Playing devil's advocate (even though I agree with you), do you think the general public can handle being able to choose their programming?
You mean like getting movies from Netflex and playing them when they like?
Or using Netflix streaming to play what they want whenever they want?
Or buying TV shows on iTunes and playing them back when they wish?
Or buying movies from a hotel TV screen?
All of those options are used widely by MANY people already. People (and I mean NORMAL people) already chose the "programming" they want to watch every day. Even the most non-technical user can handle this; look at a list and choose what they want.
But, those services are typically used to augment TV watching. A lot of people choose the shows they want to watch from watching TV advertisements and network programming (movies aside).
Now imagine if the ability to passively watch network TV went away completely. You are sitting down with a quick dinner and want to watch TV for 30 minutes, but you can't just turn the TV on anymore you have choose something. Some people will like this, but others will have a hard time with it because it is too active a task. (I know this from personal experience within my family.)
I am not saying that people are going to cease to watch programs or just up and die. But it will require a distinct mental shift for many individuals.
To a pull system from a push content system. A push system is defined as something like television, where everything is pushed with a schedule at timed intervals. A pull content gives you a choice, instead of waiting and being forced to stay for a show.
For example, even on legal sites, you choose when and what to watch, availability withstanding.
DVR is a stopgap in that direction. Netflix, Hulu and Youtube are currently going in the right direction.
Playing devil's advocate (even though I agree with you), do you think the general public can handle being able to choose their programming? Currently, I think a lot of people are used to watching what is fed to them by the networks.
Remember that too much choice paradoxically makes people unhappy!
The thing is, the poster above was just using pulseaudio as a single example of a common problem with multiple faucets of all Linux distros.
Think of it from your mother's perspective. How would she feel if she bought a new computer and the audio didn't work all the time? Or if she couldn't always watch DVDs on it? Or if she had to do something more complicated than click on system preferences to adjust a setting... What's a terminal again? And why don't this computer recognize my *insert peripheral here*???
Not everyone wants to tinker with their desktops. You know how you feel when your motherboard dies? That is how they feel when their computer won't do something simple and they can't figure out how to fix it.
The Russian images look more realistic because of the sense of perspective induced by the reflection of the sun of the globe. The Russian color schemes also look more alien, which catches your eye a bit more than the NASA (regular) color scheme, which we are used to seeing.
That is why near IR images of earth objects are so intriguing as well. It's a picture of an everyday object, but it just looks different!
Just to be clear, they are absolutely not implying it has melted through the containment, but, rather, the reactor pressure vessel.
However, they also stated that they think the containment integrity has failed and could leak molten core materials due to the highly reactive groundwater detected outside the plant.
Thus, they are stating that it hasn't melted through the containment, but it could!
And it works even if everybody turns off his or her phone while they're buying drugs or robbing banks. And this isn't some crazy hypothetical stuff, this data exists, you could do this right now for millions of people.
This is not a new concept for real criminals.
People who want to avoid surveillance carry a burn phone, only deal in cash, and don't have anything registered in their name or use multiple aliases.
Sure, you are definitely providing the cell phone company with valuable data. But, if you really want to get stressed out, think about how you are providing your internet provider with valuable data every time you surf the internet, your credit card company with valuable data every time you buy something, and your bank with valuable data every time you make a deposit or withdrawal. Then think about all the surveillance cameras in public and private spaces and imagine they are all tied to a single government agency with really good facial recognition software.
In modern society, we've been trading anonymity for convenience for decades. If you want a high standard of living, there really is no other existing solution.
The problem is the title: "Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels"
The headline is actually worse than sensationalist: It's an outright lie. Fallout of Cs-137 and I-131 are at near Chernobyl levels, but the fallout, as a whole, is far far less than Chernobyl.
But the argument is that Cs-137 and I-131 are the main carcinogens for humans, so the Fukushima incident is as harmful to humans as the Chernobyl incident.
The article does briefly mention that in the Chernobyl incident much of these elements were bound to (sticky) soot, but doesn't explain that this difference could have made them more likely to be incorporated into substances humans come in contact with.
Are you retarded ? Nuclear has _no_ emissions and the waste is quite small for a year's worth of operation. Just dump it all back in the mine when the uranium ore is depleted and have a nice day.
I am sure you mean no *intentional* emissions.
The problem is that the unintentional emissions are harmful for thousands of years and induce cell mutations that kill you slowly and painfully.
"Why do videogames still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do they snigger at it, or treat it as a reward? Den Of Geek has been taking a look."
I always figured it was some combination of games being made by our inner adolescent, marketed to the outer ones, and getting banned whenever they take sex seriously.
Any computer software is an extension of its developers. The programmers either think of sex that way, or think that representing it that way will appeal to the audience.
The article is silly though. The author keeps complaining that sex is a deep and meaningful connection between two human beings. Well, if you are playing a single player game, there is no other person to connect with. People do seem happy with the sex in multiplayer games, like Second Life, though.
Finish VASIMIR, improve ion engines, develop high power nuclear reactors (not just wimpy RTGs), try laser beaming, solar sails or even magnetic bubbles! Anyway, if you can get a propulsion system that's 10x more efficient than our current chemical rockets you could send much more massive payloads quicker! This would substantially reduce the launch cost since it would "only" cost 10s of thousands of dollars to send a kg instead of 100s of thousands to the outer planets. This in turn would allow designers much more flexibilty to reduce cost/increase perfornance since they wouldn't be under such pressure to reduce weight. And by reducing or eliminating the need for time-consuming gravitational assists (6 years to Mercury!), it would likewise reduce support costs as well as increase science return (instruments won't be decades obsolete on arrival).
It is amusing that you criticize gravitational assists, since they are one of the advanced energy-efficiency concepts you are promoting in your post.
In fact, you'll find that almost all of the proposed high-efficiency propulsion concepts are actually much slower than chemical rocket propulsion. So while they would use less energy than a rocket, they would take a lot longer to get to a destination in our solar system.
Additionally, while I applaud your enthusiasm for space exploration, you do not seem to have a realistic view as to the actual technological and political challenges involved. Many of your proposed concepts will need 20 years of concerted funding before they are ready to be demonstrated on a high-dollar mission to an outer planet. For the past few years, the United States has been barely been able to cough up the funding to keep the space shuttle flying and Congress is unwilling to pay to redevelop the technology necessary to return to the moon.
Enthusiasm is good, but it needs to be coupled with reality for success to occur in an engineering arena.
But what useful knowledge would we gain from this experiment?
I mean, we get supersonic vehicle to stay on the ground at speeds where it would most definitely rather fly. It's not all that useful. We develop air drag model and shape for a vehicle which has no practical purpose, nor ever will. We spend lots of money and resources just to develop a variant of a jet plane we forcibly keep from flying, for no good reason but to call it a "car" and beat a "ground" speed record.
I still say it''s a waste: the little we can actually learn from this could be either learned using vastly less resources, or the resources could be used to learn something vastly more useful.
You can't say that the car would "most definitely rather fly." Supersonic jets rely on a supersonic airfoil design to fly. It's just as easy to design a supersonic airfoil to give downward thrust.
The video article (and you) are overlooking the actual hard part, which is going to be managing the shock waves that the supersonic vehicle sheds. If the design is not sufficient, they will reflect off the ground and then impinge on the car frame, creating severe turbulence and oscillatory instabilities that will either destroy the vehicle outright or cause it to lose control and roll. Solving this problem is the real key to operating a supersonic car.
It also would be an incredibly useful technology to master. It's not only important for driving a supersonic car, but for understanding the dynamics of two supersonic bodies in close proximity.
Our legal system needs a reset on its entire code. There are over 4,000 federal crimes; to whit, there were only about 620 total laws (religious, civil and criminal) in the Old Testament. That means that there are likely more felonies in the federal criminal code than there were total regulations on every aspect of civilized life back then. Heck, the Roman law of the 12 tables, on which many of our ideas are based as well, is practically a foot note compared to just our personal income tax code.
Wait, are you advocating a return to justice driven by such concepts as "an eye for an eye?"
Regardless, you appear to be overlooking the fact that civilization has also evolved for more than 2000 years since the Old Testament was written. New laws exist to address situations that did not even exist back then.
BCC doesnt show other recipients, so if your boss scenario actually happened, either you don't know how to use BCC yourself, or he added everyone in by hand.
You did not read the GP's post carefully enough. Only the boss was BCCed. All others were in the TO and CC fields. So while the boss can't see other BCCed recipients, he can both see and reply-to-all to those on the TO and CC fields. (This is confirmed in your link.)
Ironically, your post illustrates why BCC is a problem nowadays. People don't spend enough time reading online text before hitting the reply button. (Don't take offense, we all do it. There are just too many emails and not enough time in the day.)
Hey editors, how on earth did this awful link get onto the main page?
Time to step it up editors. The quality of the "articles" have been slipping for several months now.
Personally, I'd rather see three extra minutes spent reviewing the quality of the linked articles than however long it takes to revamp the website every six months.
The said coffee shops in the articles are doing this for very good business reasons. They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue. They way the potential for lost revenue by kindle customers getting upset and going elsewhere with the actual loss they were experiencing.
If you don't like it, you are free to frequent other coffee shops or even start your own that caters to kindle users. That's what it means to live in a free country.
I support this as a customer too. It is annoying as hell when you buy a coffee and there are no seats... purely because 15 people have setup their mobile offices on all of the tables.
If you want to work (or read for an hour), go to your office or the library. There will be less distractions and you will work faster.
My point is that when you are student, your realizations are less important than your will to learn and to share. It may sound like a pukingly everybody-is-nice slogan, but that is the truth. A good student is good at learning and if s/he is good at sharing his/her knowledge too, that is the kind of student we need more. It is very different from when you arrive in the real arena of science where something that works and that works better than what the others made is what you want. (At least in theory, my experience on this is a lot more cynical)
Learning is good, but sometimes not good enough to bring home the paycheck in the real world. (This is the GP's point.) So while it is great that the kid was able to get off the couch and try, he or she may need to apply themselves a lot harder to meet the competitive standard.
I agree with the GP. US student performance expectations have eroded to the point where breathing is good enough to get a C/D and being conscious will get you a B. This does a massive disservice to the students when they graduate, join the workforce, and compete with others (Americans and immigrants) who have a real work ethic. Ultimately, it is bad for the country and we are now beginning to observe that.
It needs to be fixed. Teachers need to be both paid more and have higher expectations placed upon them. Teachers who under-perform should be fired. Students who are under-performing need to be failed and held back. There should be positive economic incentives placed on families whose children demonstrate good academic performance.
The "WTF" is that it's not a bunch of scientists, it's just entertainment television and nothing more. There's some math and science involved, but the actual purpose of the show is just to have something fun and interesting to watch.
It's frustrating though because they don't really emphasize that they are cutting corners on their "research" and they are usually very definitive when stating their conclusions. Also, the show is on the Discovery Channel, which gives it an air of legitimacy to the average individual.
Why are we reading about this whole solar focusing thing every few months anyway? Did people not play with this "technology" enough when they were 5 years old and burning ants? At least give us a blurb about how they are using this concept to melt salt for energy generation and storage. Stories about 19-year-olds making "death rays" on some artsy-fartsy eco-architecture website is a little lowbrow, even for/.! Especially when the kid actually took the time to glue 5800 little mirror fragments to a satellite dish. You can buy a 24" parabolic mirror from Edmund Optics for $80. Or you can glue and polish a sheet of aluminum to the dish for $1.
An outpost in space is worthless until it becomes self sustaining. If you destroy a country that has space outposts, you will suddenly have those space outposts begging the victorious country for supplies to survive or a ride home.
You need to read about the concept of mutually-assured destruction.
Slashdot Mirror
Playing devil's advocate (even though I agree with you), do you think the general public can handle being able to choose their programming?
You mean like getting movies from Netflex and playing them when they like?
Or using Netflix streaming to play what they want whenever they want?
Or buying TV shows on iTunes and playing them back when they wish?
Or buying movies from a hotel TV screen?
All of those options are used widely by MANY people already. People (and I mean NORMAL people) already chose the "programming" they want to watch every day. Even the most non-technical user can handle this; look at a list and choose what they want.
But, those services are typically used to augment TV watching. A lot of people choose the shows they want to watch from watching TV advertisements and network programming (movies aside).
Now imagine if the ability to passively watch network TV went away completely. You are sitting down with a quick dinner and want to watch TV for 30 minutes, but you can't just turn the TV on anymore you have choose something. Some people will like this, but others will have a hard time with it because it is too active a task. (I know this from personal experience within my family.)
I am not saying that people are going to cease to watch programs or just up and die. But it will require a distinct mental shift for many individuals.
To a pull system from a push content system. A push system is defined as something like television, where everything is pushed with a schedule at timed intervals. A pull content gives you a choice, instead of waiting and being forced to stay for a show.
For example, even on legal sites, you choose when and what to watch, availability withstanding.
DVR is a stopgap in that direction. Netflix, Hulu and Youtube are currently going in the right direction.
Playing devil's advocate (even though I agree with you), do you think the general public can handle being able to choose their programming? Currently, I think a lot of people are used to watching what is fed to them by the networks.
Remember that too much choice paradoxically makes people unhappy!
The thing is, the poster above was just using pulseaudio as a single example of a common problem with multiple faucets of all Linux distros.
Think of it from your mother's perspective. How would she feel if she bought a new computer and the audio didn't work all the time? Or if she couldn't always watch DVDs on it? Or if she had to do something more complicated than click on system preferences to adjust a setting... What's a terminal again? And why don't this computer recognize my *insert peripheral here*???
Not everyone wants to tinker with their desktops. You know how you feel when your motherboard dies? That is how they feel when their computer won't do something simple and they can't figure out how to fix it.
...with a lot of facts but no explanation.
The Russian images look more realistic because of the sense of perspective induced by the reflection of the sun of the globe. The Russian color schemes also look more alien, which catches your eye a bit more than the NASA (regular) color scheme, which we are used to seeing.
That is why near IR images of earth objects are so intriguing as well. It's a picture of an everyday object, but it just looks different!
Just to be clear, they are absolutely not implying it has melted through the containment, but, rather, the reactor pressure vessel.
However, they also stated that they think the containment integrity has failed and could leak molten core materials due to the highly reactive groundwater detected outside the plant.
Thus, they are stating that it hasn't melted through the containment, but it could!
And it works even if everybody turns off his or her phone while they're buying drugs or robbing banks. And this isn't some crazy hypothetical stuff, this data exists, you could do this right now for millions of people.
This is not a new concept for real criminals.
People who want to avoid surveillance carry a burn phone, only deal in cash, and don't have anything registered in their name or use multiple aliases.
Sure, you are definitely providing the cell phone company with valuable data. But, if you really want to get stressed out, think about how you are providing your internet provider with valuable data every time you surf the internet, your credit card company with valuable data every time you buy something, and your bank with valuable data every time you make a deposit or withdrawal. Then think about all the surveillance cameras in public and private spaces and imagine they are all tied to a single government agency with really good facial recognition software.
In modern society, we've been trading anonymity for convenience for decades. If you want a high standard of living, there really is no other existing solution.
The problem is the title: "Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels"
The headline is actually worse than sensationalist: It's an outright lie. Fallout of Cs-137 and I-131 are at near Chernobyl levels, but the fallout, as a whole, is far far less than Chernobyl.
But the argument is that Cs-137 and I-131 are the main carcinogens for humans, so the Fukushima incident is as harmful to humans as the Chernobyl incident.
The article does briefly mention that in the Chernobyl incident much of these elements were bound to (sticky) soot, but doesn't explain that this difference could have made them more likely to be incorporated into substances humans come in contact with.
The "Forever" part is how long the development process takes.
I'm interested in these devices that "can detect the supersonic sound waves generated by enemy gunfire."
Supersonic sound waves? As in, sound that travels faster than sound?
Odd.~
Yes, it is called a shock wave.
if it is really detecting supersonic sound waves, it needs to be re-calibrated methinks...
Why? Are you not familiar with the concept of a shock wave?
Has anyone beamed a business card to you recently in a meeting? I suspect not, unless you spend time with people who like using classic PDAs.
Even more importantly, does anyone still have a business card that was beamed to them 10 years go?
Are you retarded ? Nuclear has _no_ emissions and the waste is quite small for a year's worth of operation. Just dump it all back in the mine when the uranium ore is depleted and have a nice day.
I am sure you mean no *intentional* emissions.
The problem is that the unintentional emissions are harmful for thousands of years and induce cell mutations that kill you slowly and painfully.
"Why do videogames still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do they snigger at it, or treat it as a reward? Den Of Geek has been taking a look."
I always figured it was some combination of games being made by our inner adolescent, marketed to the outer ones, and getting banned whenever they take sex seriously.
Any computer software is an extension of its developers. The programmers either think of sex that way, or think that representing it that way will appeal to the audience.
The article is silly though. The author keeps complaining that sex is a deep and meaningful connection between two human beings. Well, if you are playing a single player game, there is no other person to connect with. People do seem happy with the sex in multiplayer games, like Second Life, though.
Finish VASIMIR, improve ion engines, develop high power nuclear reactors (not just wimpy RTGs), try laser beaming, solar sails or even magnetic bubbles! Anyway, if you can get a propulsion system that's 10x more efficient than our current chemical rockets you could send much more massive payloads quicker! This would substantially reduce the launch cost since it would "only" cost 10s of thousands of dollars to send a kg instead of 100s of thousands to the outer planets. This in turn would allow designers much more flexibilty to reduce cost/increase perfornance since they wouldn't be under such pressure to reduce weight. And by reducing or eliminating the need for time-consuming gravitational assists (6 years to Mercury!), it would likewise reduce support costs as well as increase science return (instruments won't be decades obsolete on arrival).
It is amusing that you criticize gravitational assists, since they are one of the advanced energy-efficiency concepts you are promoting in your post.
In fact, you'll find that almost all of the proposed high-efficiency propulsion concepts are actually much slower than chemical rocket propulsion. So while they would use less energy than a rocket, they would take a lot longer to get to a destination in our solar system.
Additionally, while I applaud your enthusiasm for space exploration, you do not seem to have a realistic view as to the actual technological and political challenges involved. Many of your proposed concepts will need 20 years of concerted funding before they are ready to be demonstrated on a high-dollar mission to an outer planet. For the past few years, the United States has been barely been able to cough up the funding to keep the space shuttle flying and Congress is unwilling to pay to redevelop the technology necessary to return to the moon.
Enthusiasm is good, but it needs to be coupled with reality for success to occur in an engineering arena.
But what useful knowledge would we gain from this experiment?
I mean, we get supersonic vehicle to stay on the ground at speeds where it would most definitely rather fly. It's not all that useful. We develop air drag model and shape for a vehicle which has no practical purpose, nor ever will. We spend lots of money and resources just to develop a variant of a jet plane we forcibly keep from flying, for no good reason but to call it a "car" and beat a "ground" speed record.
I still say it''s a waste: the little we can actually learn from this could be either learned using vastly less resources, or the resources could be used to learn something vastly more useful.
You can't say that the car would "most definitely rather fly." Supersonic jets rely on a supersonic airfoil design to fly. It's just as easy to design a supersonic airfoil to give downward thrust.
The video article (and you) are overlooking the actual hard part, which is going to be managing the shock waves that the supersonic vehicle sheds. If the design is not sufficient, they will reflect off the ground and then impinge on the car frame, creating severe turbulence and oscillatory instabilities that will either destroy the vehicle outright or cause it to lose control and roll. Solving this problem is the real key to operating a supersonic car.
It also would be an incredibly useful technology to master. It's not only important for driving a supersonic car, but for understanding the dynamics of two supersonic bodies in close proximity.
Our legal system needs a reset on its entire code. There are over 4,000 federal crimes; to whit, there were only about 620 total laws (religious, civil and criminal) in the Old Testament. That means that there are likely more felonies in the federal criminal code than there were total regulations on every aspect of civilized life back then. Heck, the Roman law of the 12 tables, on which many of our ideas are based as well, is practically a foot note compared to just our personal income tax code.
Wait, are you advocating a return to justice driven by such concepts as "an eye for an eye?"
Regardless, you appear to be overlooking the fact that civilization has also evolved for more than 2000 years since the Old Testament was written. New laws exist to address situations that did not even exist back then.
There's a big difference between calling someone names and actually accusing them of something.
Are you referring to the difference between (1) slander and (2) wrongly accusing someone of a felony?
This will be the first of many failures due to the privatization of the space sector.
BCC doesnt show other recipients, so if your boss scenario actually happened, either you don't know how to use BCC yourself, or he added everyone in by hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_carbon_copy
You did not read the GP's post carefully enough. Only the boss was BCCed. All others were in the TO and CC fields. So while the boss can't see other BCCed recipients, he can both see and reply-to-all to those on the TO and CC fields. (This is confirmed in your link.)
Ironically, your post illustrates why BCC is a problem nowadays. People don't spend enough time reading online text before hitting the reply button. (Don't take offense, we all do it. There are just too many emails and not enough time in the day.)
Hey editors, how on earth did this awful link get onto the main page?
Time to step it up editors. The quality of the "articles" have been slipping for several months now.
Personally, I'd rather see three extra minutes spent reviewing the quality of the linked articles than however long it takes to revamp the website every six months.
The said coffee shops in the articles are doing this for very good business reasons. They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue. They way the potential for lost revenue by kindle customers getting upset and going elsewhere with the actual loss they were experiencing.
If you don't like it, you are free to frequent other coffee shops or even start your own that caters to kindle users. That's what it means to live in a free country.
I support this as a customer too. It is annoying as hell when you buy a coffee and there are no seats... purely because 15 people have setup their mobile offices on all of the tables.
If you want to work (or read for an hour), go to your office or the library. There will be less distractions and you will work faster.
Sunk costs should never influence your current decision.
Your economic-based logic would apply to a company whose only goal was profit, but the BBC is a public service media company.
My point is that when you are student, your realizations are less important than your will to learn and to share. It may sound like a pukingly everybody-is-nice slogan, but that is the truth. A good student is good at learning and if s/he is good at sharing his/her knowledge too, that is the kind of student we need more. It is very different from when you arrive in the real arena of science where something that works and that works better than what the others made is what you want. (At least in theory, my experience on this is a lot more cynical)
Learning is good, but sometimes not good enough to bring home the paycheck in the real world. (This is the GP's point.) So while it is great that the kid was able to get off the couch and try, he or she may need to apply themselves a lot harder to meet the competitive standard.
I agree with the GP. US student performance expectations have eroded to the point where breathing is good enough to get a C/D and being conscious will get you a B. This does a massive disservice to the students when they graduate, join the workforce, and compete with others (Americans and immigrants) who have a real work ethic. Ultimately, it is bad for the country and we are now beginning to observe that.
It needs to be fixed. Teachers need to be both paid more and have higher expectations placed upon them. Teachers who under-perform should be fired. Students who are under-performing need to be failed and held back. There should be positive economic incentives placed on families whose children demonstrate good academic performance.
wtf guys?
The "WTF" is that it's not a bunch of scientists, it's just entertainment television and nothing more. There's some math and science involved, but the actual purpose of the show is just to have something fun and interesting to watch.
It's frustrating though because they don't really emphasize that they are cutting corners on their "research" and they are usually very definitive when stating their conclusions. Also, the show is on the Discovery Channel, which gives it an air of legitimacy to the average individual.
Why are we reading about this whole solar focusing thing every few months anyway? Did people not play with this "technology" enough when they were 5 years old and burning ants? At least give us a blurb about how they are using this concept to melt salt for energy generation and storage. Stories about 19-year-olds making "death rays" on some artsy-fartsy eco-architecture website is a little lowbrow, even for /.! Especially when the kid actually took the time to glue 5800 little mirror fragments to a satellite dish. You can buy a 24" parabolic mirror from Edmund Optics for $80. Or you can glue and polish a sheet of aluminum to the dish for $1.
An outpost in space is worthless until it becomes self sustaining. If you destroy a country that has space outposts, you will suddenly have those space outposts begging the victorious country for supplies to survive or a ride home.
You need to read about the concept of mutually-assured destruction.