The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now government agencies are only allowed to access your private communications under terms of FISA.
It's already criminal for government to access those outside of the provisions of FISA, that's, actually, the entire point of FISA. That it was already outlawed should be obvious from the fact that it is "illegal wiretapping". The description presented here and in TFA, if perhaps not the law itself, is clearly redundant.
The link to the actual amendment in TFA seems to be broken, and while I can find references to the amendment (H.AMDT.182 to H.R.2082) I can't find the text of either the amendment or the amended bill (the amendment passed after the latest text I can find, the May 7 version of the bill.)
So I'm not sure what this new bill does in this regard if anything, whether it is just a clarification, or whether it creates some new enforcement mechanism that provides a remedy when the executive isn't interested in prosecuting themselves for the crime of violating FISA.
Seriously, though, aren't most browsers multi-threaded anymore? There's no reason why the Java plug-in can't just spawn off a thread and return control to the browser.
Or, perhaps better, why the browser can't asynchronously launch the JVM on browser startup, so that the startup delay doesn't happen when you first hit an applet (unless, of course, the applet is on your homepage.)
And did you notice how blurry the image was of the 'standard' text. Nice job there. "look how much easier the text on the right is to read compared to the old stuff on the left!". This is a SERIOUSLY flawed example.
Aside from blurring, it was also in an italic, serif font (fonts with serifs not being, generally, great for online reading, and italics for text, as opposed to emphasis, being bad for readability in any medium.)
Scientists have discovered that a space-inefficient style of formatting that has historically been used for poetry, for prose in lots of applications when space was not at a premium, etc., is easier to read, despite being less space efficient.
Interesting, sure, but it seems to be in the "confirming what experience has shown and professionals have applied for centuries" category rather than "stunning new breakthrough" one.
Are they including iTunes downloads and DVD sales? If not, why not? These days, anyone between the ages of 15 and 30 spends more time watching downloads and DVDs than they do tuning into TV broadcasts.
So? I'd be surprised if, even with that, the networks weren't making far more from advertising on the TV "broadcasts" (if you can even call it that for a cable network), and therefore, advertising—and thus the "broadcast" audience—guides decisionmaking.
I suspect it's impossible to make these services free as in freedom.
Its easy to make software-as-services Free.
First, you make the software behind the service Free Software unencumbered by patents, etc., and make it available as source to users of the service.
Second, (though the first implies doing this in a potentially obscure, difficult to understand way), you make the interfaces to the service public, clear, and well-documented, so that tools that use or connect to the service are practical to freely implement (whether Free or not.)
You can do all this while still charging money for the service, too, if you need to, and that doesn't make them any less "free as in freedom", though they might not also be "free as in beer".
The next gen BMW 118i, 2 liter 140bhp, is rated at an average of 48mpg. The cleverest part is that it does something very "hybrid". It switches the engine off in traffic.
Yes, it does something "very hybrid" because, though not marketed as a "hybrid", it is a "mild hybrid" of pretty much exactly the same sort as, e.g., the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid. As well as the auto-start/auto-stop you mention, it also has regenerative braking.
Hybrids are overhyped. In typically mixed driving, at least in the UK, a well setup petrol or diesel easily betters the Prius.
That would be more convincing if examples of well setup non-hybrid gasoline and diesel powered cars comparable to the Prius that beats it was presented, rather than a mild hybrid gasoline powered car that is rated slightly worse for overall economy than the Prius, but in its mild hybrid diesel iteration performs slightly better than the Prius.
Really, all this shows is that: 1) Mild hybrids are slightly worse than "full" hybrids, for fuel economy, and 2) Diesels are better than comparable gasoline (hybrid or not) for fuel economy (at least, per unit volume of fuel), unsurprising since diesel fuel releases more energy per unit volume when burned.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a diesel hybrid, especially since diesel engines can be very efficient when run at a constant RPM and use an electric motor to control the vehicle speed (this is how diesel locomotives have worked for the last 50+ years).
I don't know of any current diesel hybrid cars, but diesel hybrid buses are around in the US now.
And, of course, diesel/electric submarines have been around for quite a while, but not particularly useful for commuting.
'To user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users.'
But, then why are try to recreate what has been the Windows paradigm since Microsoft started pushing.NET as the key platform in Windows for exactly the kind of desktop/online integration that you are talking about?
I will refer you to a study on this subject [thewatt.com], which shows hybrids getting significantly worse dust-to-dust energy ratings than a Hummer H3.
Why would you refer me to a study which—aside from the fact that the server seems to be down—you offer to support a conclusion that I've acknowledged but pointed to the reason why its not an important point? Again, even with a substantial increase in total energy used, shifting from what is produced by burning gasoline on the road to large-scale power production that fuels heavy industry can be a big win, environmentally. The total energy use is, again, not the important issue.
Already, a modern European diesel engine does the same mileage as a hybrid, on a similar car category.
Examples? So far in this thread someone cited a subcombact diesel that outperformed the midsized Prius, but those aren't the same (or even all that "similar") categories.
Lastly, when considering the complete energy usage of a car from manufacturing to disposal, hybrids are often worse than SUVs.
Total energy usage isn't all that important, since large-scale electricity production that powers heavy industry is much cleaner, on average, per kW than burning gasoline in auto engines; displacing energy use from the road to large-scale systems is a win, even, in many cases, if the total energy consumption increases substantially, the total output of greenhouses gases and consumption of fossil fuels can still go down.
Because they simply aren't better than a diesel engine, no matter what the hype and marketed figures are. The hybrids (Prius at least from what I checked) are easy to beat by a lot of european diesel cars - VW Polo 62mpg just an example.
Um, yeah, a diesel subcompact can outperform a hybrid midsize car. 62mpg does not outperform, say, a Honda Insight, a hybdrid subcompact car.
I mean, also, a Toyota Yaris gets better mileage than a Toyota Highlander Hybrid: this doesn't mean that regular non-hybrid gasoline powered cars outperform hybrids in fuel efficiency, but that small cars are more economical than bigger ones, and if there is enough of a size difference, it can outweighs the smaller car having a less efficient kind of engine.
The Smart get's 50mpg and with the turbo engine is quite a blast to drive. the toyota Vitz sold everywhere but the USA also get's about 44mpg and is a decent car to drive.
And neither probably get better gas mileage than a Prius in city driving. Traditional gasoline cars do best on the open highway, modern full hybrids do best in city driving—and, for lots of people, most driving is in "city" conditions (even if its on a highway in overcrowded commute conditions.) Fuel economy, though often summarized in a single number, is not a per-vehicle single constant number.
Of coure, modern non-hydrid small cars sold in the US (like the Toyota Yaris) get mileage not far short of that (I think the Yaris is at or above 40mpg overall), too.
also the TCO of these cars is so much lower than a hybrid that your dollars per gallon spent are drastically lower.
Yes, because the social costs of burning gasoline remain largely a non-internalized externality, hybrids are often less economical, in financial terms, than just buying a regular gas burning car, especially a cheap one with decent fuel economy.
Hybrids do recoup their energy, mostly in the form of braking as well as driving a motor at a constant RPM (for true hybrids; not something like the Prius).
What defines a "true hybrid" and what are some examples? The Prius (and anything with Toyota's "Hybrid Synergy Drive", as well as the Ford Escape Hybrid) is a "full hybrid". I've usually heard "true hybrid", if used at all, used as a synonym for "full hybrid".
Clearly, if you are using it to mean something that excludes the Prius, you are using it differently.
While I assume that pricing of the sensor system is far cheaper, they really should have given us numbers. If it turns out that installing the sensor/computer costs $15,000, then hey, buy the Hybrid.
Well, the "intelligent cars" require communicating with other cars and/or "the road", which requires lots of other people (and/or the government) to buy compatible hardware for you to get any benefit. Plus, of course, they aren't commercially available.
Hybrids are commercially available now, and don't rely on anyone else changing their behavior to produce a benefit.
Seriously, is it that hard to tie the road sensors to timing chips? It doesn't even have to be done on all roads - but anything labeled an expressway, as well as a major roads with known traffic patterns should all have coordinated lights at all times. Expressway cuts through residential areas for 3 miles? Have a green wave run one way in the morning and the other way in the evening. Major road intersects with expressway? All lights on that major road are timed according to the same mechanism, except the one that controls the intersection with the expressway. It's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be. Any improvement over the current idiocy of stopping 10 cars to prevent one car from idling for more than 20 seconds will result in a dramatic improvement in gas mileage.
AFAIK, that approach has been used for decades in many places in the US.
You don't need sophisticated sensors for this; in most situations, your vision alone is enough to give you 60 seconds of forewarning, or close to it, if you choose to drive "intelligently."
Not if you are driving a compact car on a road where other people are driving gargantuan SUVs.
First, the technologies aren't incompatible, competing technologies.
Second, the negative spin on hybrids is bizarre: that they—a widely available commercial technology—are "no better" than the tests suggest a proof-of-concept, not-yet-commercially-available technology might be if put into practical use is, well, a weird way of looking at things.
I mean, usually, that a presently available technology does just as well, with less specialized infrastructure, than a proof-of-concept isn't, even if they are directly competing, bad news for the existing technology, its bad news for the experimental alternative. "New, unproven technology offers no more than existing, popular technology" would be the usual way of looking at that.
Of course, they aren't competing technologies, there is no reason a hybrid couldn't benefit from being "intelligent" or vice-versa. Now, you might not get the full efficiency gains of each, since there is some overlap in their benefits vs. dumb non-hybrids, but you would expect more efficiency than either alone.
I had never heard of this particular intelligence agency.
That's possibly because its a fairly recent rename, it used to be the "National Imagery and Mapping Agency". But its also not one of the big-name sexy ones that gets cited in the news a lot like CIA, DIA, or NSA.
If you have a reasonably up-to-date system there is no difference in the end-user experience.
Which seems to say that it is equally heavy and overkill with Flash, not less, and thus not warrant the claim that Java enables you to do something without something "heavy and overkill" like Flash.
More importantly, Java does run on a 64-bit Linux desktop.
That may be more important, at least to people running 64-bit Linux desktops, but that wasn't the claim that was made. Certainly, Java's cross-platform availability (and now its open-source nature) are advantages over Flash for certain audiences, but that's completely different than the "heavy and overkill" claim.
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It's already criminal for government to access those outside of the provisions of FISA, that's, actually, the entire point of FISA. That it was already outlawed should be obvious from the fact that it is "illegal wiretapping". The description presented here and in TFA, if perhaps not the law itself, is clearly redundant.
The link to the actual amendment in TFA seems to be broken, and while I can find references to the amendment (H.AMDT.182 to H.R.2082) I can't find the text of either the amendment or the amended bill (the amendment passed after the latest text I can find, the May 7 version of the bill.)
So I'm not sure what this new bill does in this regard if anything, whether it is just a clarification, or whether it creates some new enforcement mechanism that provides a remedy when the executive isn't interested in prosecuting themselves for the crime of violating FISA.
Or, perhaps better, why the browser can't asynchronously launch the JVM on browser startup, so that the startup delay doesn't happen when you first hit an applet (unless, of course, the applet is on your homepage.)
Aside from blurring, it was also in an italic, serif font (fonts with serifs not being, generally, great for online reading, and italics for text, as opposed to emphasis, being bad for readability in any medium.)
Scientists have discovered that a space-inefficient style of formatting that has historically been used for poetry, for prose in lots of applications when space was not at a premium, etc., is easier to read, despite being less space efficient. Interesting, sure, but it seems to be in the "confirming what experience has shown and professionals have applied for centuries" category rather than "stunning new breakthrough" one.
So? I'd be surprised if, even with that, the networks weren't making far more from advertising on the TV "broadcasts" (if you can even call it that for a cable network), and therefore, advertising—and thus the "broadcast" audience—guides decisionmaking.
Its easy to make software-as-services Free.
First, you make the software behind the service Free Software unencumbered by patents, etc., and make it available as source to users of the service.
Second, (though the first implies doing this in a potentially obscure, difficult to understand way), you make the interfaces to the service public, clear, and well-documented, so that tools that use or connect to the service are practical to freely implement (whether Free or not.)
You can do all this while still charging money for the service, too, if you need to, and that doesn't make them any less "free as in freedom", though they might not also be "free as in beer".
Yes, it does something "very hybrid" because, though not marketed as a "hybrid", it is a "mild hybrid" of pretty much exactly the same sort as, e.g., the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid. As well as the auto-start/auto-stop you mention, it also has regenerative braking.
That would be more convincing if examples of well setup non-hybrid gasoline and diesel powered cars comparable to the Prius that beats it was presented, rather than a mild hybrid gasoline powered car that is rated slightly worse for overall economy than the Prius, but in its mild hybrid diesel iteration performs slightly better than the Prius.
Really, all this shows is that:
1) Mild hybrids are slightly worse than "full" hybrids, for fuel economy, and
2) Diesels are better than comparable gasoline (hybrid or not) for fuel economy (at least, per unit volume of fuel), unsurprising since diesel fuel releases more energy per unit volume when burned.
So? I think you didn't read what I wrote, which was about fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, not $ cost.
No, I wouldn't say that it has been the key Windows paradigm since that. I meant exactly what I said.
I don't know of any current diesel hybrid cars, but diesel hybrid buses are around in the US now.
And, of course, diesel/electric submarines have been around for quite a while, but not particularly useful for commuting.
But, then why are try to recreate what has been the Windows paradigm since Microsoft started pushing
Why would you refer me to a study which—aside from the fact that the server seems to be down—you offer to support a conclusion that I've acknowledged but pointed to the reason why its not an important point? Again, even with a substantial increase in total energy used, shifting from what is produced by burning gasoline on the road to large-scale power production that fuels heavy industry can be a big win, environmentally. The total energy use is, again, not the important issue.
Examples? So far in this thread someone cited a subcombact diesel that outperformed the midsized Prius, but those aren't the same (or even all that "similar") categories.
Total energy usage isn't all that important, since large-scale electricity production that powers heavy industry is much cleaner, on average, per kW than burning gasoline in auto engines; displacing energy use from the road to large-scale systems is a win, even, in many cases, if the total energy consumption increases substantially, the total output of greenhouses gases and consumption of fossil fuels can still go down.
Um, yeah, a diesel subcompact can outperform a hybrid midsize car. 62mpg does not outperform, say, a Honda Insight, a hybdrid subcompact car.
I mean, also, a Toyota Yaris gets better mileage than a Toyota Highlander Hybrid: this doesn't mean that regular non-hybrid gasoline powered cars outperform hybrids in fuel efficiency, but that small cars are more economical than bigger ones, and if there is enough of a size difference, it can outweighs the smaller car having a less efficient kind of engine.
Ditto with your Polo-Prius comparison.
And neither probably get better gas mileage than a Prius in city driving. Traditional gasoline cars do best on the open highway, modern full hybrids do best in city driving—and, for lots of people, most driving is in "city" conditions (even if its on a highway in overcrowded commute conditions.) Fuel economy, though often summarized in a single number, is not a per-vehicle single constant number.
Of coure, modern non-hydrid small cars sold in the US (like the Toyota Yaris) get mileage not far short of that (I think the Yaris is at or above 40mpg overall), too.
Yes, because the social costs of burning gasoline remain largely a non-internalized externality, hybrids are often less economical, in financial terms, than just buying a regular gas burning car, especially a cheap one with decent fuel economy.
What defines a "true hybrid" and what are some examples? The Prius (and anything with Toyota's "Hybrid Synergy Drive", as well as the Ford Escape Hybrid) is a "full hybrid". I've usually heard "true hybrid", if used at all, used as a synonym for "full hybrid".
Clearly, if you are using it to mean something that excludes the Prius, you are using it differently.
Millions of out-of-shape obese people forced, overnight, into bicycle commutes, often in the tens of miles?
I think "effectively zero" fatalities is rather unrealistic.
Well, the "intelligent cars" require communicating with other cars and/or "the road", which requires lots of other people (and/or the government) to buy compatible hardware for you to get any benefit. Plus, of course, they aren't commercially available.
Hybrids are commercially available now, and don't rely on anyone else changing their behavior to produce a benefit.
AFAIK, that approach has been used for decades in many places in the US.
Not if you are driving a compact car on a road where other people are driving gargantuan SUVs.
First, the technologies aren't incompatible, competing technologies.
Second, the negative spin on hybrids is bizarre: that they—a widely available commercial technology—are "no better" than the tests suggest a proof-of-concept, not-yet-commercially-available technology might be if put into practical use is, well, a weird way of looking at things.
I mean, usually, that a presently available technology does just as well, with less specialized infrastructure, than a proof-of-concept isn't, even if they are directly competing, bad news for the existing technology, its bad news for the experimental alternative. "New, unproven technology offers no more than existing, popular technology" would be the usual way of looking at that.
Of course, they aren't competing technologies, there is no reason a hybrid couldn't benefit from being "intelligent" or vice-versa. Now, you might not get the full efficiency gains of each, since there is some overlap in their benefits vs. dumb non-hybrids, but you would expect more efficiency than either alone.
That's not quite true; NRO still exists independently, though some functions were transferred to NIMA.
That's possibly because its a fairly recent rename, it used to be the "National Imagery and Mapping Agency". But its also not one of the big-name sexy ones that gets cited in the news a lot like CIA, DIA, or NSA.
Which seems to say that it is equally heavy and overkill with Flash, not less, and thus not warrant the claim that Java enables you to do something without something "heavy and overkill" like Flash.
That may be more important, at least to people running 64-bit Linux desktops, but that wasn't the claim that was made. Certainly, Java's cross-platform availability (and now its open-source nature) are advantages over Flash for certain audiences, but that's completely different than the "heavy and overkill" claim.