It's not that solar provides a fraction of "needed" power. The issue is that Americans (myself included) use far more than they really "need". People considering solar should look at lowering their energy usage and increasing their home's efficiency as a first step, and then looking at solar after all other improvements have been made.
I wonder what kind of car Stallman drives. Seriously. Does he update the firmware controlling the engine timing and fuel injectors?
What's that? The car manufacturers have digitally handcuffed him so that he can't go mucking around with things? Oh - it must be a safety issue. OK, well, surely he can update the firmware for other things in his car, such as the radio display?
People aren't hearded in to giving up their freedoms. There are certain freedoms that those people just don't *need* to begin with. My mother, who has an iPhone, isn't handcuffed - if anything, the device liberates her into using technology that she wouldn't otherwise use in in the modern world.
There are products across the spectrum that address the balance between usable and the freedom to do whatever you'd like. Just because manufacturers lock down their devices doesn't mean there's not a suitable audience that doesn't benefit...
I have as much disdain for the TSA as anyone else on here, but after watching the video, I tend to agree with TSA's action. They stated that the watch had "wires, switches, and fuses" on it, and somewhere mentioned that they were toggle switches.
Now, I have no idea what it actually looked like, but there's only so many ways to attach toggle switches and fuses to a watch. It's going to look highly suspicious. Couple that with some odd shoewear, and I actually think the TSA is justified in taking precautions on this one.
However, continuing to detain him after the bomb squad cleared him is blatantly wrong..
Only two comments, both in this post, talking about how great Microsoft is.
Can we have a "Shill" negative rating?
Not even Hubble can resolve that from LEO: http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php?id=77&cat=topten
"I have altered the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further"
I have to admit it, I got caught up in the hype and I bought a computer. The novelty wore off after a couple of days. Since then, it has sat on my desk, almost completely unused. In fact, it's one of the worst purchases I've ever made.
Computers in general are rather pointless devices. They're far bulkier than my pencil and paper, so they're not very good on the go. They're much less comfortable to use than my clipboard, especially when I have to do a lot of writing. They require so much power relative to even a battery powered book light that they're not usable for anything for when I just want to take notes. My pencil and paper has infinite resolution, and thus is a much better medium for reading and writing.
I learned the hard way that the usefulness of computers is purely a marketing creation. They look like they have potential, but in practice they're just the combination of the worst of every other type of new fangled technology that has come out in the past 20 years.
Every tool is only as good as how you implement it.
It's the Georgia *Institute* of Technology, not a university.
It's not a single-payer healthcare system that we don't understand or trust. It's that we don't trust our government to do it in a way that's cost effective or efficient. They don't exactly have a history of being either of those, and when you start talking about handing over one of the largest industries to the US government to manage, most people realize that it just won't end well. So... the broken system we have now is better than the alternative.
I couldn't agree more, and I have kids (that I love, in a good family environment).
I always said that I was happy without kids, and I was. In my mid-30's, I decided that I was ready to try something else in life. And it's been great - I love having my kids around. No, I'm not ready to say "I can't imagine my life without kids" because I can - I do remember those days of freedom of responsibility with fondness. But I wouldn't give up my kids for that again - it's just a different perspective in life.
Life, like anything, is what you make of it. You can be happy with kids and you can be happy without kids. People tend to judge others based on their own experiences, for better or worse.
As both an underwater photographer and a reef keeping hobbyist, I'd have to refute your claim. When you dive, your brain fills in the missing reds, yellows, etc - you don't notice the lack of color underwater near as much as you think you would. You definitely notice bleaching however - the coral is stark white at first, and then then becomes brown or green with algae.
It's certainly true that underwater strobes provide fill light to corals in exactly the same way that a studio photographer will use strobes to light his model. However, if the colors aren't there to begin with, they're not going to be magically created by the strobes.
In the end, the grandparent poster was correct- either the picture was from years ago or the photo may have been taken from a different part of the world.
I have to agree. I have a daughter who is 2 years old next month, and we allow about one hour of TV per day - about 30 mins in the morning and about 30 mins at night - enough for one or two of her favorite educational cartoons. She asks for them by name (clearly and persistently...), and I feel that as long as she's learning from them, then I'm ok with them.
And learn she has. Everything from identifying airplanes, airports, dump trucks, numbers, colors to concepts like "on/off", "go/stop", etc. We're lucky to have my mother-in-law watch her every other day and she works with her constantly, so she gets plenty of direct people interaction.
She's also allowed about 30 minutes of iPad time per day, which she loves - she plays games that identifies animals, concepts, and such. She can pick out and say aardvark, beaver, lemur, or any of 50 other non-basic animals from a large list of pictures in a matter of seconds. Critical life skills, no, but this is about learning the world around her.
Having said all this - it's not about TV in particular. It's about what type of media they are exposed to, in what quantity, and the type. Moderation in everything, and this is no exception. Before I get raked over the coals, I'll state that she spends as much time daily with me outside in the grass, at the playground, at the pool, with her wooden blocks, etc, etc as she does watching TV. Again, it's not about the medium - it's about moderating exposure and parental involvement.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property. You can't put the OS on your own hardware, you can't run your own apps on the iPod Touch / iPhone without hacking it, you can't use products which directly compete with Apple's offering on either either (heh). Are you all forgetting iTunes prior to the catalogue being converted to DRM-free MP3s?
No. Jobs and his company were based on one thing- making products so that they can make money. Apple hasn't been run as some ideology in order inflict control - they've done so because they know they can appeal to a larger audience - namely, the common, non-techie person. My parents (and grandparents, for that matter), who can use an iPad, don't care that they can't put their own OS on their hardware. They don't care that they can't run their own apps. Nor do they even know what DRM is. They only care that when they pick up the product, it's very intuitive and things just work.
Apple is not a government. It's a company whose success depends on how many devices they can sell. If you want to be able to do the things you've mentioned, then there are alternatives. It's not "control" when people voluntarily pay money for something.
Horrible people can do good things just as good people can do horrible things, and a lot of the things Jobs did in computing were horrible. Pretty, and king of usability, but all a thing veneer on something fundamentally malign.
I won't deny that Apple is very draconian from a developer's perspective. I'm an app developer, and I abhor the restrictions. But I choose to write in that environment because I reach a far larger audience with my product.
Apple delivers a product - a choice if you will. If you want to blame anyone, blame the people who buy the products to support the ideology.
Last I checked, the moon wasn't a planet...
> Worthless for anything that requires typing because typing on an on-screen keyboard is a nightmare.
And tablets were never designed for things that require a lot of typing. My computer is worthless for anything that requires a touchscreen.
> Terrible web browsing experience.
Because much of the web is designed for another interface. Most sites work quite well, and my computer can get heavy while in my lap on the couch...
> Rubbish for gaming because of the lack of physical controls.
The 50 million users of Angry Birds might argue otherwise.
> Useless for watching videos because who wants to hold their display while watching a film.
And who wants to hold their phone when not in use? There's these fancy doohickey's for attaching your phone to your hip. Likewise, there's these fancy stands for tablets. And I don't know what kind of traveling you do, but carrying and mounting my 50" plasma everywhere I go can be quite cumbersome.
> Can't be used for any RealWork such as programming, graphic design, stock trading or anything else.
As an app developer of productivity software, I have thousands of users who would beg to differ. Just because you can't do *your* job on the tablet doesn't mean it's worthless for the rest of the world.
> I can't really think what else they could be used for.
You haven't actually used a tablet have you?
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
