flatulent1

So eliminating it from the New World can't do that much damage given that the ecosystem got along fine before it arrived.

I wonder what kind of South American bug pollinates Cherimoya blooms? The Cherimoya fruit is exceptional, but producing it in California requires hand pollination since some bug that lives in the Andes isn't in California.

Hopefully whatever man dumps into the environment won't create some new nasty... flesh-eating locusts perhaps?

Don't forget the possibility of data being repeated by your electric meter even if you don't provide WiFi. They're generally dual band, operating at WiFi frequencies for local interaction and with more power at a lower frequency for the networked traffic. While the protocols are not intended to be WiFi compatible, the already-proven-hackable devices are just a patch away from unexpected functionality. The local link is intended for things like telling your air conditioner not to run part of the time when the grid supply doesn't have much excess capacity.

What other data is sitting around? How about raster images of whatever your "copier" printer fax has handled? Even if you're using USB, if there's WiFi capability in there, assume it can be awakened. A link that's not compatible with your sniffer is a possibility too. Drag out a spectrum analyzer and directional antenna. While you're at it, check those new LED streetlights for bursts of r.f. too.

But what of value was actually produced by that "computational effort"? What is the current total worth of the results for all of that computational effort? If effort produces nothing of lasting value, is it a valid basis for value?

Machine rights and slavery are being ignored as people blindly treat the work done by machine slaves as if it was done by "owners". Some publicly act as if slavery of machines or other humans should not be the basis for a currency, yet we still have slaves. The slavery still around isn't just about mining the materials for the capacitors in your tech toys. And it wasn't just a part of past colonies.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/men-sho...

How many hours of CPU work, or how many bitcoins does a slave cost? If some do decide or admit that slavery is acceptable, or just a fact of life, would the value of a slave be a more stable value for the basis of a currency? (measured in prime adult slave-years perhaps). Perhaps one should have to be a slave for a time to obtain bitcoins. However if one is born into debt, it might take some time to have a positive balance.

Does being born into a society where there is public debt associated with a national currency amount to defacto slavery?

"Giving someone coins is similar to Bitcoin." It is quite a stretch to compare bitcoin to gold or other useful metals. Gold has significant inherent value, bitcoin is inherently worthless. The value of gold can't fall to very low levels since it is scarce and is valuable for industrial uses (excellent conductor that doesn't corrode, etc.). It is unlikely that there could be much of a change in the scarcity of gold. (This hasn't taken into account the demand for gold for jewelry)

Since Bitcoin has no inherent value, those initially creating and trading it for something of value would seem to have gotten something for nothing, or nearly so.

I was thinking about issuing pellets as a currency. It takes work units (gathering/mining and processing food) to create them. Much of the work is carried out by an organic machine called a rabbit. The currency has more inherent value than bitcoin since it has inherent value as a fertilizer. The maximum amount of currency is finite since it biodegrades and the Earth can only support a finite number of rabbits. As with all physical currency, it is wise to wash your hands after handling it.

Various units are possible for convenience. The smallest are individual pellets. They can be compressed rolled and cut into "sheet" currency, and made into bricks. For still higher value currency the rabbit may be replaced with a bull. Some bull-sheet currency should be available soon.

"The above equation is also why lights in your house dim when you turn on a motor (= inductor). There is a significant current change, and the voltage changes even more, so the lights dim."

Uh, no. Most of the voltage drop in the source occurs in the resistance of the wiring, and you didn't even figure resistance into the equation. Intuitively, the surge current more closely matches that of a capacitor charging through resistances. It isn't even a matter of the motor inductance or the frequency of the power. In fact the early surge would be seen even if we used D.C. power and a D.C. motor. The time constant matching the light dimming involves the mass of the rotor being brought up to speed. The load is actually more resistive at startup than when an A.C. motor is up to speed and coasting.

A pure inductor starts at zero current the instant voltage is applied and it ramps up at a rate determined by the inductance, at D.C. or very low frequencies rising to where it becomes limited by the series resistance. It's pure capacitors that draw a maximum current at the instant voltage is applied to the circuit.

I believe that many people get lost in the math and lose a feel for what is happening. What you said is completely backwards from reality. Mechanical analogies are far easier for people to get a feel for than Laplace Transforms. Compare the behavior of an RLC circuit to a machanical system with a shock absorber, spring, and a mass.

People may get confused over a critically damped circuit, but the idea of a car oscillating up and down after a bump with no shock absorber is easy to grasp.

"But the problem is living spaces being separate from working spaces."

Some companies have closely integrated living and working. Foxconn is one such company.

(some have suggested that Foxconn employee depression problems may be partly due to the employees living away from their friends and families, often at a considerable distance)

I think people are missing the point. Apple is actually moving in the direction of less lock-in as far as the consumer goes. They've basically said that in the latest generation many people won't need to buy any one device to use as a hub or to sync, and no additional device is needed to establish service. They seem to have gone as far as content providers will allow in getting away from DRM, and they support syncing music and pictures across quite a few devices, even PCs. Their being able to negotiate a deal where users can Music-Match (replace their own music rips with 256k DRM-free AAC copies that can sync to many devices) is extraordinary. It's a very smart move. It ensures excellent playback quality, and it likely will get some additional people buying from them as music customer.

Being able to view photos taken with an iPhone or iPad streamed through Apple TV is a nice added feature for those not set up to do it through a desktop or laptop.

In an environment designed for easy transmission and sharing of data lock-in just doesn't seem to apply. It's nothing like having data tied up in a proprietary format that only expensive software can read. The only lock-in I see is things being addictively simple.

Foxconn has had some problems, but didn't rank that poorly. It seems to be more a case of what life is like in China.

"In a survey published in 2010 by Oxfam Hong Kong, Foxconn ranked sixth for corporate social responsibility out of the 42 companies that then made up the Hang Seng index."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13624798

MobileMe accounts are being extended to a year from now for free, before the service is shut off.

If the phone no longer meets her needs at that time, she can sell it to help fund a new one (or perhaps you will have yet another leftover from another upgrade of yours). Even an old iPhone can still be used as an iPod, to play games on, and for some WiFi net activities. Old Apple phones have better resale value than any others I've seen.

It sounds like you're complaining about problems that are more hypothetical than real. If you really think that many users are being placed in a bad position, think of it as an opportunity to rescue them with some kind of great app / service that you create. Also, Steve said something yesterday about some open iCloud APIs.

' "Search" is not a vertical market.'

Search alone isn't vertical, search alone isn't even a market if people don't pay for it. You misunderstand the (Google) business and who the customers are. Those doing the searches are not the customers. Advertisers are the customers. Eyeballs of those searching are the primary product. Search isn't the product, only part of the means to obtain the product. Search is a supporting part of a vertical structure that produces revenue for Google.

It's the same thing with commercial broadcast television. The viewers are not customers, the programs are not the product.

In both cases, the choices that produce maximum advertising revenue are not necessarily those that deliver what the person searching or viewing considers best.

In the case of Google, there are elements of a vertical market in the sense that they're combining pieces. They just aren't combining the same pieces or using them the same way as most others. They don't actually sell a mobile OS, or (with past exceptions for developers) handsets. I don't believe they're directly producing much video either. And while they mine data, that is yet another companion component to drive sales of or increase value of the advertising. The will tell how apps fit into their revenue model. They relate to attracting users, more ads in some cases, and a cut of sales. Even if not a big part of the total phone revenue stream, apps are still something that they're stuck dealing with.

There was search before Google, there was data mining before Google, there were ad brokers before google. They're well beyond all of that, more vertical than any of those things alone. In some cases they're filling in gaps or providing alternatives in other vertical products (handset/OS/carrier) only to insert their ad business into the equation. Mapping, video hosting and other things they do also are methods to increase the value of ad business, or build pathways to insert themselves into other ad funded businesses (perhaps broadcasting)

Whether a particular model or product is "good" all depends on perspective. A model where the OS is nearly free appeals to some handset makers or carriers. Low budget "reality" tv and infotainment news programs with 18+ minute of ads an hour may appeal to a tv network if it has a better viewer/cost ratio than obtained with more expensive quality programming.

Yes. It is also worth mentioning that GNUnet is designed to be a secure framework, making it more than just the core of another P2P program. For instance it potentially might be used as the basis for other functions such as chat or VoIP without reinventing all of the low-level transport stuff. With GPL licensing it is likely to evolve as people imagine new enhancements.

Short and giving a clue as to function and freedom the name seems a good choice to me. The (GNU) GPL insures that the users and community will not be restricted from making their own fixes or enhancements. I think it is misleading when some refer to a permissive license as restrictive. You're given permission to do practically anything to the code for your own use, and basically have permission to distribute it to others too as long as you DON'T impose new restrictions on them.

Ballmer pretty much acknowledged the state of things "the world's going html5" back in late 2010.

(Ballmer interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI47b3a9cEI

http://www.osnews.com/story/23966/Microsoft_Changes_Silverli...

It must be a parallel project.

When 4.0 was released to the public, the next update provided 40 b13 nightly users was a 4.2 alpha. (some plug-ins break)

It's too bad there apparently aren't any robots ready to put into service in Fukushima. They might have robotic arms or cranes for doing things like shuffling fuel rods, but what can help with doing improvised welding or wiring in a hostile environment?

In recent months NHK reported on experiments in using simple robots that could help the elderly in Japan with a few chores, but they were a flop mainly because the people involved rejected them instead insisting on human companionship. There's a shortage of working-age people, and a growing percentage of retirement age people there. Many of the younger people stay in the larger cities making the shift even more dramatic in some areas. In the 60's many predicted flat-panel on the wall television sets to be in use by the 80's. It looks like general purpose robots will take longer than many would have hoped too.

Perhaps something remotely controlled by a human with VR gloves etc is viable for the emergency repairs? Things would have to be well shielded to avoid having stray neutrons altering data bits.

There's quite a bit of misleading info in some news reporting making numeric comparisons between numbers representing different types of data (activity totals versus exposure rates) and in some cases mismatching units too. At least there seems to be plenty of monitoring going on in Japan, and wide access to frequently updated data. NHK today was reporting the government website now has hour by hour values tabulated. I think that's to help people understand that the daily averages are mostly well below the peak values that get attention. Using a peak hourly rate value for a daily or longer calculation may cause people to over react. (Of course people may have other exposure through food, water etc.)

Studying two other incidents, one at a Japanese fuel facility in 1999 (closed in 2003) and the other with a U.S. army Idaho Falls (Dugway testing grounds) reactor that went critical in an accident in 1961 provides insight into the neutron-moderating behavior of water, and interesting case studies of exposure to people after the initial events. Less known than three mile island, both are significant.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SL-1 https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tokaimura_nuc...

It strikes me as a site for scamming people, http://bit.ly/fgGX3a sure doesn't sound like a normal way to access the Red Cross. The retailing links are fishy too.

>Capitalism and free enterprise produced everything good.

>National parks were not created either.

National Parks consist of isolated bits of something good that was there long before man. They're definitely not something good produced by free enterprise, rather something good still there because it was protected FROM free enterprise.

Now to see something like this work with a net-enabled 3D television.

It's okay to be the quiet one. That improves the chances of you being a good listener, someone that really listens instead of being tuned-out while composing your next line.

It's important for many reasons to strike a balance between work and play (and quality solitude), but don't be alone out of being uncomfortable with others. Try to seek a space where it works for you, where you can unwind, and you can be "in the moment".

By being in the moment I mean not thinking or worrying about what happened last week or last year, or what will happen next week or next year. Relax... take in the sounds around you. Get i tune with all of your senses. Hopefully as you unwind you'll find yourself breathing slower but deeper. Perhaps you can casually go somewhere with someone on a picnic, a hike, or camping. Visit the coast or a lake, enjoy the night sky. The things people stress over at school or work may not even matter years later. Don't throw your time away in a stressful limbo that's in-between work/study you're into, and the off the clock pleasure time. Get plenty of rest, regular sunshine, some exercise (at least plenty of fast walking), eat with variety and moderation. The rest and sunshine play a large role in healthy brain chemistry and various hormones. Living out of the moment is a bit like driving while texting. Life flows better if you're all there for it. Get in tune with yourself, discover how seemingly small things influence the way you feel.

Go at your own pace with people. Take time to figure out who you are, what you like, and who you want to be with. If you're thinking about your orientation, don't feel alone. Whatever you're going through know that there are many like you, and you'll get wherever you're going at your pace. The people that matter will appreciate you for who you are. Be tolerant of and not preoccupied with the rest. Be in tune with peoples' feelings, and learn to see who can sense and really care about yours.

You might experiment with different types of music. There's a rush from the energy of metal, but some other types may work better for relaxed intimate periods.

Do what you feel is right, even when no one else seems to. Learn to trust your gut feelings more than what people say.

Best wishes.

That would be an improvement over something some cable tv systems once did in small communities. If a town had one nearby full-power analog tv station, analog signals carried on the same channel on cable would often get interference. Even if the same station was carried, the differing time delays would cause the video to appear in different positions on a scan line causing ghosts. In the later days, the channel would typically carry public service text, community access programs, or guide listings. But in the early days it'd be things like weather guages next to an aquarium with the camera panning back and forth.

Maybe by 2012 someone can do a video with (Tina Fey) Sara Palin shown secretly hunting down the last bear in Alaska or something... chase a Russian bear on an iceberg and wrestle for oil rights?

BearGate, the Sara Palin conspiracy

In some cases those profiting from the earlier higher priced sale of a property, and the commissions, were committing fraud. One of the story links indicates that Toxie was connected to a known case.

A realtor flipped a property back and forth between friends multiple times, it being sold for a higher price each time. The banks were happy to make the loans on the property that was increasing in value. The people involved shared the gains along the way, then the last one defaulted. The selling back and forth could happen normally... it seems the fraud was in the parties obtaining loans for an owner occupied property. It was apparently empty the whole time.

These people didn't need an economic downturn to default. It was planned.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/07/23/128720556/atc-flip...

The original Crystal Quest of the mid to late 80's on monochrome Macs and the early color version on the Mac II were great (but not MultiFinder compatible). Very addictive and fast/smooth which was a feat on the 8 and 16 MHz machines of the era. (Not to be confused with later rewrite which just wasn't the same)

Just the other day I was wondering about getting an old version of the OS running under SheepShaver to try it. I'll probably dust off an old machine instead.

Crosby had an important role in the history of the magnetic recording industry.

Crosby was an early investor in Ampex corporation, the U.S. company that adapted WWII German wire-recorder technology (which used an A.C. bias signal to improve quality).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex_Corporation

This technology clear goes way too far. It might be a good idea to remind employers of when the state of Texas sued doubleclick for stalking. Knowing how to do something doesn't mean that you should do it.

There will be some backlash to this sort of thing seen as an increasing number of surfers stripping back enabled browser functionality.

Or tell them an evil twin tied you up and decided to try a prank.

It seems like the tech sites that end up with mega-publisher owners are a bit soft in articles that cover products from major potential advertisers.

Conde Nast owns Wired, arstechnica, webmonkey, and reddit

Tabs to the side of the address bar? Using the URL space for search? What are they smoking?

We'll see how standards support actually turns out...

>Apple or HTC could easily come out with a similar device before MS hits the market.

Sure, but that is if they see it as viable. Unless it's just an add-on secondary input device and display, it'll require that the OS and apps all work really well with it. So there's the big issue... would it work great with existing software or require a fresh start? Can it work well for mainstream use including things like word processing?

The work doesn't seem particularly new. If one looks closely at the first picture "Bill Buxton using the Active Desk he helped develop at the University of Toronto" we can see the older Apple color icon at the top left.

Of course it still is a very cool technology to respect and admire even if existing OSes aren't quite ready for it. The biggest problem I see with touch interfaces on legacy OSes is that they can work better on large screens, but don't scale down well.

Note - The title is misleading. It's a zero day vulnerability on all platforms, but the exploits hit XP Vista and W7. It's still prudent to kill Flash on all though.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/13/adobe_flash_0day_vul...

It is easy to turn off Flash in the Firefox plugins, and running the Better Privacy extension which kills the Flash hidden cookies normal cookie management doesn't touch. (One stalks you keeping track of every site you've visited with Flash) Better Privacy isn't yet compatible with the Firefox 4 beta but is fine with 3.x

NoScript is still a good idea for many reasons.

The malware is worse this year than last... http://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk/about-g-data/press-centre/new...

And how does this relate to VirtualBox (open-source)?

There was another article recently that looked at gender issues and concluded that the differences weren't so much women being better or worse off, but the men being more extreme and greater risk takers. So men see more of both the highs and the lows. It isn't an inherent difference in ability at all, but there may be inherent behavioral differences partly accounted for by hormones and other genetic factors.

It's a very limited comparison, but look at the behavior differences between male cats that have been "fixed" and those that haven't.

Differences in testosterone and oxytocin levels vary and can have a large influence on behavior.