general, and specifically for Apple the permanent, active push from MacOSX to iOS (with the same aim for signed, centralized applications, etc.) I clearly consider Apple indeed is pushing laptops and macs *towards* the 'appliance' model...
I read elsewhere in this thread there is no danger because tablets just cannot do what laptops do. Well. We'll see, but I'd never bet on this. All the innovative applications are now created, not ported, on tablets. I just bought a Blackberry Playbook, a platform for which you expect somewhat less applications than on iOS. The first one I loaded, free, was a planetarium that uses all sensors at the same time (gravity, magnetic and GPS) so as to show you exactly the right portion of the sky you see when you raise the tablet at arm's length and point it to the sky. I think on this example we can consider *any* developments on software planetariums will happen on tablets from now --not on laptops. And I didn't select more obvious domains like mapping for instance.
My view of the computing evolution is definitely towards walled, closed, central-application-market appliances. And within this, the mechanical enclosure is but the most minor feature. This, is my gratest fear. I hope I'm wrong.
At least, the correct answer to the OP question, in two concise lines, and less than 1 meter below the question in the thread. Not so bad after all, Slashdot. Author friended.
(...) Perhaps/. shouldn't give more mods to people who spend (or waste) all of their mod points whenever they get them and shouldn't keep giving mods to people who have a history of voting negatively.
I fear this to be a sign of less users on/.
For a couple of months now, I find myself endowed with mod points in an unusually frequent way. Up to last year I got to mod only now and then; I didn't improve my participation, or so I feel;-)
I'm worried if modpoints are attributed more often this may mean that le are just less numerous...
The open, Linux-based Freerunner... I still have one, with its nice, large, colorscreen (that broke in 2 weeks). When it worked, I ran all sorts if things on it, like TangoGPS on what was then --and probably still is the only open-source GPS in the world. All in all, this probably means their economic model was wrong... they died.
One forgotten thing in these comments (or did I skip?) is, in an era just without internet, spending lots of time on semiporn chatting on Minitels appears to have raised so much money than it turned these service owners into billionnaires.
The current owner of Free, which is I believe the largest french ISP after the ex-state monopoly France telecom, started as a minitel porn service supplier. Then he just used his millions to switch to ISP.
Many french themselves have forgotten this, and here Free has quite a good aura today...
So, while I seriously doubt Minitel service was costing much to the state, it definitely raised huge amounts of silly guys' money into sex chat providers pockets.
These, are our present internet landlords here. And there are people around that still think theyr work will better the country.
I think here is one of the key issues with the Playbook. I'd have bought one full price on day one if I could have filtered ads on it, and the first thing I asked for was, can I insert a system-wide filter on outgoing comms. I quickly understood that most of RIM pride, and efficiency, was about securing comms, in a manner nobody, nowhere, would manage to crack them. Which is definitely a cool feature. But this very feature led them to things like bootloader lock: they WANT nobody mangling into your comms... So, I understood there was no chances ever, that I could implement my filter trick. And then I waited instead of buying. Now, since then there is a 'local-solution': a guy is proposing an alternative browser, probably based on the very same engine, but with various added features among which filtering. It's quite late, only local (so this won't filter ads in an RSS reader for instance), but I'll buy it. It's just, well, late...
Now that I know there indeed is a native ad-blocking browser available I'll probably buy one this week-end. As concerns 'Android apps can be run on it' things are less clear to me anyhow. Can I just go to the Android market and boom, or is there something like the need to repackage, resubmit or whatever? Any details on this would be welcome;-)
That's not untrue. I for one would definitely have bought a playbook at their initial price, would it be only from being fond of Canada and afraid of monopolies.
The thing that stopped me at the time, other than the lack of email software (now solved I understand), sadly was their key feature: the very secure way they protect data transmissions led them to hardcode many things in the Playbook, with the result simple ad filtering was rendered impossible. (no mangling in the background with the link to internet is, of course, a security feature)
I really wanted this filtering. I really discussed in really wise and geeky forums. The only way to do it would have been to recompile the browser with an added filter : too much for me.
BTW, is there an ad filter now on the Playbook? 8-)
It seems you're surprised they can build a 15-floor building in 15 days. That may be unusual; what's more telling, to me, is the 15-floor experience. This has JUST NOTHING to do with a real tower. The surprising info in your search should be that apparently their only curriculum is in 15-floor building.
If this is true, then they won't even be selected as a contractor. In China like anywhere else.
I was part of the Huygens team, and I really experience a special moment as concerns time: - building the Probe had been quite a long period in my own life (years) - once launched, the travel from Earth to Saturn lasted *seven years* : enough for you to deeply change your business occupation, and mostly loose contact with your former team, customer team, science team - then what was happening at that very time was, due to Earth/Saturn distance, transmitting the probe entry and descent data would last *longer than the real descent itself* : in other words, you were still waiting to see whether the thing you'd spent years in the building didn't just burn upon atmosphere entry, while you *knew* everything over there was finished already.
So believe me, this feeling of meeting back with friends lost for 10 years, to listen what your device may have sent some hours ago knowing that at present indeed all the adventure has been over for one hour... that was very special.
Also, the explanations of this to the journalists in the ground station rooms by your average public relation guy was definitely funny to watch:-D
What you describe is 'publishing rather than patenting'. There already are many ways to do it; the trouble is, when you really have found something original and brilliant, and you start developing it alone, it may really be easier to a large company to just copy what you disclosed, with more efficiency than you or your small team. This is why, to real inventors, 'just publishing' won't do.
Other than this, you say that 'anyone shelling out money to obtain a patent intends to make money off of it'. I don't know for 'anyone', but I personally, definitely patented years ago an idea that I DIDN'T want to see developed (see earlier comment in the thread): I know it'll never bring me a cent, because the purpose I'm 'shelling out money' is simply I don't want this to happen.
It could interest other people than the small companies you mention. Me, for instance.
Some 10 years ago, I imagined a way to offer an internet connection freely in exchange of mandatory ads that appeared so ugly to me (I hate ads), and at the same time so easy to deploy, that what I found to try preventing it was to patent the process.
I'm no patent maniac, I didn't extend that patent outside my country, but at least here it is now unfeasible (I'll never grant a license), and elsewhere, due to the publication of that patent at least it's not patentable anymore.
It costed me money, I do know it won't bring me any cent --this is just the kind of stuff I'd *offer* to an organisation such as DPL... I'm going to check this carefully.
In 2009 an easier-to-do competitor was chosen, to Jupiter (also because we already went to Titan with Cassini/Huygens, similarly a joint NASA/ESA mission), but TSSM does remains a convincing candidate for the next row of selection...
Herve5, former tech. resp. of the Huygens probe to Titan;-)
Try Virtualworks with an old Snow Leopard system disk. There are plenty of sites describing how to install it step by step. I have it running on Lion inside a Macbook Air.
Just consider you won't get transferred clipboards, you'll need to exchange file through shared folders (between host and guest).
But definitely on my Air all the old Appleworks files still are openable through Virtualworks.
I heard the two paying alternatives (Parallels and Fusion) could do it as well (and perhaps with better integration) but will block installation because Apple doesn't want it...
One very worriying thing for me is the fact that in Montreal airport, international duty free section, you find not one but many iPad stores, while none showing a RIM tablet.
I went to Canada a couple of times these last two years, and with the dawn of non-apple tablets and my love for canadian things I definitely was waiting for buying one in the airport. Nothing. Once I got a lot of luck: a full free afternoon downtown before leaving. I started checking internet, calling, visiting stores. I wanted the large-memory RIM tablet with 3G. None available, only the smallest possible one, and wifi only.
But really, the fact there is none at the airport, a place flocked with blackberry-equipped managers...
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead [nerp.net]
OK, because of my sympathy for your post I did follow this "go to my web page instead" link, expecting to find something fabulous given your/. number;-) Indeed, the page is empty. Now maybe THIS is the message, some kind of Zen-like?
One of the wisest comment here on/. at the time of discussing the Fukushima event was to remind us that at the time when the factory was built, the specifications for the "worst possible tsunami" were based on the previous century's recordings, and not on the Continental Drift theory, which (present) energy prediction indeed give "better" (and higher) waves.
When reading this last year I friended the author while there remained a slight doubt about the actual lack of knowledge for Wegener's theory in Japan in 1960.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that may sound surprising, but there are many other countries where votes are still cast in the form of papers with names on them, that are later counted by candidate citizens... Like we do in France for instance. Here there indeed have been a fashion for voting machines half a dozen years ago, but there are less and less; the trend was clearly to more traditional paper at the last president elect in May.
France is the place where the (in)famous experiment was done of blastocyte degranulation, supposedly demonstrating homeopathy, which then (of course) could not be duplicated anywhere else in the world, while its acceptance in the science review Nature costed its head to the director there.
France indeed is special because there is a big factory (I don't dare say "lab") that produces tons of homeopathic products, and is visibly very profitable since it finances the above kind of research.
So, up to now, as a French I thought I was among the most stupid in the world, but in fact it's nothing funny to discover brits are in the same boat...
Yes, one hundred ninety three. So, error bar @ 95% is 7% ( 0.98/sqrt(n) )
I'd like to know if the difference in "happiness measurement" is above this...
Otherwise, it's just like those latest political polls: they detect noise.
This is very significant, too bad I don't have mod points.
Still, it somehow opens the way to thinking these ads I block would have been for products I don't buy...
So it may allow me dreaming that's Coca-cola drinkers paying for this site while I don't drink coca...
It's funny that you consider laptops so much opposed to appliances.
To me, with the rise of iOS, 'walled' tablets in general, and specifically for Apple the permanent, active push from MacOSX to iOS (with the same aim for signed, centralized applications, etc.) I clearly consider Apple indeed is pushing laptops and macs *towards* the 'appliance' model...
I read elsewhere in this thread there is no danger because tablets just cannot do what laptops do. Well. We'll see, but I'd never bet on this.
All the innovative applications are now created, not ported, on tablets.
I just bought a Blackberry Playbook, a platform for which you expect somewhat less applications than on iOS.
The first one I loaded, free, was a planetarium that uses all sensors at the same time (gravity, magnetic and GPS) so as to show you exactly the right portion of the sky you see when you raise the tablet at arm's length and point it to the sky.
I think on this example we can consider *any* developments on software planetariums will happen on tablets from now --not on laptops.
And I didn't select more obvious domains like mapping for instance.
My view of the computing evolution is definitely towards walled, closed, central-application-market appliances. And within this, the mechanical enclosure is but the most minor feature.
This, is my gratest fear.
I hope I'm wrong.
At least, the correct answer to the OP question, in two concise lines, and less than 1 meter below the question in the thread. Not so bad after all, Slashdot. Author friended.
I'm still surpised nothing similar to Little Snitch exists on Linuxes...
(...) Perhaps /. shouldn't give more mods to people who spend (or waste) all of their mod points whenever they get them and shouldn't keep giving mods to people who have a history of voting negatively.
I fear this to be a sign of less users on /.
For a couple of months now, I find myself endowed with mod points in an unusually frequent way. ;-)
Up to last year I got to mod only now and then; I didn't improve my participation, or so I feel
I'm worried if modpoints are attributed more often this may mean that le are just less numerous...
H.
The open, Linux-based Freerunner... I still have one, with its nice, large, colorscreen (that broke in 2 weeks). When it worked, I ran all sorts if things on it, like TangoGPS on what was then --and probably still is the only open-source GPS in the world.
All in all, this probably means their economic model was wrong... they died.
One forgotten thing in these comments (or did I skip?) is, in an era just without internet, spending lots of time on semiporn chatting on Minitels appears to have raised so much money than it turned these service owners into billionnaires.
The current owner of Free, which is I believe the largest french ISP after the ex-state monopoly France telecom, started as a minitel porn service supplier. Then he just used his millions to switch to ISP.
Many french themselves have forgotten this, and here Free has quite a good aura today...
So, while I seriously doubt Minitel service was costing much to the state, it definitely raised huge amounts of silly guys' money into sex chat providers pockets.
These, are our present internet landlords here.
And there are people around that still think theyr work will better the country.
I think here is one of the key issues with the Playbook.
I'd have bought one full price on day one if I could have filtered ads on it, and the first thing I asked for was, can I insert a system-wide filter on outgoing comms.
I quickly understood that most of RIM pride, and efficiency, was about securing comms, in a manner nobody, nowhere, would manage to crack them.
Which is definitely a cool feature.
But this very feature led them to things like bootloader lock: they WANT nobody mangling into your comms...
So, I understood there was no chances ever, that I could implement my filter trick. And then I waited instead of buying.
Now, since then there is a 'local-solution': a guy is proposing an alternative browser, probably based on the very same engine, but with various added features among which filtering. It's quite late, only local (so this won't filter ads in an RSS reader for instance), but I'll buy it.
It's just, well, late...
Now that I know there indeed is a native ad-blocking browser available I'll probably buy one this week-end. ;-)
As concerns 'Android apps can be run on it' things are less clear to me anyhow. Can I just go to the Android market and boom, or is there something like the need to repackage, resubmit or whatever?
Any details on this would be welcome
Thanks for this! I'll definitely check this.
That's not untrue. I for one would definitely have bought a playbook at their initial price, would it be only from being fond of Canada and afraid of monopolies.
The thing that stopped me at the time, other than the lack of email software (now solved I understand), sadly was their key feature: the very secure way they protect data transmissions led them to hardcode many things in the Playbook, with the result simple ad filtering was rendered impossible.
(no mangling in the background with the link to internet is, of course, a security feature)
I really wanted this filtering. I really discussed in really wise and geeky forums. The only way to do it would have been to recompile the browser with an added filter : too much for me.
BTW, is there an ad filter now on the Playbook? 8-)
And the space station is some *20 times* closer to Earth than an earth radius. I must say I stopped reading here too.
It seems you're surprised they can build a 15-floor building in 15 days. That may be unusual; what's more telling, to me, is the 15-floor experience.
This has JUST NOTHING to do with a real tower.
The surprising info in your search should be that apparently their only curriculum is in 15-floor building.
If this is true, then they won't even be selected as a contractor. In China like anywhere else.
I remember when the Huygens probe landed on Titan (Huygens, from the Cassini/Huygens mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens )
I was part of the Huygens team, and I really experience a special moment as concerns time:
- building the Probe had been quite a long period in my own life (years)
- once launched, the travel from Earth to Saturn lasted *seven years* : enough for you to deeply change your business occupation, and mostly loose contact with your former team, customer team, science team
- then what was happening at that very time was, due to Earth/Saturn distance, transmitting the probe entry and descent data would last *longer than the real descent itself* : in other words, you were still waiting to see whether the thing you'd spent years in the building didn't just burn upon atmosphere entry, while you *knew* everything over there was finished already.
So believe me, this feeling of meeting back with friends lost for 10 years, to listen what your device may have sent some hours ago knowing that at present indeed all the adventure has been over for one hour... that was very special.
Also, the explanations of this to the journalists in the ground station rooms by your average public relation guy was definitely funny to watch :-D
What you describe is 'publishing rather than patenting'.
There already are many ways to do it; the trouble is, when you really have found something original and brilliant, and you start developing it alone, it may really be easier to a large company to just copy what you disclosed, with more efficiency than you or your small team.
This is why, to real inventors, 'just publishing' won't do.
Other than this, you say that 'anyone shelling out money to obtain a patent intends to make money off of it'.
I don't know for 'anyone', but I personally, definitely patented years ago an idea that I DIDN'T want to see developed (see earlier comment in the thread): I know it'll never bring me a cent, because the purpose I'm 'shelling out money' is simply I don't want this to happen.
It could interest other people than the small companies you mention. Me, for instance.
Some 10 years ago, I imagined a way to offer an internet connection freely in exchange of mandatory ads that appeared so ugly to me (I hate ads), and at the same time so easy to deploy, that what I found to try preventing it was to patent the process.
I'm no patent maniac, I didn't extend that patent outside my country, but at least here it is now unfeasible (I'll never grant a license), and elsewhere, due to the publication of that patent at least it's not patentable anymore.
It costed me money, I do know it won't bring me any cent --this is just the kind of stuff I'd *offer* to an organisation such as DPL...
I'm going to check this carefully.
It was one of the last NASA / Esa proposals for an ambitious large mission, only, the thing was automated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission -nicknamed 'TSSM'
In 2009 an easier-to-do competitor was chosen, to Jupiter (also because we already went to Titan with Cassini/Huygens, similarly a joint NASA/ESA mission), but TSSM does remains a convincing candidate for the next row of selection...
Herve5, former tech. resp. of the Huygens probe to Titan ;-)
Try Virtualworks with an old Snow Leopard system disk.
There are plenty of sites describing how to install it step by step. I have it running on Lion inside a Macbook Air.
Just consider you won't get transferred clipboards, you'll need to exchange file through shared folders (between host and guest).
But definitely on my Air all the old Appleworks files still are openable through Virtualworks.
I heard the two paying alternatives (Parallels and Fusion) could do it as well (and perhaps with better integration) but will block installation because Apple doesn't want it...
One very worriying thing for me is the fact that in Montreal airport, international duty free section, you find not one but many iPad stores, while none showing a RIM tablet.
I went to Canada a couple of times these last two years, and with the dawn of non-apple tablets and my love for canadian things I definitely was waiting for buying one in the airport. Nothing.
Once I got a lot of luck: a full free afternoon downtown before leaving. I started checking internet, calling, visiting stores. I wanted the large-memory RIM tablet with 3G. None available, only the smallest possible one, and wifi only.
But really, the fact there is none at the airport, a place flocked with blackberry-equipped managers...
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead [nerp.net]
OK, because of my sympathy for your post I did follow this "go to my web page instead" link, expecting to find something fabulous given your /. number ;-)
Indeed, the page is empty.
Now maybe THIS is the message, some kind of Zen-like?
One of the wisest comment here on /. at the time of discussing the Fukushima event was to remind us that at the time when the factory was built, the specifications for the "worst possible tsunami" were based on the previous century's recordings, and not on the Continental Drift theory, which (present) energy prediction indeed give "better" (and higher) waves.
When reading this last year I friended the author while there remained a slight doubt about the actual lack of knowledge for Wegener's theory in Japan in 1960.
Now I know it's real!
H.
Approved. Sorry not to have mod points to + you... ;-)
H.
P. S. is european federalism taboo to the extent you are obliged to post AC?