In the same amount of time, 5mW of 532nm laser energy will do more eye damage than 5mW of ultraviolet 400nm laser energy. Not that I am planning, to, but does this mean you could make an ultraviolet (or infrared) laser that would damage someone's eyes without them seeing any light or understanding why it suddenly hurts so much? Is the blink reflex triggered by light, so you could bypass it with non-visible wavelengths and cause damage?
I'll order an array of those for my dark, gothic castle tower, then. Shine it over the villagers! They'll never know why it hurts so much to glance at my evil castle, they'll just know that overly curious people are punished with an unnatural blindness. Serves them right!
Oh geeze. They might as well call that thing the "Shark Jumper". Hey, nothing special about it. Just another 1-man, almost indestructible, almost undetectable, hyperdrive-equipped, star-system-destorying ship.
That's nothing, compared to my "Galaxy Annhilator": A one-man device powerful enough to destory whole galaxies in one go. It does this through quantum resonance between the stars, formed in the begnning of time and dormant until now. Upon triggering, it warps in the stars' alternate-universe antimatter counterparts, instantly converting each star-anti-star pair into pure energy.
This Galaxy Annhilator looks like a cheesy ring trinket and is commonly found in Dark-Jedi Munch (TM) popcorn bags.
But the main thrust of your post was correct with regards to dividing sums of money easily. Or at least it was until the education system decided that mathematics and mental arithmetic were not the most important subjects in life. I'm not sure how some of today's young people could cope with such problems. 12 is a nice number, but I will not support it for a standard until we grow another pair opposable thumbs.
Young people today are nothing compared to what is to come. e-ink restuatant bills that calculate the price for everyone, and even takes into account if you had 2 drinks or 3.
Give another 50 years, and what we call basic math will be indistinguishable from magic for large parts of the population.
We should move all high-bandwidth content delivery systems over to P2P.
Couple with decentralized storage that copy popular content close to demand so you can pull more content off your general area instead of halfway across the globe.
Word of mouth still links into geographical location. Most of my firends live in the same region as me, even if I use email to tell them about the lastest news.
If a million people in Mongolia suddenly decides to watch Turbonegro's latest HD music video? Pushing HD over there should be a piece of cacke. Send a copy or two, then have mongolian nodes distribute the stuff over there.... P2P is an awesome concept, no matter what greysones it is currently serving. I can only guess that if all the pirate content tossed around the world today had been shared in a client-server model, the Internet would have been long dead by now.
Seriously. There is a story about this on Slashdot at least every other day with no actual new legal/economic/industry developments, resulting in the exact same comments and arguments rehashed. Yes, I know I can just ignore it. Yes, I must be new here. But what's wrong with some constructive criticism of Slashdot?
FWIW I think the only way we'll see the stories disappear is if we stop reading and commenting on them (which means/. loses ad revenue and will stop posting them). You're funny, but I don't think you intended to.
Make the stories disappear? What is the alternative? That we lock down one instance, call it the "ultimate music distribution discussion FAQ" and just force everyone to read that one instead of expressing their own thoughts about things?
Discussing is learning. Life is repetition. You follow the arguments, read, post, reply. Good points get repeated more often. Battle of the memes and all that; the slashdot crowd is defined.
those who aren't willing to betray their customers' trust will be forced to comply without compensation. ...without anyone ever finding out about it! Business as usual, I guess.
Come on, don't you know ha-ha-only-serious when you see it? I hereby revoke your ha-ha-only-serious license. Though I'm not touching your geek badge, you may still cap articles with a geek-culture references if you like.
- Did you use a hardware write block? - Er... I used Linux and mounted the... I think the better response would be: - I used a software write block
Though I would assume that the hardware write blocks would carry some kind of certification required to be viable as proof. So the question would rather be "Did you use a XYZ-certified write block?"
Just pointing out that the difference isn't really about software vs. hardware. Unless there is a market for custom-made "hardware" write blockers with convenient evidence-manufacturing malfunctions.
How much would that one million dollars (or any amount of money, for that matter) be worth if a tyrannical regime decides to take it from you? Aha! But if one candidate really was a tyrannical regime, votes would be much more worth!
The less difference between candiadates, the less value has the vote. Because people don't care who wins. In current conditions, 1 vote is certainly worth less than 1 million dollars. This does not in any way devaluate the system as such.
However: Notice the corelation with low voter turnout, ponder US votings for a while. One starts wondering if a 2-party system could have an inherent tendency to encourage apahty in the masses.
While the means to play movies and music files have been built in for as long as they have been technically possible, there is no long standing computer format designed to show a series of pictures. So, the community has created their own standards in using re-named zip and rar files and viewing applications created to display them. A community-created standard would maybe be less technically advanced due to funding issues, but I think that in the end, they will probably more user friendly.
I would prefer to watch movies as bundles of video, sound and a wide range of subtitles.
Let me play a Japanese movie with Spanish dubbing and Norwegian subtitles. And no, I don't want every single language on earth encoded into a single file. Can we get some modularity, please? I want to keep some 3-5 languages to cover anything in my family, but no more.
Not to mention subtitles. Too much translations are done in a hurry. I've seen "Makeup sex" translated like some kind of cosmetic fetish. Ugh. Not to mention that a single translation isn't enough. I want one preserving the mood spirit of the movie, but also a literal translation if I'm watching for language studies.
If you ask me, there is still no proper format availiable for watching movies. Sure, we got some great ones for playing back sound and video. But nothing that combines all this into the best possible user experience.
...urge to support the Wal Mart beast. But Linux is good right? But wait...Wal Mart is not good. Unless, they throw me a open-source bone. Then they're good right? Damn, I hate moral dilemmas. Fortunately, they're sold out!
This means you can go there and complain loudly to the staff about them being sold out with the good you wanted to buy. It's a godsend! You can now complain about Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart staff and support Linux at the same time!
These laptops are intended as (among other things) a replacement for books. So many people are missing this and thinking OLPC is only about increasing IT skills.
How many textbooks can you get for $200? Not a whole lot.
If they'd called it "the 120Euro laptop" it would probably STILL be the 120Euro laptop. Indeed. The are only slightly over their original target if you don't cound in USD.
But why euro? Compare to the currency of developing country X if you want to see how the deal is becoming for the potential buyers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms: You may solo them, I prefer them in a group. Dude, that sig is seriously gross. I got this mental image of a geek group-sexing his MMO pals. Ugh.
iPhones are not availiable in Norway, so the only way is to hack a v1 firmware one. And I know a guy in Denmark. Now it sounds like I'll be able to just order one and plug in my current SIM. Neat. Bonus point for going through a proper retailer so I can get a receipt and have the job pay for it.
If this is true, you made my day. Thank for the info!
In terms of actual new things, the iPhone has visual voicemail. So did my phone in Japan when I lived there... 2 years ago.
Heck, I could listen to the answering machine as it was recorded, just like in the movies. And afterwards, I got each message listed with caller and length of message, and I could tap the screen to play/delete the messages I wanted. I honestly could not believe what I heard when I read comments on slashdot about voicemail being a "new" thing.
I'm curious about the iPhone because it's slick. Not because of any "new" features, but because the implementation is nice.
But what about Minidisc, SACD, Sony Memory Stick, UMD, and the ATRAC music format? Are you saying they were all failures? Since that pretty much sums up what said in his post, I'd say 'yes'.
Note parent suggesting to make it more like GIMP. A program considered by many to have an awful UI. (And the only one I have seen to date that pops up a window arguing why it's really a nice UI, thank you, when being installed.) Also, GIMP does not have CYMK.
This leads us to the following conclusion: GP was a joke. (For some, this may be more obvious. I opened this discussion thinking "Ah, gonna be some gimp-bashing here today".)
Though being modded -1 for missing a joke? How cruel;) Not to mention that there is no "-1 *Whooos*" mod.
That's a poor analogy. Not just a poor analogy. Meaningless and utterly irellevant to the post he replied to. I don't understand why GB was modded insightful.
The guy suicided. He would not worry about M.A.D. He enforced it on his own.
On topic: I am certain we would have fewer school shootings if everyone was armed at all times. However, I'm worried we would also have so many "drunk people picking a fight and escalating for no good reason" shootings that it would not be worth it.
There's no reason to assume that technological progress = social progress. However, we can safely assume that time ~= technological progress.
Alien life forms would certainly be millions of years either more or less developed than us. Probably billions. How much has human warfare changed the last 1000 years? Even with several orders of magnitude error margins, we're talking "sufficiently advanced technology" here.
Alien warfare will not be fair. It will be like discovering an amazonas hunter-gatherer tribe, then deciding whether or not to attack them with gunships, infrared sensors or maybe nukes.
Even with some sort of hyperdrive- do you want to risk any survivors of an attack, knowing such a device is possible, developing their own and striking back? I'm not sure if this is any more likely than nuking an amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe. And having said tribe realize nukes are possible, develop their own and strike back. Not very likely.
Any intelligent life we encounter will probably be millions of years behind us, or millions of years ahead. Maybe more. If they are behind, they will not even have a civilization to fight, they will be an intelligent species that may evolve into a civilization given a few million years.
In the other case, they will be "magic". Or, assuming there is a hard cap on technological progress (and that we are close to it) - they will have a few millions of years worth of experience, probably including intergalactic warfare, in all those millions of years they've been around.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll order an array of those for my dark, gothic castle tower, then. Shine it over the villagers! They'll never know why it hurts so much to glance at my evil castle, they'll just know that overly curious people are punished with an unnatural blindness. Serves them right!
That's nothing, compared to my "Galaxy Annhilator":
A one-man device powerful enough to destory whole galaxies in one go. It does this through quantum resonance between the stars, formed in the begnning of time and dormant until now. Upon triggering, it warps in the stars' alternate-universe antimatter counterparts, instantly converting each star-anti-star pair into pure energy.
This Galaxy Annhilator looks like a cheesy ring trinket and is commonly found in Dark-Jedi Munch (TM) popcorn bags.
Young people today are nothing compared to what is to come. e-ink restuatant bills that calculate the price for everyone, and even takes into account if you had 2 drinks or 3.
Give another 50 years, and what we call basic math will be indistinguishable from magic for large parts of the population.
We should move all high-bandwidth content delivery systems over to P2P.
...
Couple with decentralized storage that copy popular content close to demand so you can pull more content off your general area instead of halfway across the globe.
Word of mouth still links into geographical location. Most of my firends live in the same region as me, even if I use email to tell them about the lastest news.
If a million people in Mongolia suddenly decides to watch Turbonegro's latest HD music video? Pushing HD over there should be a piece of cacke. Send a copy or two, then have mongolian nodes distribute the stuff over there.
P2P is an awesome concept, no matter what greysones it is currently serving. I can only guess that if all the pirate content tossed around the world today had been shared in a client-server model, the Internet would have been long dead by now.
FWIW I think the only way we'll see the stories disappear is if we stop reading and commenting on them (which means
Make the stories disappear? What is the alternative? That we lock down one instance, call it the "ultimate music distribution discussion FAQ" and just force everyone to read that one instead of expressing their own thoughts about things?
Discussing is learning. Life is repetition. You follow the arguments, read, post, reply. Good points get repeated more often. Battle of the memes and all that; the slashdot crowd is defined.
Don't know how it ended up as the official name for the sun, or how many other languages that call it for "sol".
1 computer for everything else Ok, sounds reasonable enough. But how many for porn?
- Er... I used Linux and mounted the... I think the better response would be:
- I used a software write block
Though I would assume that the hardware write blocks would carry some kind of certification required to be viable as proof. So the question would rather be "Did you use a XYZ-certified write block?"
Just pointing out that the difference isn't really about software vs. hardware. Unless there is a market for custom-made "hardware" write blockers with convenient evidence-manufacturing malfunctions.
The less difference between candiadates, the less value has the vote. Because people don't care who wins. In current conditions, 1 vote is certainly worth less than 1 million dollars. This does not in any way devaluate the system as such.
However: Notice the corelation with low voter turnout, ponder US votings for a while. One starts wondering if a 2-party system could have an inherent tendency to encourage apahty in the masses.
I would prefer to watch movies as bundles of video, sound and a wide range of subtitles.
Let me play a Japanese movie with Spanish dubbing and Norwegian subtitles. And no, I don't want every single language on earth encoded into a single file. Can we get some modularity, please? I want to keep some 3-5 languages to cover anything in my family, but no more.
Not to mention subtitles. Too much translations are done in a hurry. I've seen "Makeup sex" translated like some kind of cosmetic fetish. Ugh. Not to mention that a single translation isn't enough. I want one preserving the mood spirit of the movie, but also a literal translation if I'm watching for language studies.
If you ask me, there is still no proper format availiable for watching movies. Sure, we got some great ones for playing back sound and video. But nothing that combines all this into the best possible user experience.
...urge to support the Wal Mart beast. But Linux is good right? But wait...Wal Mart is not good. Unless, they throw me a open-source bone. Then they're good right? Damn, I hate moral dilemmas. Fortunately, they're sold out!This means you can go there and complain loudly to the staff about them being sold out with the good you wanted to buy. It's a godsend! You can now complain about Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart staff and support Linux at the same time!
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'd buy one.
Helping a good cause and getting a unique gadget at the same time? Maybe it could be a nice file server with its low power consmption.
I'd also get the optional crank for postnuclear scenarios. Stove it in the basement with a one-armed leather jacket and a shotgun.
How many textbooks can you get for $200? Not a whole lot.
But why euro? Compare to the currency of developing country X if you want to see how the deal is becoming for the potential buyers.
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group. Dude, that sig is seriously gross. I got this mental image of a geek group-sexing his MMO pals. Ugh.
Interesting!
iPhones are not availiable in Norway, so the only way is to hack a v1 firmware one. And I know a guy in Denmark. Now it sounds like I'll be able to just order one and plug in my current SIM. Neat. Bonus point for going through a proper retailer so I can get a receipt and have the job pay for it.
If this is true, you made my day. Thank for the info!
Heck, I could listen to the answering machine as it was recorded, just like in the movies. And afterwards, I got each message listed with caller and length of message, and I could tap the screen to play/delete the messages I wanted. I honestly could not believe what I heard when I read comments on slashdot about voicemail being a "new" thing.
I'm curious about the iPhone because it's slick. Not because of any "new" features, but because the implementation is nice.
*wooosh*
;) Not to mention that there is no "-1 *Whooos*" mod.
Note parent suggesting to make it more like GIMP. A program considered by many to have an awful UI. (And the only one I have seen to date that pops up a window arguing why it's really a nice UI, thank you, when being installed.) Also, GIMP does not have CYMK.
This leads us to the following conclusion: GP was a joke.
(For some, this may be more obvious. I opened this discussion thinking "Ah, gonna be some gimp-bashing here today".)
Though being modded -1 for missing a joke? How cruel
The guy suicided. He would not worry about M.A.D. He enforced it on his own.
On topic: I am certain we would have fewer school shootings if everyone was armed at all times. However, I'm worried we would also have so many "drunk people picking a fight and escalating for no good reason" shootings that it would not be worth it.
Actually, Natalie Portman think memes are cute.
Alien life forms would certainly be millions of years either more or less developed than us. Probably billions. How much has human warfare changed the last 1000 years? Even with several orders of magnitude error margins, we're talking "sufficiently advanced technology" here.
Alien warfare will not be fair. It will be like discovering an amazonas hunter-gatherer tribe, then deciding whether or not to attack them with gunships, infrared sensors or maybe nukes. Even with some sort of hyperdrive- do you want to risk any survivors of an attack, knowing such a device is possible, developing their own and striking back? I'm not sure if this is any more likely than nuking an amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe. And having said tribe realize nukes are possible, develop their own and strike back. Not very likely.
Any intelligent life we encounter will probably be millions of years behind us, or millions of years ahead. Maybe more. If they are behind, they will not even have a civilization to fight, they will be an intelligent species that may evolve into a civilization given a few million years.
In the other case, they will be "magic". Or, assuming there is a hard cap on technological progress (and that we are close to it) - they will have a few millions of years worth of experience, probably including intergalactic warfare, in all those millions of years they've been around.