Ah yes - that reminds me of the scam that I got hit with by a bank that starts with a "W" and ends with an "ells Fargo"... but I won't name names.
It all started when I made a series of mistakes (ancient history) and ended up having myself added to the bank account of a girlfriend so that we could access the same cash pool. Her account, my name added for ATM access. That relationship didn't work out and, after returning the ATM card, we parted ways.
So, none the wiser, I went to the same bank and opened my own account and got my own ATM card, and life as a bachelor was good. That is until about a year later when I got a call from the bank.
The woman on the phone explained that my girlfriend had over-drawn her account by nearly $1,000 and, since my name was on the account I shared the responsibility for payment. "Excuse me? No, no, you don't understand..." Furthermore, since my account is also with the same bank, they can just transfer the funds from my account to hers for added convenience. "EXCUSE ME?" A spat ensued. She won, though I got in my share of colorful euphemisms.
Ever since I have refused to do my banking with anything bigger than a local credit union who takes care of customers with nervous precision.
What mystifies me is that everyone I ever speak with or read thoughts from such as yours says the same thing: our culture is losing its collective mind. So where are the whack jobs hiding who come up with these ideas? I've never heard anyone make a serious argument in favor of the lunacy we see here. I have to wonder if the creators of Sesame Street are equally guilty of bowing to political pressure instead of standing their ground.
Agreed - sounds like a cool way to disable pace-makers, hearing aids and the likes. I don't foresee this thing taking off not only for safety concerns, but because it just doesn't seem practical for police to outfit specialized vehicles with equipment like this. 99 out of 100 (made up statistic) police cars are run-of-the-mill cruisers/interceptors and the extra 1 is parked somewhere with no hope of being in the right place at the right time clear across town.
For one, cable is the only connection to the outside world for both broadcast programming and internet access in areas like mine: mountains and tall trees prevent satellite access. Cable works well as a last mile solution in these rural wooded areas.
I get the feeling that what the government is banking on is that electronic communications such as email have yet to be legally defined as "papers and effects" as referenced in the fourth amendment. It would take a further amendment with a broader definition to rectify this. At this point, my guess is, they feel as empowered to take action on transmissions broadcast on the Internet as they would on some guy walking down the street saying the same thing out loud. Without a doubt, this will continue until someone with the money and the cajones has the opportunity to take it to the Supreme Court.
"let's for a moment assume that you're able to max out the drive, writing at the rated speed of 100MB/s. With a page size of 1024 bytes, that's 100.000 page updates every second, so failure will set in after 64,000,000 seconds = 2 years."
2 years seems pretty impressive to me for beating the virtual snot out of your test subject testing in a completely unrealistic scenario. I would be surprised if my car's engine survived 2 years of running non-stop at 7,000 RPM.
"The consequences of changing grades can be dire."
I think you are not wrong, however cause/effect arguments could be drawn out ad nauseum; at some point you need to stop holding people accountable for "what if's" and "unintended consequences" and just deal with the legality and intent of their direct actions. That's what convictions like "involuntary manslaughter" are about - not that the world was deprived of 400 future generations of potential history-changing prodigies, but that, perhaps, personal negligence led to an accidental death.
I figured out the likely location using the wonderful Earth Sandwich tool
Nice try, but it must be wrong; Dad said we could dig a hole straight down to China, but that we shouldn't because all the commies would come pouring through.
You could not possibly be putting this machine in the same league as "decent machining equipment" in the 25-500K range, could you?
For the same budget there are plenty of desktop options for CNC type machines that could be considered to be in the same small form-factor, rapid prototyping league, but with better flexibility and that work with real materials. 5 seconds of effort on a search engine will turn up matches.
Here's something simple that I found selling on ebay for less than $500 right now. Surely there are more options, but I'm not going to do everyone's homework for them. Don't get lost in the details: as neat as inkjet printed objects are conceptually - I'm sure it will have its place in the world - as someone who actually does enjoy prototyping and designing mechanical gadgets, I prefer traditional approaches to fabrication that are equally within grasp.
I think I'd prefer a small bench top CNC setup. Etch plastic, metal, wood, assemble machined parts into working contraptions - seems more useful than a plastic blob printer.
... what kind of fireball a giant lithium battery would create (?) Of course this is a minor detail as the power cell could be based on any storage technology conceivably.
I have a feeling that increasing speed is the biggest issue facing this technology because, if I'm not mistaken, most ground vehicles expend most of their energy defeating wind resistance. Thus if most energy were spent defeating wind, it would be impossible to reclaim most of that energy during deceleration. IANA fluid dynamics expert, but my guess would be that they avoid this problem specifically by keeping the velocity low, thereby reducing the energy required.
You're confusing two issues: the purpose of AVS versus license restrictions for wholesale content.
AVS is a stop-gap to ensure that, for the web master's part, they have done everything required of them to ensure that viewers are of legal age. By making the user responsible for that assertion, the webmaster is off the hook for ensuring that they are not serving content to minors; this is much the same as posting in public forums where the forum indemnifies itself through EULA disclaiming legal responsibility for users' activities on their site. Some AVS methods are more or less effective than others at this task, but the general premise is not connected to revenue. There are plenty of tour/FHG/TGP sites that have AVS in front of them that offer free or sample content and there is no revenue involved with access. This is because AVS is unrelated to payment.
Webmasters who license wholesale content are at the mercy of the terms of the content provider. If the content provider says they must provide AVS in front of their content then they must do so. If the provider says they must charge for access to some major percentage of the content then they must do so. The license requirement to charge for content is intended that the complete set of wholesale content assets don't show up in the wild free of charge in their entirety and thus eliminating the provider's revenue stream.
Not all content sites have to purchase content from a wholesale provider however. Many shoot and publish their own material, yet they still have AVS systems in front of their content. This is not because of revenue generation or license restrictions; it's because of hyper compliance with the law and, in some cases, marketing appeal for being a "responsible" provider who has the best interests of minors in mind.
If you had been working in the porn industry, surely you would know this.
I do know this. If you were closer to the industry you would know that the most serious and responsible adult content providers are concerned about the legality of their operation and thus engage in what they consider to be "hyper compliance"; Most of the bigger players prefer to be one step ahead of legal requirements to ensure the legal footing of their business.
2257 records for talent and age verification for visitors are related only in that both are mechanisms designed, at least on the surface, to protect minors from the harmful radiation released by nudity. Providers who are most serious about their business engage in both and won't be convinced to budge until it is practical.
I too have been involved with adult content since before 2257 became effective in summer, 2005. No matter what court rulings come down as to the constitutionality of the law, until the law is actually repealed or amended, adult content providers won't change a thing. They will not break the law because it's not worth the prison sentence just to save some lazy schmuck three extra clicks to enter their (fake) birth date.
I think yours is a perfect account of recognition for what may generally be perceived as poor intelligence and/or blatant disrespect on the part of the potty mouth. I swear all the time too: at home, in the office, to friends, to family, you name it. It's become ingrained in me and I'm struggling to root it out. Communication and expression are considered by many to be and art form and a flood of vulgarities just don't come off as terribly artful. Profanity is prolific right down to the lowest common denominator on the social scale; willful participation among those with more respected social standing debases them.
Whichever organization employs such methods will be exposing itself to lawsuits.
Think about it.
"That's right, your honor - the defendant slandered my cred though I was a legit merchant. I can demonstrate proof that I had a full one million stolen credit card accounts in my possession. At $7 each, that entitles me to $7,000,000 plus legal fees to cover the stolen data that I was so rudely prevented from selling by this infidel."
There's a reason that organized criminals are not litigious...
Space-faring folk should go digital; even so, the whole concept is beyond ridiculous being that nobody beyond this planet is actually using this. Just stick with American Express.
Last summer I took a guided tour down into a hard-rock mine shaft several miles deep here in California. One of the questions that was asked was what happens if there is an earthquake and people are in the mine. The answer surprised me: they can't feel earthquakes down there, so the effect is nil.
Apparently, we were told, the destructive force of earthquakes is carried along the upper couple hundred feet of the surface. I am reminded of a body of water that has waves and turmoil on the surface but which is quite calm below the surface.
My guess would be that the sensors don't go any further down because they don't need to.
Re:Beyond the Moon, Looking Toward Mars
on
The New Moon Race
·
· Score: 1
I see a permanent outpost on the moon being a tremendously advantageous step toward not one, but regular trips to Mars. The moon's low gravity makes it an excellent jumping off point to other places in the solar system. You can launch a heavier craft with less fuel consumed leaving more for the trip. If fuel can be produced ON the moon (there may be various possibilities here), then it's more conventient than even an orbiting platform such as the ISS for "parking" given the extensive surface area on which to build, and no deteriorating orbit. That's my take on it anyway - I don't see moon and Mars missions as being mutually exclusive.
Sounds familiar. Yes, Adaptec was one of those big competitors that they were very concerned about. Interesting to see them pulling the same tactics though. I recall at the time that the Adaptec 2850 was pretty much the industry standard and *nix folks just used that when they needed commodity hardware SCSI support. I don't know however if those early drivers were built from information provided by Adaptec or if they were just hacked together.
What you suggest is a distinct possibility, but is not mutually exclusive to the point made.
I know for a fact that the baseline statement is true. I had an employer many moons ago who manufactures PC-add-on boards such as RAID controllers. They were a smaller company fiercely protective of their home-grown knowledge because a bigger competitors could take that knowledge and turn it into a less expensive product and bring it to market faster than they could. In that respect their motivation was exactly as you describe: competitive advantage.
However it was in these early days of Slackware that Linux started to gain popularity. My employer received a great deal of pressure to release driver source code for their products to the Linux community. They refused, but not because of competitive advantage. It was because there were features designed into the hardware ASIC's that should have worked, but didn't. The failed designs that made it all the way through to ASIC production could not be rectified economically.
So the problems were fixed in the drivers by ensuring that the driver never triggered the error. The source code was not released specifically because the company was unwilling to disclose that there were embarrassing design flaws in their hardware, a perception that could have ruined them. It's yet another case where someone is unwilling to tarnish their shiny image of flawlessness to the detriment of the open source community.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes - that reminds me of the scam that I got hit with by a bank that starts with a "W" and ends with an "ells Fargo"... but I won't name names.
It all started when I made a series of mistakes (ancient history) and ended up having myself added to the bank account of a girlfriend so that we could access the same cash pool. Her account, my name added for ATM access. That relationship didn't work out and, after returning the ATM card, we parted ways.
So, none the wiser, I went to the same bank and opened my own account and got my own ATM card, and life as a bachelor was good. That is until about a year later when I got a call from the bank.
The woman on the phone explained that my girlfriend had over-drawn her account by nearly $1,000 and, since my name was on the account I shared the responsibility for payment. "Excuse me? No, no, you don't understand..." Furthermore, since my account is also with the same bank, they can just transfer the funds from my account to hers for added convenience. "EXCUSE ME?" A spat ensued. She won, though I got in my share of colorful euphemisms.
Ever since I have refused to do my banking with anything bigger than a local credit union who takes care of customers with nervous precision.
What mystifies me is that everyone I ever speak with or read thoughts from such as yours says the same thing: our culture is losing its collective mind. So where are the whack jobs hiding who come up with these ideas? I've never heard anyone make a serious argument in favor of the lunacy we see here. I have to wonder if the creators of Sesame Street are equally guilty of bowing to political pressure instead of standing their ground.
Agreed - sounds like a cool way to disable pace-makers, hearing aids and the likes. I don't foresee this thing taking off not only for safety concerns, but because it just doesn't seem practical for police to outfit specialized vehicles with equipment like this. 99 out of 100 (made up statistic) police cars are run-of-the-mill cruisers/interceptors and the extra 1 is parked somewhere with no hope of being in the right place at the right time clear across town.
For one, cable is the only connection to the outside world for both broadcast programming and internet access in areas like mine: mountains and tall trees prevent satellite access. Cable works well as a last mile solution in these rural wooded areas.
I get the feeling that what the government is banking on is that electronic communications such as email have yet to be legally defined as "papers and effects" as referenced in the fourth amendment. It would take a further amendment with a broader definition to rectify this. At this point, my guess is, they feel as empowered to take action on transmissions broadcast on the Internet as they would on some guy walking down the street saying the same thing out loud. Without a doubt, this will continue until someone with the money and the cajones has the opportunity to take it to the Supreme Court.
"let's for a moment assume that you're able to max out the drive, writing at the rated speed of 100MB/s. With a page size of 1024 bytes, that's 100.000 page updates every second, so failure will set in after 64,000,000 seconds = 2 years."
2 years seems pretty impressive to me for beating the virtual snot out of your test subject testing in a completely unrealistic scenario. I would be surprised if my car's engine survived 2 years of running non-stop at 7,000 RPM.
"The consequences of changing grades can be dire."
I think you are not wrong, however cause/effect arguments could be drawn out ad nauseum; at some point you need to stop holding people accountable for "what if's" and "unintended consequences" and just deal with the legality and intent of their direct actions. That's what convictions like "involuntary manslaughter" are about - not that the world was deprived of 400 future generations of potential history-changing prodigies, but that, perhaps, personal negligence led to an accidental death.
I figured out the likely location using the wonderful Earth Sandwich tool
Nice try, but it must be wrong; Dad said we could dig a hole straight down to China, but that we shouldn't because all the commies would come pouring through.
You could not possibly be putting this machine in the same league as "decent machining equipment" in the 25-500K range, could you?
For the same budget there are plenty of desktop options for CNC type machines that could be considered to be in the same small form-factor, rapid prototyping league, but with better flexibility and that work with real materials. 5 seconds of effort on a search engine will turn up matches.
Here's something simple that I found selling on ebay for less than $500 right now. Surely there are more options, but I'm not going to do everyone's homework for them. Don't get lost in the details: as neat as inkjet printed objects are conceptually - I'm sure it will have its place in the world - as someone who actually does enjoy prototyping and designing mechanical gadgets, I prefer traditional approaches to fabrication that are equally within grasp.
I think I'd prefer a small bench top CNC setup. Etch plastic, metal, wood, assemble machined parts into working contraptions - seems more useful than a plastic blob printer.
... what kind of fireball a giant lithium battery would create (?) Of course this is a minor detail as the power cell could be based on any storage technology conceivably.
I have a feeling that increasing speed is the biggest issue facing this technology because, if I'm not mistaken, most ground vehicles expend most of their energy defeating wind resistance. Thus if most energy were spent defeating wind, it would be impossible to reclaim most of that energy during deceleration. IANA fluid dynamics expert, but my guess would be that they avoid this problem specifically by keeping the velocity low, thereby reducing the energy required.
"AVS is there for revenue generation."
You're confusing two issues: the purpose of AVS versus license restrictions for wholesale content.
AVS is a stop-gap to ensure that, for the web master's part, they have done everything required of them to ensure that viewers are of legal age. By making the user responsible for that assertion, the webmaster is off the hook for ensuring that they are not serving content to minors; this is much the same as posting in public forums where the forum indemnifies itself through EULA disclaiming legal responsibility for users' activities on their site. Some AVS methods are more or less effective than others at this task, but the general premise is not connected to revenue. There are plenty of tour/FHG/TGP sites that have AVS in front of them that offer free or sample content and there is no revenue involved with access. This is because AVS is unrelated to payment.
Webmasters who license wholesale content are at the mercy of the terms of the content provider. If the content provider says they must provide AVS in front of their content then they must do so. If the provider says they must charge for access to some major percentage of the content then they must do so. The license requirement to charge for content is intended that the complete set of wholesale content assets don't show up in the wild free of charge in their entirety and thus eliminating the provider's revenue stream.
Not all content sites have to purchase content from a wholesale provider however. Many shoot and publish their own material, yet they still have AVS systems in front of their content. This is not because of revenue generation or license restrictions; it's because of hyper compliance with the law and, in some cases, marketing appeal for being a "responsible" provider who has the best interests of minors in mind.
If you had been working in the porn industry, surely you would know this.
I do know this. If you were closer to the industry you would know that the most serious and responsible adult content providers are concerned about the legality of their operation and thus engage in what they consider to be "hyper compliance"; Most of the bigger players prefer to be one step ahead of legal requirements to ensure the legal footing of their business.
2257 records for talent and age verification for visitors are related only in that both are mechanisms designed, at least on the surface, to protect minors from the harmful radiation released by nudity. Providers who are most serious about their business engage in both and won't be convinced to budge until it is practical.
I too have been involved with adult content since before 2257 became effective in summer, 2005. No matter what court rulings come down as to the constitutionality of the law, until the law is actually repealed or amended, adult content providers won't change a thing. They will not break the law because it's not worth the prison sentence just to save some lazy schmuck three extra clicks to enter their (fake) birth date.
It's called a scare tactic; it is not to be taken seriously by anyone with the capacity for rational thought.
The burden of proof is on the prosecution. A legitimate operation should have no problem distancing themselves from simple attacks like you describe.
I think yours is a perfect account of recognition for what may generally be perceived as poor intelligence and/or blatant disrespect on the part of the potty mouth. I swear all the time too: at home, in the office, to friends, to family, you name it. It's become ingrained in me and I'm struggling to root it out. Communication and expression are considered by many to be and art form and a flood of vulgarities just don't come off as terribly artful. Profanity is prolific right down to the lowest common denominator on the social scale; willful participation among those with more respected social standing debases them.
Whichever organization employs such methods will be exposing itself to lawsuits.
Think about it.
"That's right, your honor - the defendant slandered my cred though I was a legit merchant. I can demonstrate proof that I had a full one million stolen credit card accounts in my possession. At $7 each, that entitles me to $7,000,000 plus legal fees to cover the stolen data that I was so rudely prevented from selling by this infidel."
There's a reason that organized criminals are not litigious...
Space-faring folk should go digital; even so, the whole concept is beyond ridiculous being that nobody beyond this planet is actually using this. Just stick with American Express.
Last summer I took a guided tour down into a hard-rock mine shaft several miles deep here in California. One of the questions that was asked was what happens if there is an earthquake and people are in the mine. The answer surprised me: they can't feel earthquakes down there, so the effect is nil.
Apparently, we were told, the destructive force of earthquakes is carried along the upper couple hundred feet of the surface. I am reminded of a body of water that has waves and turmoil on the surface but which is quite calm below the surface.
My guess would be that the sensors don't go any further down because they don't need to.
I see a permanent outpost on the moon being a tremendously advantageous step toward not one, but regular trips to Mars. The moon's low gravity makes it an excellent jumping off point to other places in the solar system. You can launch a heavier craft with less fuel consumed leaving more for the trip. If fuel can be produced ON the moon (there may be various possibilities here), then it's more conventient than even an orbiting platform such as the ISS for "parking" given the extensive surface area on which to build, and no deteriorating orbit. That's my take on it anyway - I don't see moon and Mars missions as being mutually exclusive.
The plan blatantly disregards cold-blooded politicians. Back to the drawing board, boys.
ugh - you're right. Too many part numbers floating around in my head these days. That's the one I was thinking of.
Sounds familiar. Yes, Adaptec was one of those big competitors that they were very concerned about. Interesting to see them pulling the same tactics though. I recall at the time that the Adaptec 2850 was pretty much the industry standard and *nix folks just used that when they needed commodity hardware SCSI support. I don't know however if those early drivers were built from information provided by Adaptec or if they were just hacked together.
What you suggest is a distinct possibility, but is not mutually exclusive to the point made.
I know for a fact that the baseline statement is true. I had an employer many moons ago who manufactures PC-add-on boards such as RAID controllers. They were a smaller company fiercely protective of their home-grown knowledge because a bigger competitors could take that knowledge and turn it into a less expensive product and bring it to market faster than they could. In that respect their motivation was exactly as you describe: competitive advantage.
However it was in these early days of Slackware that Linux started to gain popularity. My employer received a great deal of pressure to release driver source code for their products to the Linux community. They refused, but not because of competitive advantage. It was because there were features designed into the hardware ASIC's that should have worked, but didn't. The failed designs that made it all the way through to ASIC production could not be rectified economically.
So the problems were fixed in the drivers by ensuring that the driver never triggered the error. The source code was not released specifically because the company was unwilling to disclose that there were embarrassing design flaws in their hardware, a perception that could have ruined them. It's yet another case where someone is unwilling to tarnish their shiny image of flawlessness to the detriment of the open source community.