Is there anything to suggest that this law will be any more effective at curbing the free distribution of illicit data than previous laws currently failing to do the same? I'm guessing "no."
The only benefit to this technology that the article mentions is that it "can greatly improve the device robustness and durability" and says nothing of the sound quality. It made me assume this would be used for MP3 player earbuds rather than headphones but then the article mentions "the speakers consume relatively high levels of power, because of their low efficiency of converting electrical energy into sound." Sounds like this has no practical commercial application at the moment.
Thank god we have decades of research proving that an overactive massive industrial infrastructure is just the solution to this sort of thing. A few more coal plants should fix this, right?
there's lots of small businesses that are hanging at the 49 employee number to avoid the Obamacare mandates.
[...]
I think most everyone can see that these two reactions in particular apparently weren't anticipated as side effects as widespread as they seem to be at this point.
Social media is a tool no different than any other tool. People who go out of their way to understand the tools they use rarely encounter problems with them. But like an inexperienced driver climbing behind the wheel after having "only a few" drinks, too many people browse social media sites as if every word is fact, unaware that nearly everything written online should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. But there's no helping people who will believe a FB group about the moon landing being fake while dismissing contradicting posts like this as part of the government cover-up. As long as there are people who thrive in the social experience of collective willful ignorance, every tool can become a menace to society. That doesn't mean we should take them all away.
They just need to be sure they regularly dose their cows with the right antibiotic...
From the SUMMARY:
several different farms across the U.K. have turned up evidence for a new strain of MRSA — bacteria which have evolved resistance to common antibiotics
The artist is an art-producing AI, who was compiled from source code that is open.
Why did this get modded funny? Am I seriously the only weeabee in a thread about Japan? Are you guys not aware of Hatsune Miku? The computer doesn't compose the music on its own but it's a publicly available application that allows you to synthesize voice. Some of the music they play at her concerts were composed by fans (who weren't paid to do so). Here's an example that would be disturbing even if it wasn't still crawling out of the uncanny valley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI
Because the average patient doesn't have the background to understand what they're getting themselves into. Without laws to the contrary snake oil salesman can claim whatever they want about a treatment or medication. Do you really want to live in the 19th century?
You're right, laws to protect citizens from "snake oil salesmen" were indeed important in the 19th century since no one could google "snake oil" and realize that this wasn't going to cure their cancer. Now you can. Welcome to the 21st century.
I think we're all missing the underlying subtext here. There's a reason the IE team always sends its congratulations in the form of a cake... because it's a lie.
I agree completely. Frankly I think these idiots have done a lot to help the gay community. I remember back when they were picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, ranting about how they went to hell since they defended an allegedly gay-loving country. The best part was seeing marines going up to them and just glaring at them with pure hatred, clearly on the verge of beating the shit out of them. I have a lot of respect for our soldiers (regardless of what our leaders are telling them to do) and that just really struck me as a symbol of patriotism standing up against these people. It's because of stuff like that that no one takes them seriously. We all know they're total scum so we don't need to talk about it every time these people stage yet another silly protest.
In short, they've essentially made it fun and cool to hate people who hate gays. Keep up the good work Westboro!
Radiant: we're a little short on staff -- think you could raise the penalty for jaywalking?
Congressman: can do!
This exact sort of thing is already happening in the U.S. except rather than keeping people in prison to make them work, the prison lobby wants to keep people in prison for the sake of needing to build more prisons. We've got both the prisons' investors and prison guard unions constantly lobbying for harsher punishments for lesser offenses. It's a scary to think that it's profitable for anyone to lock people up and throw away the key...
I *love* this idea. Neural interfaces are still very much in their infancy with the best commercially available probably being the OCZ NIA and even it is mostly a glitchy gimmick at this point. But the standards they're considering for this X-Prize seem very high. Providing vision to the blind and being able to control virtual bodies both require an understanding of very intricate neural operations that we probably won't see for many years. Sure, there's been devices created that can sort of do these things already but not on levels that can significantly help the disabled. All the more reason that this prize is a good idea since it will hopefully draw interest to the appropriate fields of study. Unfortunately the kind of things that they're talking about will almost certainly require implants. Further advancement in non-implanted interfaces will undoubtedly be much slower so don't assume that you're going to be roaming the hills of Azeroth as if you were actually there any time in the next 20 years. But hey, hopefully I'm wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Day one server issues for a AAA release??? STOP THE PRESSES!
Is there anything to suggest that this law will be any more effective at curbing the free distribution of illicit data than previous laws currently failing to do the same? I'm guessing "no."
The only benefit to this technology that the article mentions is that it "can greatly improve the device robustness and durability" and says nothing of the sound quality. It made me assume this would be used for MP3 player earbuds rather than headphones but then the article mentions "the speakers consume relatively high levels of power, because of their low efficiency of converting electrical energy into sound." Sounds like this has no practical commercial application at the moment.
The flu is an emergent bug in a natural system. We haven't seen the first truly malicious virus yet.
I thought we already had an internet filled with blackjack and hookers.
Thank god we have decades of research proving that an overactive massive industrial infrastructure is just the solution to this sort of thing. A few more coal plants should fix this, right?
there's lots of small businesses that are hanging at the 49 employee number to avoid the Obamacare mandates.
[...]
I think most everyone can see that these two reactions in particular apparently weren't anticipated as side effects as widespread as they seem to be at this point.
Italy's cutoff for corporations being required to pay into the socialized medicine system is ten employees. That's why 90% of its workforce is employed at companies with less than ten workers.
This was not only anticipated, it was planned. Gotta kill those evil big corporations y'know!
How appalling! Has anyone reported this to China's Petitioning Depart-... oh wait.
Quite many buttloads, I'd presume.
Fortunately a buttload of pressurized air doesn't actually have much force behind it.
Source: personal experience.
Social media is a tool no different than any other tool. People who go out of their way to understand the tools they use rarely encounter problems with them. But like an inexperienced driver climbing behind the wheel after having "only a few" drinks, too many people browse social media sites as if every word is fact, unaware that nearly everything written online should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. But there's no helping people who will believe a FB group about the moon landing being fake while dismissing contradicting posts like this as part of the government cover-up. As long as there are people who thrive in the social experience of collective willful ignorance, every tool can become a menace to society. That doesn't mean we should take them all away.
They just need to be sure they regularly dose their cows with the right antibiotic...
From the SUMMARY:
several different farms across the U.K. have turned up evidence for a new strain of MRSA — bacteria which have evolved resistance to common antibiotics
The artist is an art-producing AI, who was compiled from source code that is open.
Why did this get modded funny? Am I seriously the only weeabee in a thread about Japan? Are you guys not aware of Hatsune Miku? The computer doesn't compose the music on its own but it's a publicly available application that allows you to synthesize voice. Some of the music they play at her concerts were composed by fans (who weren't paid to do so). Here's an example that would be disturbing even if it wasn't still crawling out of the uncanny valley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI
Because the average patient doesn't have the background to understand what they're getting themselves into. Without laws to the contrary snake oil salesman can claim whatever they want about a treatment or medication. Do you really want to live in the 19th century?
You're right, laws to protect citizens from "snake oil salesmen" were indeed important in the 19th century since no one could google "snake oil" and realize that this wasn't going to cure their cancer. Now you can. Welcome to the 21st century.
Should I change the password and enable WPA?
Or allow my neighbors in a 12,000 sq mile radius to share my connection?
I like sharing, it seems neighborly.
This just in! President Obama announces the immediate formation of a new free nation-wide wireless network simply called "Linksys".
Rule 34 on Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.
http://www.thespacewriter.com/arp274_HST_XL.jpg
You're welcome.
I think we're all missing the underlying subtext here. There's a reason the IE team always sends its congratulations in the form of a cake... because it's a lie.
Yeah, most of us speak l337 nowadays. Comic very related: http://megatokyo.com/strip/9
If there's ever a robot uprising, I bet it's going to be started by us making them do stuff like this.
I agree completely. Frankly I think these idiots have done a lot to help the gay community. I remember back when they were picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, ranting about how they went to hell since they defended an allegedly gay-loving country. The best part was seeing marines going up to them and just glaring at them with pure hatred, clearly on the verge of beating the shit out of them. I have a lot of respect for our soldiers (regardless of what our leaders are telling them to do) and that just really struck me as a symbol of patriotism standing up against these people. It's because of stuff like that that no one takes them seriously. We all know they're total scum so we don't need to talk about it every time these people stage yet another silly protest.
In short, they've essentially made it fun and cool to hate people who hate gays. Keep up the good work Westboro!
OMG, so are you!
Radiant: we're a little short on staff -- think you could raise the penalty for jaywalking?
Congressman: can do!
This exact sort of thing is already happening in the U.S. except rather than keeping people in prison to make them work, the prison lobby wants to keep people in prison for the sake of needing to build more prisons. We've got both the prisons' investors and prison guard unions constantly lobbying for harsher punishments for lesser offenses. It's a scary to think that it's profitable for anyone to lock people up and throw away the key...
Unless their matchmaking servers fill my dating needs too. :)
Blizzard has got you covered: http://us.battle.net/matchmaking.html
Actually, he might be on to something. I just printed this article out and it's a helluva lot funnier in print.
And on paper you can't be modded down.
Yeah, it looks like he's headed for -1 Troll any minute now.
I *love* this idea. Neural interfaces are still very much in their infancy with the best commercially available probably being the OCZ NIA and even it is mostly a glitchy gimmick at this point. But the standards they're considering for this X-Prize seem very high. Providing vision to the blind and being able to control virtual bodies both require an understanding of very intricate neural operations that we probably won't see for many years. Sure, there's been devices created that can sort of do these things already but not on levels that can significantly help the disabled. All the more reason that this prize is a good idea since it will hopefully draw interest to the appropriate fields of study. Unfortunately the kind of things that they're talking about will almost certainly require implants. Further advancement in non-implanted interfaces will undoubtedly be much slower so don't assume that you're going to be roaming the hills of Azeroth as if you were actually there any time in the next 20 years. But hey, hopefully I'm wrong.
I bet NORML is desperately searching for the haggis lobbyists so they can hire them.