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Comment Re:Vive le Galt! (Score 1) 695

Volunteering isn't bartering. Assuming you meant bartering...

It is not bartering in the strict meaning I guess, no. Still I did not mean bartering, I meant exactly what I said.

in exchange for what?

In exchange for nothing! That is what volunteering means!

Picture everybody doing this --or for starters, picture a small town doing this, so you can also get an idea of how it can spread to neighboring towns.

Consider this scenario: a bridge breaks, and needs to be fixed: it needs engineers, masons perhaps, other experts, workers, all that. Those are the the ones that are going to physically fix it. It may also need replacement material, which has a 'cost' (a monetary cost). Last, there is a bunch of politicians and burreaucrats that have to rule on the economics and whatnot and the rest of the 'administrative stuff' regarding the rebuilding of the bridge, which is a crowd that somehow has hypnotized everyone over the years into believing that their work is essential.

In this scenario, the town's experts volunteer time to do their best to fix the bridge. The town's best minds, via an emergent selection from the town itself, are on to it. People who have nothing direct to volunteer, volunteer snacks and entertainment for the people who do the work. Snacks get too many too soon, and the town has an excess that it can perhaps DONATE to a neighboring town (that is going through a similar 'bartering', if you want to call it as such, process) and that neighboring town may have an excess of bridge material (the material that has a 'cost') to DONATE to the town with the faulty bridge.

Where does money fit here? Nowhere. Where do burreaucrats fit here? Nowhere. Bridge gets fixed? Hell yes.

As long as people keep greed in check, this can work surprisingly well.

Comment Re:Exactly what I was thinking (Score 1) 365

Also how much of a payload can one missile really carry? Not much, good only for targeted strikes.

For your edification: a hypersonic missile DOES NOT NEED to carry ANY payload. The missile itself IS the payload, which is part of the whole 'hypersonic' point (the other part being to be able to hit globally in under 60 minutes).

Submission + - Scientists Report Observation of Dirac Monopoles (nature.com)

arisvega writes: From their abstract: " [..] Here we demonstrate the controlled creation of Dirac monopoles in the synthetic magnetic field produced by a spinor Bose–Einstein condensate. Monopoles are identified, in both experiments and matching numerical simulations, at the termini of vortex lines within the condensate. [..] These real-space images provide conclusive and long-awaited experimental evidence of the existence of Dirac monopoles. Our result provides an unprecedented opportunity to observe and manipulate these quantum mechanical entities in a controlled environment."

I am trully sorry for the fact that the article is paywalled by a publisher that adds almost no value to it. Research from public funding has to be public, period. But this discovery/technique is Nobel-prize nomination material, so I think it worths a look.

Comment So does 'Lightbeam' (in a browser), but .. (Score 2) 52

.. if you go hastefully through the ToS it is very easy to miss that _some_ data will be communicated to 'momma' server _anyway_, regardless of user control settings, and that they reserve the right to do basically whatever they want with it.

Their stated intentions for the collected data, should they (the company behind the addon, working with Mozilla for the time being) not be acquired, go bankrupt or 'experience corporate restructuring', is to produce a public internet map with it to show which megacorp is connected to which other megacorp- but there is no link or even a timeline for that, and they are not really clear as to what data they will make public, how, when and where.

I have my doubts for them, as I do for this app.

Submission + - Occulus Rift Used in Virtual Reality Prototype with Live Motion Capture (bbc.co.uk) 1

arisvega writes: A researcher at University College London has developed a prototype augmented reality system which enables users to interact with virtual objects, avatars and websites, all bundled with live motion tracking.

Before you get too excited, note that the system is rather difficult to be made portable, as it uses fixed cameras to perform motion capture.

The system, developed by William Steptoe (and presumably his team?), researcher at University College London, uses a head-mounted display and panels fitted to the hands to insert virtual objects into the room in which you sit or stand, enabling interaction with virtual objects, avatars and websites.

In this demonstration he uses the technology to interact with objects around him and brings up tablet-like displays to get online. He even uses his Occulus Rift to put on a virtual Occulus Rift on.

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