I'm saying if they found an interesting way to both improve NTP with time difference *and* make it work stand-alone independent from central servers that's called a technological improvement. You might not see the merit right now, but that's not the point... It's legitimate news for nerds! Come on, admit it, half the shit we love has absolutely no link to the real world whatsoever...:)
What makes you think the US won't sabotage GPS when they need to? Especially since weapons and troops now use GPS frequently to find targets they can easily send faulty data to mess with the enemies equipment... This is not really all that far fetched in a war scenario! Also an internet kill switch could easily encompass GPS...
If you need accuracy no matter what (even in the case of a war, and in isolation of the rest of the world) GPS does not help.
But even the outside scenario of a time synchronizing system on Mars can be enough reason... When spaceflight becomes more common and they run into problems with time dilation etc. it's a good thing to be able to resolve the local time anywhere with anyone.
You missed the point... NTP is a mechanism to get time from an authority, and so is GPS (which probably uses a souped-up NTP-ish system to sync with ground control). This system is about being independent from authoritative servers. And there can be legitimate purposes why you might need it so it's a good thing they research it... Some of the reasons to want this might be:
- Reduce the potential points of failure from one single bottleneck to infinite peers.
- Require no configuration (some old routers for example have a wrong time and log full of errors because the NTP server preprogrammed is gone).
- Protect against sabotaged NTP servers (in case of attack, or deliberate government intervention).
- Maintain high resolution timers in sync when the internet kill switch is tripped (or any internet-disrupting calamity).
- You're on Mars, and forgot to bring an atomic clock with you on the first colony ship...
- You're just paranoid about anything the government says, even the time...
Also this mechanism adds something new: Accurate time difference between two events (something that can still be very skewed with NTP when you have in inaccurate crystal).
All in all interesting, and worthy of a Slashdot dupe...:)
Yours must be broken or just plain crap, cuz mine works just fine with most certainly under 100 ms of lag (or unnoticeable)... Any delay from pushing play on my phone to hearing audio is caused by the application, not the bluetooth A2DP connection.
Yeah, console grade A/V cards... Where you can plug them into the lowest grade shit computer and the GPU takes care of the baseload, both in graphics as well as game processing (reducing the CPU load as much as possible). The graphics card needs to be fed with data and then operates on it's own, with the HDMI to connect to the TV. The inclusion of audio processing in the GPU also takes care of the problem that multi-channel audio is also handled by the CPU way too often in cheap PCs. Basically the A/V card is the whole console that just needs the data and a power supply to operate... This would probably also be good for gaming on other OSes, since they would only need to write a different generic loader and basic input handling but the rest is the GPU doing all the work. This insures a proper gaming A/V processing baseline that guarantees a game will run smoothly, but GPUs can still differentiate by adding more quality to the scenes (so competition-wise thats a good thing).
Sadly this will most likely be proprietary and probably very closed, but most importantly working! But given the requirements of the gaming companies and GPU manufacturers this would be right up their alley. They would probably create a new PC-Console card standard every other year, so you can upgrade and run the latest games on your old PC by only buying the latest GPU... This would allocate more of the gamers budget to the GPU manufacturers product (at the cost of the current console and PC manufacturers), so it's a probable business plan for GPU manufacturers and gaming studio's.
You made an excellent point until you started about the fees to allow recycling to be done properly... no way this will cost as much as the product itself (for regular electronics). This seems to be US-only because there appears to be (according to comments in this thread) a lack of recycling facilities that will actually take your old crap, and the ones that do are extortion schemes that let you pay trough your nose...
Here in the EU in the Netherlands we have another way of doing this with the government doing most of the work:
The old (soon to be over) system was: you pay like 20 euro extra for your new TV, but the company *has* to take the old one and recycle it. So it becomes the responsibility of the people selling and producing the cheap crap.
This system fails because of the fake recycling mentioned in the article, because there is not enough control over the actual recycling (companies hire companies, that hire crooks, that hire 3rd world kids).
Nowadays the government does all the recycling, and there are multiple ways to get your old stuff properly re-used or recycled:
- If you have a lot of old equipment to dispose off you can drive by the government waste and recycling center (we have multiple close by) and drive your car up and dump everything in the right container (you can also dump all other garbage here including dangerous waste, so just one trip is needed after a good cleaning).
- If you only have a little you can put in on the street (on one day of the week, we call it 'coarse garbage') and it will also be picked up and recycled, this includes all big products like old fridges and washing machines.
- But best of all: almost all old computer gear (and for that matter, anything remotely re-usable) I put on the street is gone in like 15 minutes and re-used.
The recycling is payed with your taxes, partially with a local garbage disposal fee. Since you already payed for recycling of all consumer products, and it's as easy as dragging it out on the street and letting someone else take care of it, there is no need not to do it. Meanwhile the cost of this stays low, at least you surely don't pay as much as the original device cost. With a proper centralized mechanism in place without scammers skewing prices there is absolutely no need for expensive recycling.
Gay marriage: There is marriage for the government and marriage for the church, a church can choose not to marry gay people, but they have no say over the state. Furthermore the value of the marriage before the state is in no way diminished, and it reduces complication with (parental) rights. There is no proven effect that two homosexual parents can't raise children, but they generally have less children and both have an income so they are good for the economy. All in all this is about equal legal rights, without downsides except in the eyes of a select few who experience no measurable disadvantages because of other people getting married in non-traditional ways.
Abortion: The only problem is determining the proper 'line' where a fetus becomes a human being (for example the first brain activity), before that an abortion is a naturally occurring process (in fact over 50% of every womans first conception end with a natural abortion). In all area's of medicine we enhance the natural abilities or mitigate the shortcomings of the human body. Abortion is a way of enhancing this natural occurring phenomenon which occurs when severe (genetic) defects are detected, or the mothers body is not ready (because of age, malnutrition, or sickness), so both these natural reasons should be enhanced by medicine.
The only problem with both these points is from a religious point of view... But since state and religion should be separated there is no reason to ban these things. For example: The great thing about choice is that you can choose *not* to have an abortion if your have any moral dilemma. There is no sufficient reason to overrule the basic human right of choice over their live and body, especially since this a very slippery slope. There are hundreds of ways of inducing a natural abortion too, once abortion is forbidden should we throw women who get a natural abortion in jail too because they could have prevented it? And when a woman doesn't know she's pregnant, should we mandate daily pregnancy tests and proactively strap pregnant women to a hospital bed for 9 months? You understand why this is ridiculous, but that is the whole problem with having a religious motivated problem with something that is natural, you have no way of knowing how ridiculous it will end once you allow people to rule a country based on (often wrongly interpreted) myths and morals of millennia old...
There are three revolutionary parties without policies or stance I would love to see:
- Poll party (every issue is polled and thus as democratic as possible)
- Scientific party (every issue is decided on basis of facts alone, weighing only measurable pro's and cons)
- Neutral party (every issue is decided on election day, taking the stance of other parties based in votes total for each issue. This works as an equalizer, only taking the best of all parties. NOTE: this only works if there are a lot more than 2 parties!)
Great to see someone creating an advance in democracy! Although I must note the first one is most susceptible to the whims of the crowds, which can sway easily with some (im)proper media coverage... So that would be my least favorite of 3.
Well, still, one down and two more to go!!!
Veganism is still a choice, but so is extreme body modification... We might find both strange, but some people in their right mind still choose to do so. But I want to bet that a large portion of the people who make these extreme choices have some mental illness that can in fact be diagnosed and treated (or to put it bluntly: we all know most vegans are a little nuts;-D). If that is the case there is no need to create an extra disorder, only one of possible symptoms caused by another disorder.
Yeah, but i'd see it more as a symptom... Some troubled people become very obsessive with their food, but those are often the same people who are obsessive with just about anything else that is supposedly 'bad' (radiation, water, chem trails, the crazier the better)... Those people might benefit from some therapy, but not specific for their food-pattern but a 'how-to-live-life-without-constant-paranoia-and-obsession' kind of therapy.
Creating a DSM classification for this might be overkill. But then again, the DSM classifies pretty much anything observable regardless of merit... in the past they even classified homosexuality as a disorder for example.
I'm afraid it's too little too late... For lot's of cool apps i've been waiting for a good Windows Mobile version (like Last.fm, Sugarsync, and numerous messaging apps), while the Android, iPhone and even Symbian and others are at the umpteenth version they haven't even bothered to release a proper beta for Windows Mobile... The platform seems to be dying, sadly...
"based on How and whom"... and you read "Earths leaders are idiots"... Really? No, seriously really?
When a violent tyrant of a leader is actually chosen by the people, the people are pretty fucking dumb... not the leader. And shit like that is no exception, smart but terrible leaders are chosen again and again. There are of course examples of extremely stupid leaders, but it's fairly obvious this sentence is just as well a reference to the stupidity of the masses...
Yeah, you just can't let any terrorist photograph public places... Before you know it he might even snap a picture with YOUR KID! Won't somebody please think of the children!!!
Everyone knows that real (non-mobile phone) camera's are only used by terrorists and pedophiles, duhhh.
Why do people always consider the mobile devices first??? Think big first:
- Energy storage for renewable to allow baseline operation
- Car fuel that only needs to be refilled monthly
- Backup generators that don't require huge fuel tanks ...and finally after all other things bigger have been made to run on this you start creating the smaller versions.
You never want to start small with new technology. Remember the problem with exploding Nokia's? I would not let a higher energy density version near my head until it's been tested in practice for years, no need to nuke my own head off...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying if they found an interesting way to both improve NTP with time difference *and* make it work stand-alone independent from central servers that's called a technological improvement. You might not see the merit right now, but that's not the point... It's legitimate news for nerds! Come on, admit it, half the shit we love has absolutely no link to the real world whatsoever... :)
What makes you think the US won't sabotage GPS when they need to? Especially since weapons and troops now use GPS frequently to find targets they can easily send faulty data to mess with the enemies equipment... This is not really all that far fetched in a war scenario! Also an internet kill switch could easily encompass GPS... If you need accuracy no matter what (even in the case of a war, and in isolation of the rest of the world) GPS does not help.
But even the outside scenario of a time synchronizing system on Mars can be enough reason... When spaceflight becomes more common and they run into problems with time dilation etc. it's a good thing to be able to resolve the local time anywhere with anyone.
You missed the point... NTP is a mechanism to get time from an authority, and so is GPS (which probably uses a souped-up NTP-ish system to sync with ground control). This system is about being independent from authoritative servers. And there can be legitimate purposes why you might need it so it's a good thing they research it... Some of the reasons to want this might be:
:)
- Reduce the potential points of failure from one single bottleneck to infinite peers.
- Require no configuration (some old routers for example have a wrong time and log full of errors because the NTP server preprogrammed is gone).
- Protect against sabotaged NTP servers (in case of attack, or deliberate government intervention).
- Maintain high resolution timers in sync when the internet kill switch is tripped (or any internet-disrupting calamity).
- You're on Mars, and forgot to bring an atomic clock with you on the first colony ship...
- You're just paranoid about anything the government says, even the time...
Also this mechanism adds something new: Accurate time difference between two events (something that can still be very skewed with NTP when you have in inaccurate crystal).
All in all interesting, and worthy of a Slashdot dupe...
Yours must be broken or just plain crap, cuz mine works just fine with most certainly under 100 ms of lag (or unnoticeable)... Any delay from pushing play on my phone to hearing audio is caused by the application, not the bluetooth A2DP connection.
More likely the batteries will be lighter and smaller, and last a little longer... But not months or years, so I would not count on it anytime soon.
Yeah, console grade A/V cards... Where you can plug them into the lowest grade shit computer and the GPU takes care of the baseload, both in graphics as well as game processing (reducing the CPU load as much as possible). The graphics card needs to be fed with data and then operates on it's own, with the HDMI to connect to the TV. The inclusion of audio processing in the GPU also takes care of the problem that multi-channel audio is also handled by the CPU way too often in cheap PCs. Basically the A/V card is the whole console that just needs the data and a power supply to operate... This would probably also be good for gaming on other OSes, since they would only need to write a different generic loader and basic input handling but the rest is the GPU doing all the work. This insures a proper gaming A/V processing baseline that guarantees a game will run smoothly, but GPUs can still differentiate by adding more quality to the scenes (so competition-wise thats a good thing).
Sadly this will most likely be proprietary and probably very closed, but most importantly working! But given the requirements of the gaming companies and GPU manufacturers this would be right up their alley. They would probably create a new PC-Console card standard every other year, so you can upgrade and run the latest games on your old PC by only buying the latest GPU... This would allocate more of the gamers budget to the GPU manufacturers product (at the cost of the current console and PC manufacturers), so it's a probable business plan for GPU manufacturers and gaming studio's.
You made an excellent point until you started about the fees to allow recycling to be done properly... no way this will cost as much as the product itself (for regular electronics). This seems to be US-only because there appears to be (according to comments in this thread) a lack of recycling facilities that will actually take your old crap, and the ones that do are extortion schemes that let you pay trough your nose...
Here in the EU in the Netherlands we have another way of doing this with the government doing most of the work:
The old (soon to be over) system was: you pay like 20 euro extra for your new TV, but the company *has* to take the old one and recycle it. So it becomes the responsibility of the people selling and producing the cheap crap.
This system fails because of the fake recycling mentioned in the article, because there is not enough control over the actual recycling (companies hire companies, that hire crooks, that hire 3rd world kids).
Nowadays the government does all the recycling, and there are multiple ways to get your old stuff properly re-used or recycled:
- If you have a lot of old equipment to dispose off you can drive by the government waste and recycling center (we have multiple close by) and drive your car up and dump everything in the right container (you can also dump all other garbage here including dangerous waste, so just one trip is needed after a good cleaning).
- If you only have a little you can put in on the street (on one day of the week, we call it 'coarse garbage') and it will also be picked up and recycled, this includes all big products like old fridges and washing machines.
- But best of all: almost all old computer gear (and for that matter, anything remotely re-usable) I put on the street is gone in like 15 minutes and re-used.
The recycling is payed with your taxes, partially with a local garbage disposal fee. Since you already payed for recycling of all consumer products, and it's as easy as dragging it out on the street and letting someone else take care of it, there is no need not to do it. Meanwhile the cost of this stays low, at least you surely don't pay as much as the original device cost. With a proper centralized mechanism in place without scammers skewing prices there is absolutely no need for expensive recycling.
Good examples! I'll do a short attempt:
Gay marriage: There is marriage for the government and marriage for the church, a church can choose not to marry gay people, but they have no say over the state. Furthermore the value of the marriage before the state is in no way diminished, and it reduces complication with (parental) rights. There is no proven effect that two homosexual parents can't raise children, but they generally have less children and both have an income so they are good for the economy. All in all this is about equal legal rights, without downsides except in the eyes of a select few who experience no measurable disadvantages because of other people getting married in non-traditional ways.
Abortion: The only problem is determining the proper 'line' where a fetus becomes a human being (for example the first brain activity), before that an abortion is a naturally occurring process (in fact over 50% of every womans first conception end with a natural abortion). In all area's of medicine we enhance the natural abilities or mitigate the shortcomings of the human body. Abortion is a way of enhancing this natural occurring phenomenon which occurs when severe (genetic) defects are detected, or the mothers body is not ready (because of age, malnutrition, or sickness), so both these natural reasons should be enhanced by medicine.
The only problem with both these points is from a religious point of view... But since state and religion should be separated there is no reason to ban these things.
For example: The great thing about choice is that you can choose *not* to have an abortion if your have any moral dilemma. There is no sufficient reason to overrule the basic human right of choice over their live and body, especially since this a very slippery slope. There are hundreds of ways of inducing a natural abortion too, once abortion is forbidden should we throw women who get a natural abortion in jail too because they could have prevented it? And when a woman doesn't know she's pregnant, should we mandate daily pregnancy tests and proactively strap pregnant women to a hospital bed for 9 months? You understand why this is ridiculous, but that is the whole problem with having a religious motivated problem with something that is natural, you have no way of knowing how ridiculous it will end once you allow people to rule a country based on (often wrongly interpreted) myths and morals of millennia old...
And the new anthem will be "Never gonna give you up"...
There are three revolutionary parties without policies or stance I would love to see:
- Poll party (every issue is polled and thus as democratic as possible)
- Scientific party (every issue is decided on basis of facts alone, weighing only measurable pro's and cons)
- Neutral party (every issue is decided on election day, taking the stance of other parties based in votes total for each issue. This works as an equalizer, only taking the best of all parties. NOTE: this only works if there are a lot more than 2 parties!)
Great to see someone creating an advance in democracy! Although I must note the first one is most susceptible to the whims of the crowds, which can sway easily with some (im)proper media coverage... So that would be my least favorite of 3.
Well, still, one down and two more to go!!!
Hehe, sheet music not noteworthy... made me chuckle.
Thanks for the tip, the fast release, and more general all portableapps that really make life easier! You guys rule!
Ahem, please adhere to correct terminology: WOOOOOSH! 2x combo!!!
I read: "Forced Bathing Considered Harmful", and thought: 'Well duhh, every little boy will agree'. :-)
Veganism is still a choice, but so is extreme body modification... We might find both strange, but some people in their right mind still choose to do so. But I want to bet that a large portion of the people who make these extreme choices have some mental illness that can in fact be diagnosed and treated (or to put it bluntly: we all know most vegans are a little nuts ;-D). If that is the case there is no need to create an extra disorder, only one of possible symptoms caused by another disorder.
Yeah, but i'd see it more as a symptom... Some troubled people become very obsessive with their food, but those are often the same people who are obsessive with just about anything else that is supposedly 'bad' (radiation, water, chem trails, the crazier the better)... Those people might benefit from some therapy, but not specific for their food-pattern but a 'how-to-live-life-without-constant-paranoia-and-obsession' kind of therapy.
Creating a DSM classification for this might be overkill. But then again, the DSM classifies pretty much anything observable regardless of merit... in the past they even classified homosexuality as a disorder for example.
I'm afraid it's too little too late... For lot's of cool apps i've been waiting for a good Windows Mobile version (like Last.fm, Sugarsync, and numerous messaging apps), while the Android, iPhone and even Symbian and others are at the umpteenth version they haven't even bothered to release a proper beta for Windows Mobile... The platform seems to be dying, sadly...
Yes, but mildly entertaining for us!
Waves hand - There is no ball... You can go about your business. Move along.
"based on How and whom"... and you read "Earths leaders are idiots"... Really? No, seriously really?
When a violent tyrant of a leader is actually chosen by the people, the people are pretty fucking dumb... not the leader. And shit like that is no exception, smart but terrible leaders are chosen again and again. There are of course examples of extremely stupid leaders, but it's fairly obvious this sentence is just as well a reference to the stupidity of the masses...
Intelligence does not exclude stupidity. You can have both in a large amount...
I see the Flying Spaghetti Monster in there!
Yeah, you just can't let any terrorist photograph public places... Before you know it he might even snap a picture with YOUR KID! Won't somebody please think of the children!!!
Everyone knows that real (non-mobile phone) camera's are only used by terrorists and pedophiles, duhhh.
Hehe, Gimp mask... It does have *all that*.
Why do people always consider the mobile devices first??? Think big first:
...and finally after all other things bigger have been made to run on this you start creating the smaller versions.
- Energy storage for renewable to allow baseline operation
- Car fuel that only needs to be refilled monthly
- Backup generators that don't require huge fuel tanks
You never want to start small with new technology. Remember the problem with exploding Nokia's? I would not let a higher energy density version near my head until it's been tested in practice for years, no need to nuke my own head off...