Actually Tivo is a non-issue for this stuff. It comes with several ways to control your cable box. One of them is an IR controller that you put in front of the cable box. It acts like a remote control. You tell Tivo what kind of cable box you have and you are all set. Tivo changes channels for you.
A year ago the TV people were crying that Tivos and other DVR devices would spell certain doom for free/commercial TV. Then cable companies started talking seriously about pushing out there own DVR units.
Seemed pretty obvious to me that it had something to do with locking down certain features on the DVR's that the free/commercial TV people didn't like.
Has anyone found a downside yet? The one reviewer seemed pretty pleased with the fast forward button. I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials. Tivo's FF speed is pretty fast.
How about the ability for the cable companies to keep you from recording a program? I am almost certain there is a programming flag that they can turn on to keep you from recording programs. It is supposed to be used for pay per view and the like, but tell me it isn't screaming for abuse.
Has anyone found any programs (or entire channels even) that they cannot record or time shift?
With my Tivo I have digital cable, and I have yet to be told I cannot time shift someone. I Tivo HBO all the time.
badddaaabooommm Thank you, there will be a repeat performance at 3:00 and again at 5:00.
Seriously though, this dude is my hero. I never heard of him before this story, but strapping a wing on your back and jumping out of a plane at 30,000 feet. Damn, what a cool way to die.
That is how I wanna go out.
I am gonna be the coolest dude in heaven.
Or hell. Depending on your outlook on such things.
They said that the RIAA wouldn't be able to read the Kazaa files off your machine. Huh? How does secure IDE do that? Okay, you got WXP running. And you are running Kazaa, Real Player and whatever else. Obviously the encryption/decryption is done at the hardware level between the motherboard and the hard drive. For this thing to have practical use to the general public it must be transparent to the OS.
Now the RIAA is getting information on people without invading peoples computers. They are using the Kazaa network and probably downloading MP3's just like anyone else. Then they look at the IP address and go from there. I am just not seeing how secure IDE does anything to stop that. The only way secure IDE would be helpful in the Kazaa situation is if it broke Kazaa.
As for the key. I am not getting that at all. They are saying that it isn't password protected and it isn't a dongle. It is hardware. Well that sucks. Now granted I have never had the privledge of having the FBI or the cops bust into my house and confiscate my PC. But I seriously doubt they would waste there time cracking the case and taking the hard drives. Minnimal they would take the tower. Hell they would confiscate everything. Consider all the stupid people that hide there passwords by tapeing them under the keyboard, taking your monitor might pay off for them.
So if they have the tower anyways then I ask again, how is secure IDE helping?
The only case I can see is if I decided a hard drive is bad and threw it away. And I'll level with ya, when I do that I destroy the hard drive anyways. I don't need encryption. I pull the tape off the side and expose the breather whole. Then I take a screw driver and jam it in there real hard. I make damn sure that I scratch up both sides of the platters. I also try to knock the heads off.
I argue that my way is better then encryption anyways. It might take weeks for supercomputers to decrypt there encryption, but I would love to see a solution to the mess that I make with a screwdriver.
Never said it was illegal. Personally I would not have done it. My only telemarketing job was at Appleby. They are a legal do things by the books company. No con games there. What I did IS in bad taste. But it is also illegal.
Besides kind of like you are posting as an Anonymous Coward I didn't give you her name.
That is nothing. I had a friend that worked for a company that did cold calls to retailers to distribute sporting goods.
She was taught the following. She would be given a lead. The lead would have a contact name, address and telephone number on it. She would call and say: "I am calling from such and such. You guys ordered a quantity of sports jersey's from us 2 weeks ago. I am very sorry for how late the delivery is, but we seem to have some confusion with your address."
At which point she repeats the address (intentionally screwing it up) to the hapless employee on the other end of the phone. While she is at it she also 'double checks' the payment and billing information.
She says 'Thank You' and hangs up the phone.
BLAAAAM now how is that for evil?
Now I used to do something that I don't think is nearly as evil as that. I used to work for a Window manufacturer and installer, Appleby Windows. For the most part they were honest. They didn't do scams like I described. As a matter of fact I was encouraged to purge the schedules of single owner retired people cause it is just too sleazy to send a rep out to people like that.
My job worked something like this. I had a territory that I was responsible for, say Allentown Pennsylvania. I had a number of sales reps in that territory. Each rep was promised to have 1 lead a day M-F and 2 on Saturday. So I needed to supply a total of 7 leads a week for each rep. Now these reps are pure commision. No sale, no eat. So they took those 7 leads dead serious.
Well anyone that has done this sort of work can tell you that crappy appointments are a real problem. Reps get to houses and they are stood up, a homeowner isn't present, it is a rental.. blah, blah, blah. There are a ton of problems that can make the trip out to the house by the rep a waist of time.
To resolve this problem we would have callers intentionaly overbook the schedules. Then I would call each home and 'confirm' the appointment with the homeowner. I was trained to firm up the appointments and to qualify them. If they passed my approval they got put on the schedule for that night.
Well I was required to have a demo rate of 85%. 85% of all my leads had to be saleable, no they didn't have to sell, but the reason they didn't sell must be on the reps end and not mine.
What this all turns into is that in order to give a rep 7 leads a week I actually have to book like 9 or 10. That way he gets 7 leads in spite of 15% of the ones I supply being crappy.
Sorry this is dragging on, but the evil thing I did wouldn't make any sense unless you understood the motivation for it.
So what happens when none of my leads are crappy and they are all good? We end up standing up good, qualified customers who just might buy our product.
So once I decide that everything is cool and I need to blow off the appointments here is what I did:
'Hello Mr Smith?' 'Yeah this is (insert my name) I am calling from Appleby. I am looking for my rep, Fred Wilson. I apologize for disturbing you during your estimate, but this is something of an emergency.'
At this point Mr. Smith's reaction varies. Some people are confused, others pissed - whatever I didn't care.
I try to say the next bit with a combination of relief, concern and if I can muster it just a little bit of distraction, like I am juggling stuff in an emergency situation.
'Oh dear he isn't there?!?! Ummm... I'll tell you what Mr. Smith this might just be good news. But I need a favor. Fred's son was just involved in an automobile accident. Apparently he is hurt pretty bad. Fred's wife is hysterical and trying to contact Fred. Fred carries a cell phone and I bet that she contacted Fred after she contacted me. I can't blame Fred for standing you up, I think I would have to, all things considered.
But Mr. Smith if you could please promise me that if Fred shows up you will tell him just to contact his
Let me get this straight... If the item is 'surplus' then your tax dollars have already been spent. If it is 'surplus' then it is just simply lying around somewhere.
You would rather the government either destroy it or let it sit rather then having a private individual, company or non-profit give the government some of it's cash back for said product and put it to good use?
True about the production of them (if you can really say that radio waves are produced.. but that is another thread entirely). But we are talking about radio waves that are powerful enough to be seen light years away. That I think we are going to be getting away from.
I expect that in 10 years there probably will be more devices using them, but they will be using them in a smarter way, say spread spectrum and such. I think we are moving towards 'doing more with less' as an attitude.
Hmmm good reply. All I was gonna say was that I knew as soon as I gave Seti@home a little bit of respect and credit some doofushead would quote some little known distributed computing project (probably an encryption breaking project) from way back when and spit on Seti.
I think your reply JudgeFurious was much better then what I was gonna right.
But there really isn't anything wrong with trying. Besides, Seti@home really helped to bring about this idea of 'distributed computing' to the world. And for the science in that end of the project I would be hard pressed to say this project isn't already a success.
But the more I think about it the more I think that radio signals are not the way we are going to find intelligent beings. For one I question if we are capable of picking up the radio signals we are sending out. If there was an earth, a duplicate of us, technologicaly, socialy and so forth, say 10 light years away, do we have the ability to pick up it's radio signals?
And for that matter we have had radio for a very short time, just over 100 years. And our use of it is on the way out already. In another 100 years we will probably be producing a fraction of the radio waves we produce now.
Any way you look at it the odds are stacked against Seti@home.
But I still congratulate them on giving us geeks something to talk about.
For one there is this whole morality thing about not giving the deceased's family money for organs.
During the chain of events that happen that eventually lead to an organ donation there are a lot of people involved. Doctors, medics, nurses, coroners - all of them, every one of them are getting paid. The only people in that chain that are not getting reimbursed is the family of the deceased. I am not seeing the moral problem here. Maybe it doesn't need to be cash exactly. How about covering funeral expenses or something similar? God knows it will offer an incentive.
My big problem is this, who gets the organs in the end. When we talk about organ donation most people think liver, kidneys, hearts and eyes and the like. Well there are others too like skin and bones. Skin is needed, desperatly by burn units. To date nothing is more effective then skin grafts, and often a burn victim doesn't have enough of his own left to treat him with his own skin. I would have no issue being an organ donar if I knew that my skin was going to this use.
However....
Cosmetic surgeons need it too. And no I am not talking the good kind (reconstructive) I am talking the eye-tuck, face lift kind. Bone has exactly the same problem. Orthopedists need bone for bone grafts and surgery. But the Cosmetic surgeons need it too.
So basicly you got these two uses for organs, one desperatly needed and the other... well I don't really give a rats butt if the other can get organs or not.
The root of the problem goes something like this. It is not legal to charge for organs. I cannot legally sell you a human heart for $50. But.... I can legally charge you for services related to delivering the heart to you. I can charge you fees for paperwork, fees for transportation, you name it. As long as there isn't a line that says 'human heart = $50' it is on the up and up.
So there is profit, and plenty of it in organ donations (now I bet you are beginning to see why I have no moral problem with paying the family of the deceased).
So the Hospitals have a good reason to do everything they can to help along organ donations, they profit.
Now there are companies that act like 'clearing houses' for organs. I read about a company in New Jersey that has hundereds of freezers full of human bones waiting to be purchased. These companies actually take care of the organ harvesting. They put the people on life support AFTER DEATH IS DECLARED. They do it until they can get a team in to get the organs out. They handle transportation, they handle storage.
The final link in the chain is who gets the organs. Is it a surgeon or a cosmetic surgeon?
Guess who has more money to throw around?
One of the reasons there is not enough skin to go around for skin grafts is because cosmetic surgeons are buying all of it all up. Hospitals, doctors and insurance companies only have so much money to throw at this, but cosmetic surgeons, well it is the nature of the beast.
I want to see a way to gaurentee that my organs go to people who need it. As it stands there is no gaurentee.
I know that it does use its own fuel, and I am pretty certain it uses normal jet fuel. You might be right that it is burning oxygen instead of hydrogen.
Was late when I wrote it.
As far as looking for a website, Smileyboy, God made google just for you. Go to town.
To appreciate the test you have to have a basic understanding of what the scramjet does.
A scramjet seperates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and uses the hydrogen molecules as fuel for the engine. In doing this you have an engine that can go significantly faster, an engine that uses up a fraction of the fuel load of traditional aircraft and an aircraft that expels significantly less harmful waste in the atmosphere then a traditional jet engine.
The downside is that the engine is not physicaly capable of working until it has attained an almost rediculous speed. Something like Mach 3. The damn thing won't even light before that.
So if you have a need for an aircraft that flies faster then mach 3 then this is a goal worth striving for.
NASA (as well as other organizations) have been able to 'light up' the engine in wind tunnel tests. But as of the time this test failed (I think the Australians got it to work a few months later) no one was able to even get an engine like this to lite up outside of the labortory.
What this test was designed to achieve was simply to see if they could get the engine to function at all. They wanted to see if they could get the engine to seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen and to light up the mixture with traditional jet fuel. If you can do that then you move onto the next step.
So this test had no need of anything more then 10 seconds of data.
It was late. I screwed it up. Then I corrected it. But it didn't take me greater then 120 seconds to correct it. So Slashdot through out my correction. I was beaten. Beaten by a machine. I went back to doing what I was previously doing and decided to live with the redicule of slashdotters the world over.
I meant for it to read: 'Argue loudly in public that the word Masturbate can also be used to describe the debate of weapons of mass destruction'. Not nearly as funny now.
Oh yeah... and here are a few things I do to make life more interesting:
- Inflate my karma on slashdot. - masturbate like a monkey with Lou Gerhigs disease - spread the truth about Santa, the Easter Bunny and Oprah Winfrey - to elementry school kids. - collect roadkill - argue loudly and in public that can also describe debating the need for weapons of mass destruction. - take pictures of your Moms boobies and post them to the internet. - generate copious amounts of rejection notices from the letters to the editor department of Playboy magazine. - And finally....
Key cars of people that are practicing the art of 'passive spectating', just what in the hell is that anyways?
However if he posses a risk to life or limb you have a case. That is why whenever you see a spammer you need to shout (so you can be heard clearly) "He's Coming Right For Us!"
About 'effin' time. When I first got a taste of MP3's I said to myself, 'You know, there is some real money in recording a live performance and then offering it for sale almost immediatly at the close of the show.'.
It is this kind of thinking (and potential revenue) that the RIAA is missing out on with there constant whinning about piracy.
Artsits today really only have one source of revenue, live performances. The Dead are not my cup of tea, however I have always admired there attitude towards recordings and concerts. I wish someone I liked would get a clue.
I say that ALL LIVE PERFORMANCES should be recorded. High Quality MP3's should be sold onsite (that is right, non-DRM MP3's) immediatly following the show. Some people will buy, most will trade.
If you price it correctly (to be certain to cover bandwith and such) then regardless of how many or few sales you make you can be gaurenteed to profit on this model. You can even complicate it a little and not hurt it too much, say offer lossless DRM protected software and MP3 (don't insult the user, keep it at 192k) for sale. There are people (especially people that attended that show) that will pay for the higher quality lossless recording.
This will make the fans happy. We will feel appreciated. Right now we feel stepped on. It will also foster excitement for our chosen bands. Many, many people would make it there goal to collect as many concerts as possible. And you just simply cannot beat this as a form of promotion for upcoming shows.
Not to mention upcoming albums. Throw in a new tune every now and then....
Environementaly sound? Let me get this straight, you bought several of them, saw they didn't work and then threw them away. But you still feel good about yourself because they were solar powered?
I wonder what sort of nasty chemicals go into making things like plastic and solar cells?
Not to mention the environmentally sound solution of throwing them away.
I guess as long as it makes you feel like you are a better person.....
Journalism isn't supposed to show any bias at all. Period. A good journalist has his own views, but what makes him a good journalist is that when he writes his stories he puts those views aside. His work ethics and his personal ethics are two different things.
The bias in this article is the writers insistence of shoving in our face how evil this is at every turn.
Thing about watergate is, the article that broke it never once compared it to watergate (- said with tongue in cheek, it isn't supposed to make sense). The person writing the article should put the facts in front of us and let us decide if it is evil or not.
I stand by what I said. It is a biased article, but it still makes a good case on open sourced software for electronic voting machines and the evils of the DMCA.
And you are yet another poor slob that didn't get the job I did.
While I was charming the interviewer, one upping his pointless jedi mind tricks and hitting on the receptionist I also managed to get a better salary then what he offered.
You have an awful attitude. Let me guess, you are unemployed? I wonder why?
The thing is, middle management is where you put someone so they can do the least amount of damage (paradoxoly doing the most amount of damage (thank you Scott Adams)), and when you interview you just have to assume that the new boss is like the old boss, except for a new name and a new boss smell.
No reason I have to have any respect for him at the interview, cause I sure as hell won't within 6 months.
I may be an asshole, but you are still unemployed!
One of the few moments in elementry school I remember was when I raised my hand and announced to the class that I had noticed that add was the opposite of subtract in the same way that divide was the opposite of multilply.
My teacher was probably having enough problems getting the kids to accept the multiplication tables, so she called me a liar and told me to shut up and sit down.
I remember that because years later I got really pissed off in pre-algebra class....
Slashdot Mirror
Liar.
You got this right from 'Flight of the Intruder' by Stephen Coonts.
Bet you didn't see that coming....
Actually Tivo is a non-issue for this stuff.
It comes with several ways to control your cable box. One of them is an IR controller that you put in front of the cable box. It acts like a remote control. You tell Tivo what kind of cable box you have and you are all set. Tivo changes channels for you.
Tivo B D'bomb for digital cable.
A year ago the TV people were crying that Tivos and other DVR devices would spell certain doom for free/commercial TV.
Then cable companies started talking seriously about pushing out there own DVR units.
Seemed pretty obvious to me that it had something to do with locking down certain features on the DVR's that the free/commercial TV people didn't like.
Has anyone found a downside yet?
The one reviewer seemed pretty pleased with the fast forward button. I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials. Tivo's FF speed is pretty fast.
How about the ability for the cable companies to keep you from recording a program?
I am almost certain there is a programming flag that they can turn on to keep you from recording programs. It is supposed to be used for pay per view and the like, but tell me it isn't screaming for abuse.
Has anyone found any programs (or entire channels even) that they cannot record or time shift?
With my Tivo I have digital cable, and I have yet to be told I cannot time shift someone. I Tivo HBO all the time.
So much for skydiving.
badddaaabooommm
Thank you, there will be a repeat performance at 3:00 and again at 5:00.
Seriously though, this dude is my hero. I never heard of him before this story, but strapping a wing on your back and jumping out of a plane at 30,000 feet. Damn, what a cool way to die.
That is how I wanna go out.
I am gonna be the coolest dude in heaven.
Or hell. Depending on your outlook on such things.
Please correct me if I screw something up here.
They said that the RIAA wouldn't be able to read the Kazaa files off your machine. Huh?
How does secure IDE do that?
Okay, you got WXP running. And you are running Kazaa, Real Player and whatever else. Obviously the encryption/decryption is done at the hardware level between the motherboard and the hard drive.
For this thing to have practical use to the general public it must be transparent to the OS.
Now the RIAA is getting information on people without invading peoples computers. They are using the Kazaa network and probably downloading MP3's just like anyone else. Then they look at the IP address and go from there.
I am just not seeing how secure IDE does anything to stop that.
The only way secure IDE would be helpful in the Kazaa situation is if it broke Kazaa.
As for the key.
I am not getting that at all. They are saying that it isn't password protected and it isn't a dongle.
It is hardware.
Well that sucks.
Now granted I have never had the privledge of having the FBI or the cops bust into my house and confiscate my PC.
But I seriously doubt they would waste there time cracking the case and taking the hard drives. Minnimal they would take the tower.
Hell they would confiscate everything. Consider all the stupid people that hide there passwords by tapeing them under the keyboard, taking your monitor might pay off for them.
So if they have the tower anyways then I ask again, how is secure IDE helping?
The only case I can see is if I decided a hard drive is bad and threw it away.
And I'll level with ya, when I do that I destroy the hard drive anyways. I don't need encryption. I pull the tape off the side and expose the breather whole. Then I take a screw driver and jam it in there real hard. I make damn sure that I scratch up both sides of the platters. I also try to knock the heads off.
I argue that my way is better then encryption anyways. It might take weeks for supercomputers to decrypt there encryption, but I would love to see a solution to the mess that I make with a screwdriver.
I am sorry, what I meant to say was 'What I did IS in bad taste, but it happens to also be legal.'.
Sorry about that. I got me a bad headache and I didn't proof the message.
Never said it was illegal.
Personally I would not have done it. My only telemarketing job was at Appleby. They are a legal do things by the books company. No con games there.
What I did IS in bad taste. But it is also illegal.
Besides kind of like you are posting as an Anonymous Coward I didn't give you her name.
That is nothing.
I had a friend that worked for a company that did cold calls to retailers to distribute sporting goods.
She was taught the following.
She would be given a lead. The lead would have a contact name, address and telephone number on it.
She would call and say:
"I am calling from such and such. You guys ordered a quantity of sports jersey's from us 2 weeks ago. I am very sorry for how late the delivery is, but we seem to have some confusion with your address."
At which point she repeats the address (intentionally screwing it up) to the hapless employee on the other end of the phone.
While she is at it she also 'double checks' the payment and billing information.
She says 'Thank You' and hangs up the phone.
BLAAAAM now how is that for evil?
Now I used to do something that I don't think is nearly as evil as that. I used to work for a Window manufacturer and installer, Appleby Windows. For the most part they were honest. They didn't do scams like I described.
As a matter of fact I was encouraged to purge the schedules of single owner retired people cause it is just too sleazy to send a rep out to people like that.
My job worked something like this.
I had a territory that I was responsible for, say Allentown Pennsylvania.
I had a number of sales reps in that territory. Each rep was promised to have 1 lead a day M-F and 2 on Saturday. So I needed to supply a total of 7 leads a week for each rep.
Now these reps are pure commision. No sale, no eat. So they took those 7 leads dead serious.
Well anyone that has done this sort of work can tell you that crappy appointments are a real problem. Reps get to houses and they are stood up, a homeowner isn't present, it is a rental.. blah, blah, blah. There are a ton of problems that can make the trip out to the house by the rep a waist of time.
To resolve this problem we would have callers intentionaly overbook the schedules. Then I would call each home and 'confirm' the appointment with the homeowner. I was trained to firm up the appointments and to qualify them. If they passed my approval they got put on the schedule for that night.
Well I was required to have a demo rate of 85%. 85% of all my leads had to be saleable, no they didn't have to sell, but the reason they didn't sell must be on the reps end and not mine.
What this all turns into is that in order to give a rep 7 leads a week I actually have to book like 9 or 10. That way he gets 7 leads in spite of 15% of the ones I supply being crappy.
Sorry this is dragging on, but the evil thing I did wouldn't make any sense unless you understood the motivation for it.
So what happens when none of my leads are crappy and they are all good? We end up standing up good, qualified customers who just might buy our product.
So once I decide that everything is cool and I need to blow off the appointments here is what I did:
'Hello Mr Smith?'
'Yeah this is (insert my name) I am calling from Appleby. I am looking for my rep, Fred Wilson. I apologize for disturbing you during your estimate, but this is something of an emergency.'
At this point Mr. Smith's reaction varies. Some people are confused, others pissed - whatever I didn't care.
I try to say the next bit with a combination of relief, concern and if I can muster it just a little bit of distraction, like I am juggling stuff in an emergency situation.
'Oh dear he isn't there?!?! Ummm... I'll tell you what Mr. Smith this might just be good news.
But I need a favor.
Fred's son was just involved in an automobile accident. Apparently he is hurt pretty bad. Fred's wife is hysterical and trying to contact Fred. Fred carries a cell phone and I bet that she contacted Fred after she contacted me.
I can't blame Fred for standing you up, I think I would have to, all things considered.
But Mr. Smith if you could please promise me that if Fred shows up you will tell him just to contact his
huh?!?!?
Let me get this straight...
If the item is 'surplus' then your tax dollars have already been spent.
If it is 'surplus' then it is just simply lying around somewhere.
You would rather the government either destroy it or let it sit rather then having a private individual, company or non-profit give the government some of it's cash back for said product and put it to good use?
Wow.
You are dumb.
True about the production of them (if you can really say that radio waves are produced.. but that is another thread entirely).
But we are talking about radio waves that are powerful enough to be seen light years away.
That I think we are going to be getting away from.
I expect that in 10 years there probably will be more devices using them, but they will be using them in a smarter way, say spread spectrum and such.
I think we are moving towards 'doing more with less' as an attitude.
But I still ask you, in 100 years, what then?
Hmmm good reply.
All I was gonna say was that I knew as soon as I gave Seti@home a little bit of respect and credit some doofushead would quote some little known distributed computing project (probably an encryption breaking project) from way back when and spit on Seti.
I think your reply JudgeFurious was much better then what I was gonna right.
But there really isn't anything wrong with trying.
Besides, Seti@home really helped to bring about this idea of 'distributed computing' to the world. And for the science in that end of the project I would be hard pressed to say this project isn't already a success.
But the more I think about it the more I think that radio signals are not the way we are going to find intelligent beings.
For one I question if we are capable of picking up the radio signals we are sending out.
If there was an earth, a duplicate of us, technologicaly, socialy and so forth, say 10 light years away, do we have the ability to pick up it's radio signals?
And for that matter we have had radio for a very short time, just over 100 years. And our use of it is on the way out already. In another 100 years we will probably be producing a fraction of the radio waves we produce now.
Any way you look at it the odds are stacked against Seti@home.
But I still congratulate them on giving us geeks something to talk about.
For one there is this whole morality thing about not giving the deceased's family money for organs.
During the chain of events that happen that eventually lead to an organ donation there are a lot of people involved. Doctors, medics, nurses, coroners - all of them, every one of them are getting paid.
The only people in that chain that are not getting reimbursed is the family of the deceased.
I am not seeing the moral problem here.
Maybe it doesn't need to be cash exactly. How about covering funeral expenses or something similar? God knows it will offer an incentive.
My big problem is this, who gets the organs in the end.
When we talk about organ donation most people think liver, kidneys, hearts and eyes and the like.
Well there are others too like skin and bones.
Skin is needed, desperatly by burn units. To date nothing is more effective then skin grafts, and often a burn victim doesn't have enough of his own left to treat him with his own skin.
I would have no issue being an organ donar if I knew that my skin was going to this use.
However....
Cosmetic surgeons need it too. And no I am not talking the good kind (reconstructive) I am talking the eye-tuck, face lift kind.
Bone has exactly the same problem. Orthopedists need bone for bone grafts and surgery. But the Cosmetic surgeons need it too.
So basicly you got these two uses for organs, one desperatly needed and the other... well I don't really give a rats butt if the other can get organs or not.
The root of the problem goes something like this.
It is not legal to charge for organs.
I cannot legally sell you a human heart for $50.
But....
I can legally charge you for services related to delivering the heart to you. I can charge you fees for paperwork, fees for transportation, you name it. As long as there isn't a line that says 'human heart = $50' it is on the up and up.
So there is profit, and plenty of it in organ donations (now I bet you are beginning to see why I have no moral problem with paying the family of the deceased).
So the Hospitals have a good reason to do everything they can to help along organ donations, they profit.
Now there are companies that act like 'clearing houses' for organs. I read about a company in New Jersey that has hundereds of freezers full of human bones waiting to be purchased. These companies actually take care of the organ harvesting. They put the people on life support AFTER DEATH IS DECLARED. They do it until they can get a team in to get the organs out. They handle transportation, they handle storage.
The final link in the chain is who gets the organs.
Is it a surgeon or a cosmetic surgeon?
Guess who has more money to throw around?
One of the reasons there is not enough skin to go around for skin grafts is because cosmetic surgeons are buying all of it all up. Hospitals, doctors and insurance companies only have so much money to throw at this, but cosmetic surgeons, well it is the nature of the beast.
I want to see a way to gaurentee that my organs go to people who need it.
As it stands there is no gaurentee.
Actually the reason the violent crime rate in Canada is lower in the US has nothing to do with guns.
Canadians are a bunch of pussies.
It is a fact. Look it up.
I know that it does use its own fuel, and I am pretty certain it uses normal jet fuel.
You might be right that it is burning oxygen instead of hydrogen.
Was late when I wrote it.
As far as looking for a website,
Smileyboy, God made google just for you.
Go to town.
To appreciate the test you have to have a basic understanding of what the scramjet does.
A scramjet seperates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and uses the hydrogen molecules as fuel for the engine.
In doing this you have an engine that can go significantly faster, an engine that uses up a fraction of the fuel load of traditional aircraft and an aircraft that expels significantly less harmful waste in the atmosphere then a traditional jet engine.
The downside is that the engine is not physicaly capable of working until it has attained an almost rediculous speed. Something like Mach 3. The damn thing won't even light before that.
So if you have a need for an aircraft that flies faster then mach 3 then this is a goal worth striving for.
NASA (as well as other organizations) have been able to 'light up' the engine in wind tunnel tests. But as of the time this test failed (I think the Australians got it to work a few months later) no one was able to even get an engine like this to lite up outside of the labortory.
What this test was designed to achieve was simply to see if they could get the engine to function at all. They wanted to see if they could get the engine to seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen and to light up the mixture with traditional jet fuel. If you can do that then you move onto the next step.
So this test had no need of anything more then 10 seconds of data.
It was late. I screwed it up.
Then I corrected it.
But it didn't take me greater then 120 seconds to correct it. So Slashdot through out my correction.
I was beaten. Beaten by a machine. I went back to doing what I was previously doing and decided to live with the redicule of slashdotters the world over.
I meant for it to read:
'Argue loudly in public that the word Masturbate can also be used to describe the debate of weapons of mass destruction'.
Not nearly as funny now.
Oh yeah...
and here are a few things I do to make life more interesting:
- Inflate my karma on slashdot.
- masturbate like a monkey with Lou Gerhigs disease
- spread the truth about Santa, the Easter Bunny and Oprah Winfrey - to elementry school kids.
- collect roadkill
- argue loudly and in public that can also describe debating the need for weapons of mass destruction.
- take pictures of your Moms boobies and post them to the internet.
- generate copious amounts of rejection notices from the letters to the editor department of Playboy magazine.
- And finally....
Key cars of people that are practicing the art of 'passive spectating', just what in the hell is that anyways?
However if he posses a risk to life or limb you have a case.
That is why whenever you see a spammer you need to shout (so you can be heard clearly)
"He's Coming Right For Us!"
I recommend a bazooka. More bang for the buck.
Imagine how a device like this would improve the experience of loosing your virginity.
About 'effin' time.
When I first got a taste of MP3's I said to myself, 'You know, there is some real money in recording a live performance and then offering it for sale almost immediatly at the close of the show.'.
It is this kind of thinking (and potential revenue) that the RIAA is missing out on with there constant whinning about piracy.
Artsits today really only have one source of revenue, live performances. The Dead are not my cup of tea, however I have always admired there attitude towards recordings and concerts. I wish someone I liked would get a clue.
I say that ALL LIVE PERFORMANCES should be recorded.
High Quality MP3's should be sold onsite (that is right, non-DRM MP3's) immediatly following the show.
Some people will buy, most will trade.
If you price it correctly (to be certain to cover bandwith and such) then regardless of how many or few sales you make you can be gaurenteed to profit on this model.
You can even complicate it a little and not hurt it too much, say offer lossless DRM protected software and MP3 (don't insult the user, keep it at 192k) for sale. There are people (especially people that attended that show) that will pay for the higher quality lossless recording.
This will make the fans happy. We will feel appreciated. Right now we feel stepped on.
It will also foster excitement for our chosen bands. Many, many people would make it there goal to collect as many concerts as possible.
And you just simply cannot beat this as a form of promotion for upcoming shows.
Not to mention upcoming albums. Throw in a new tune every now and then....
Environementaly sound?
Let me get this straight, you bought several of them, saw they didn't work and then threw them away.
But you still feel good about yourself because they were solar powered?
I wonder what sort of nasty chemicals go into making things like plastic and solar cells?
Not to mention the environmentally sound solution of throwing them away.
I guess as long as it makes you feel like you are a better person.....
Where have the journalists gone?
Journalism isn't supposed to show any bias at all.
Period.
A good journalist has his own views, but what makes him a good journalist is that when he writes his stories he puts those views aside. His work ethics and his personal ethics are two different things.
The bias in this article is the writers insistence of shoving in our face how evil this is at every turn.
Thing about watergate is, the article that broke it never once compared it to watergate (- said with tongue in cheek, it isn't supposed to make sense). The person writing the article should put the facts in front of us and let us decide if it is evil or not.
I stand by what I said. It is a biased article, but it still makes a good case on open sourced software for electronic voting machines and the evils of the DMCA.
And you are yet another poor slob that didn't get the job I did.
While I was charming the interviewer, one upping his pointless jedi mind tricks and hitting on the receptionist I also managed to get a better salary then what he offered.
You have an awful attitude. Let me guess, you are unemployed? I wonder why?
The thing is, middle management is where you put someone so they can do the least amount of damage (paradoxoly doing the most amount of damage (thank you Scott Adams)), and when you interview you just have to assume that the new boss is like the old boss, except for a new name and a new boss smell.
No reason I have to have any respect for him at the interview, cause I sure as hell won't within 6 months.
I may be an asshole, but you are still unemployed!
One of the few moments in elementry school I remember was when I raised my hand and announced to the class that I had noticed that add was the opposite of subtract in the same way that divide was the opposite of multilply.
My teacher was probably having enough problems getting the kids to accept the multiplication tables, so she called me a liar and told me to shut up and sit down.
I remember that because years later I got really pissed off in pre-algebra class....