I clicked on the blind listening test link expecting to see some statistics, but instead we just got a bunch of opinions that may or may not mean anything. (And some admission of non-blindness in the case of detectable hiss, meaning they listened to the cards before starting the blind test.)

You can't do a blind listening test without taking down some numbers and comparing them to the probability of 50%. If the results are more significantly likely than chance, you can't conclude anything.

Frankly, I'm disappointed, since this could have been the most useful part of the discussion.

That script looks super useful, thanks!

Firstly, it's too bad the military-industrial climate in the US means that the first "application" of such technology is towards "the soldier of the future". I see such a "strength-enhancing" technology as more useful in contexts like warehouse management, replacing forklifts, rather than soldiering, where I'd think that "small, quick and light" would be virtues. As mentioned in other comments, "helping old people" is how they think of this kind of thing in Japan. (Though it makes me laugh to think about a grandfather type wearing such a gigantic exoskeleton to do the groceries..)

Anyways, the real point of my post was to think about safety issues. Every time I see exoskeleton technology, it makes me think about the fact that acceleration-based positive feedback control has a tendency to "explode" if you're not very careful. I'd be afraid of putting such a suit on for fear of it ripping my arm off if something malfunctioned. What kind of safety restrictions are in place on this thing?

By positive feedback, I mean: In a typical control situation, you'd have sensors that can tell you, 'hey you're pulling really hard on the arm right now and there is a lot of resistance, so stop.' However in this case, I'd imagine the logic is more like 'hey you're pulling really hard on the arm right now, and there is a lot of resistance, meaning the guy needs more help, so pull harder!'

This may or may not be his thing, depending on what kind of a person he is, but try to get him into graphics coding. Introduce him to Processing for example, or one of the many similar projects. (It's certainly no replacement for someone who wants to do "hands on" art, but it's a suggestion that fits your requirement of enabling graphic arts without requiring input precision.)

And yet, you are posting on Slashdot.

I don't know.. I hate advertising too, but think about it.. all the books I could read, legally free, and all I have to do is skip a few pages every now and then? This doesn't sound like a bad deal at all. Just like reading magazines, in fact, which everyone's already pretty accustomed to. If this means more books for everyone, bring it on!

Speaking of magazines, it only makes sense that mags would eventually start encroaching on the ebook platform. Heck, the fact that I currently can't read magazines on my reader kind of sucks, so again, bring it on!

I would argue that even from the most hard-right libertarian point of view, the only job of the government is to ensure that markets stay free. This includes preventing the purchase of monopolies, so that small businesses have a chance to provide equal or better service than the big players. Net neutrality should be in the interests of anyone who believes in the free market.

The idea that the right has gotten into its head that government regulation should stay out of the market is wrong, not because regulation is some kind of socialist mindset, but because in the hard-right view of things, the only role of the government is to play "cop", to catch cheaters and make sure the market always runs smoothly and is an even playing field for all.

Just one more reason to watch what you post, folks.

But won't "watching what we post" only serve to lessen the dilution of social media "behaviour", making it even easier for classifiers to pick out outliers?

Put another way, if we act ashamed of ourselves and play cards close to the chest, won't this simply encourage conformal social behaviour and help to undo the social upheaval of the 60's?

In other words, while I agree that making yourself look stupid on the internet is not the smartest move, I would also say that asking everyone to "watch what they say" for fear of future repercussion sounds somewhat doubleplusungood to me.

In other words, we need to figure how to let teenagers be teenagers. It scares me, but I agree with Eric Schmidt that it might one day be necessary to let people change their name when they get to a certain age, similar to how we let people clean their criminal record at 18.

Legend Of The Bouncing Beholder

Tiny chess

Tetris with sound

WOLF1K and the rainbow characters

Binary clock

Mother fucking lasers

Graphical layout engine

Crazy multiplayer 2-sided Pong

Morse code generator

Pulsing 3d wires

All the comments here seem to focus on fears of health issues. That may be true, but I remember that when I was younger, a cell company put up a tower overnight in the middle of my community. There was a lot of protest, people complained. Not because of health issues, but because it was ugly--a giant ugly tower right up in the middle of the neighbourhood. So, just to say, it may not only be that people are 'nuts', but just that they want to preserve the aesthetics of their town. I think they were also quite insulted that this huge thing went up overnight without any consideration or permission of the residents. (Yes, this cell tower is still there.. they've gotten used to it I guess, but it's still ugly.)

With all the negative press these "limited-unlimited" plans have been getting both for cell phones and internet providers, I would think that a marketable slogan might now be:

"Due to the laws of physics, we aren't unlimited, but we'll do the next best thing and make it easy for you to monitor your usage and judge how much you are spending on bandwidth!"

It would be nice to have an ISP that attains success by being honest instead of by lying to their customers.

It seems the "unlimited" thing seems like such a good sell that every ISP feels the need to offer it, even when they can't actually handle the traffic. What ever happened to not selling things you can't offer?

(The corollary of SNL's "Don't Buy Things You Can't Afford.")

Well if the night swimmers become numerous enough to require a drink bar...

Where is this place? I want to hang out there.

Consider chickens. There is a gene, which if activated, will cause the chicken to grow teeth

+5 Scary?

It's a certainly a bit of a stretch to claim that publishing a novel in serial installments is a new idea.

("But this is on... THE INTERNET!")

BUT I'm a huge Stephenson fan, so I'm looking forward to reading this whether I end up subscribing or buying the book after the fact.

I downloaded it but I notice the installer is an ELF executable. This is sort of a Windows-style way to distribute an application. If I run it, I have no idea where it will put files on my system. I'm not too comfortable with that, why not distribute a deb that will allow my system's package manager to let me uninstall it easily?

(Or next best thing, just a tarball that unzips to a predictable location and runs from there.)

As it stands, if I want to be careful I'd have to create a low-priviledge user with a clean directory just to easily track what happens during install without worrying about it writing to my system directories or to a weird place in my home directory. Kind of a lot of work just to check out a game.