SHOUTING IS NOT POLITE!

Right now, this is happening in Hong Kong:

In Hong Kong, pro-democracy demonstrators are looking for new ways to communicate.

News about the protests in Hong Kong have been suppressed in mainland China, where the picture sharing site Instagram has been blocked. Messages posted to Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter, are being blocked in far greater numbers than normal. And on Sunday, rumours reportedly circulated that the authorities in Hong Kong might shut down the city's cellular networks.

In response, a different type of social network has come to the fore. The Firechat app allows smartphone users to talk to one another "off-the-grid", in the absence of a mobile signal or access to the internet. By making use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, messages are spread in a daisy chain fashion, jumping from one user to the next. The system is particularly effective when large numbers of people are congregated together - like at a music festival, or a political protest.

Micha Benoliel, CEO of Open Garden, the firm that makes the app, tells BBC Trending there has been a huge surge in downloads from Hong Kong, as more than 100,000 new accounts have been created in less than 24 hours. Usage spiked during protests in Taiwan and Iran earlier this year, but never before on this scale, says Benoliel.

Inside the app discussions are arranged either according to theme, or how close you are to other users. At one point on Sunday 33,000 people in Hong Kong were using the app at the same time.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...

Nope

Follow the links
http://www.research.ibm.com/la...

http://www.airlightenergy.com/...

Some say 12KWh/day electric cause of the cascading failure of non-engineering descriptions.
I say 100KWh/day electric and 160KWh/day thermal, (it's a beast).
Quoted 12KW electric and 20KW thermal output.
Some math: 40 m2 * 80% * 1KW/m2 = 32KW (consistency check: yep that's 12KW+20KW)
Assume 8hr/day near maximum input because it's tracking the sun.

ALSO: 40m2 area is about 7m diameter.
If you had one in your backyard to run your home:
4m diameter: 30KWh/day el and 50KWh/day th. That's a big big house with many kids (you're Xtian right?)
3m diameter: 17KWh/day el and 28KWh/day th. That's a good fit for most families
2m diameter: 7.5KWh/day el and 12KWh/day th. That's a good fit for singles.

Whimpered the gutless Scotsman.

One
  Rich
    Arsehole
      Called
        Larry
          Ellison

Yeah! Someone who didn't missed the "hakuna matata" message in Lion King.
Recycling EV batteries is the virtuous circle of LiFePO4

You're so completely full of shit. What does Bono DO with that money?

He invests it in socially responsible investments, 0promotes (spends money on) pro-social causes, gives it to charity . He does what any rational person who wants to achieve a goal in this world and has access to capital- he creates it, he invests some as principle, he uses the earnings to effect change. Rinse and repeat.

I just love conservatives who attack liberals for having *anything* to do with making money. It's a completely cynical attempt to get their opponents to divest themselves of any real power.

It's also a cynical attempt to demoralize people to whom Bono et. al. are role models- "See, they're just as greedy as the Koch brothers! People are just greed machines! Get used to it... "

Ditto the attacks on Gore and his "carbon foot print".\

The facts are, if everyone were and did as Bono and Gore do, we wouldn't have crushing poverty and war. Fact. And we wouldn't be facing extinction through environmental degradation. Fact.

So shut the fuck up you little asshole. Go read some more Ayn Rand , snort some more coke and cruise some more really vile S&M porn. Those are the points of your moral compass. That's what's *real* to your reptilian brain.

All I care about is- can I finally create a path+filename+extension location longer than 256 and still have Windows Explorer work? Or is this bug still dictating the names I can give my libraries?

It's a simple question.

I am *quite* sure the answer is no, \so what do I care about Windows 9?

Answer- I don't.

Windows 7 is still humming along, thanks.

Huge U2 fan, but not an Apple one ... with all these people "throwing away" this album that they were given (and therefore are the rightful owners of), is there any way for someone like me to legally come into possession of this thing these other people are taking to the curb? Is there an digital trash can somewhere I can go pick it out of?

Thanks!

"AT&T said, "Such an approach would preserve the ability of Internet service providers to engage in individualized negotiations with [content companies] for a host of services, while prohibiting the precise practice that has raised 'fast lane' concerns." It's not perfect, but it's probably the first earnest attempt at a compromise we've seen from either side, and it suggests the discussion can move forward without completely rejecting one group's wishes."

Nice try.

First, the ability to "enter into individual negotiations" for your IP packages to be treated one way (slow) or another way (fast) is ENORMOUSLY deceptive language for killing net neutrality.

To deconstruct this twaddle , the word "ability" is used so that rejecting this "offer" (snort) makes it seem like you';re turning down an ability in favor of what? a disability? Being forced to "negotiate" for your packet's speed is not an "ability" . It's the threat that, unless you pay or if you oppose us politically, we'll kneecap your packets.

Secondly, it is NOTHING but fast lane / slow lane practices repackaged into doublespeak. What are the
"individualized" (another gratuitously positive-sounding word) "negotiations" (if you call being strong armed by non- value producing, rent seeking monopolists "negotiations" ) except demands for payment for delivery of your packets at prices other than the price "negotiated" for the same delivery of other companies and individuals packets?

You know what this piece of corporate press release dressed up as a Slashdot article REALLY says? We're winning, and not by some small measure either. ATT is looking over the battle field and they see they're being completely routed. The writing is on the wall for them nad they're desperately trying to "negotiate" and "compromise" their way to a victory over a free as in freedom internet, because they're not going to carry the day using the normal mechanism of Congressional campaign bribes , er I mean support, and astroturfed "citizens movements"

Your letters to your Congressional representatives are totally and completely one sided, as was the public response to the FCC. Congress has NO WAY to give them what they want without shredding whatever credibility that institution has left as the People's House. The cost of defying the repeatedly expressed will of the American people on this issue would not just be toxic for generations to any party who gives in, it would also threaten the legitimacy of the institution itself. How much more can the American people take? No one wants to find out.

Takeaway from this piece of corporate PR trash?

KEEP WRITING CONGRESS. IT"S WORKING.

So the fast lane slow lane has been broken out into "individual

Bringing up the Koch brother conspiracy does prove something. That there exists powerful people who have actively degraded the message of the impact of climate change in order to accumulate further power and wealth. Of course, this doesn't change any scientific facts, but its an important consideration when evaluating why there are no effective policy changes.

This really irritates me. I am sure Stanislav Lem is an interesting and I am sure Stanislav Lem 's reputation in not going to be harmed by me, so I feel free to really let go on this.

The first point I'll make is this is extremely low quality speculation, and the second point I'll make is it's extremely and insidiously destructive of our own future in some very specific ways.

First, this is the rankest type of speculation; it's not even thought provoking, at least productive-thought provoking. Lem is positing to *creatures entirely unknown* preferences, goals, in fact an entire motivational system. That's OK for sci-fi, but it really exposes a lack of imagination and critical thinking skills when he attempts to apply it to actual forms of life in the real world. Here's a certainty- we know nothing about the possible biology of other forms of life elsewhere are far flung galaxies and planets and we certainly know absolutely nothing about any psychology which they may or may not have.

Other living creatures may not even think of themselves as, or be, individuals with a welfare to mind. We evolved in a competitive environs and have the struggle to maintain ourselves against that environs and other creatures worked deeply into our genes, but what if other creatures are just not that way?

The whole idea that what "feels good" is somehow necessarily insidiously destructive to the individual has it biological basis in our unique brain chemistry. Some neurotransmitters and chemical compounds make use feel really good because evolutionarily speaking, they were associated with some survival enhancing behaviors. Separation (and purification) of those chemicals from their behaviors resulted in the problem we know as addiction.

Essentially the "feel good" chemicals are purified, enhanced then introduced exogenously. The nefarious effect is twofold. One is an unnatural level of feelings of pleasure brought on by these drugs which subverts the motivational system and against which we have no (inherent) defense. Thus rats pushing levels to get brain stimulation unto death. Thus people in opium dens. Thus heroin addition.

The other nefarious effect is the reduction of the endogenous production of those same (or naturally occurring similar) chemicals by our bodies. Simply, the body sees that it has enough of this stuff and shuts down its own production Now you not only crave the feel good, you feel awful if you try to quit the exogenic source- you're dependent on the drug.

But this is all specific to our biology. Some *totally other* biology may have no correlative problem.

It's amazing to me that Lem couldn't figure this out.

The second point is this fear of populations succumbing to sloth and no-utility pleasure seeking is a thinly veiled regurgitation of the rhetoric of 19th century conservative scolds. It's the belief that the dirty unwashed masses will devolve into nothing but hedonistic pleasure seekers, dragging us back to the stone age, if left to their own devices .

Absent the imposition of stern consequences -things like workhouses, the threat of destitution, starvation and a life of grinding poverty, people and society will self destruct within a generation. The impoverished model of human beings - it's really something from the Bronze Age- that this implies flies in the face of everything we know about the effects of non-coersive reward structures, human curiosity and knowledge seeking and the inborn desire for self actualization.

People wrecked by threats abuse, torture and the threat of torture, shortages of every sort including empathic responses from others in society and locked in chronically oppositional and dirty relations with everyone around them are, indeed, robbed of their basic humanity, and with that basic humanity goes their desire to engage in produtcive work and be motivated by faint things like intellectual curiosity.
\
The fact that the above sentence more or less describes the World As It Has Been for the past 40,000 years explains where this belief about humans and their psychology comes from. But it's not true, it's a product of chronic shortages and the resultant need to fight for physical, intellectual and emotional needs. IF there were just magically enough of all of these, Lem's psychology of destructive self absorption would not be the result any more than the rise in people's ability to provide for families leads to over population in developed countries, as predicted by the same scolds. IN fact, just the opposite happens.

Lem's vacuous little thought experiment indirectly reinforces the highly regressive notion that if the poor aren't forced into work to avoid poverty, if all boats really were ever lifted, society will degenerate. This is, in fact, what animates Paul Ryan's views of "poor people" and he's not alone. Millions of people hold this POV more or less unconsciously and it causes them to vote in a certain way when it comes election time.

It's, at its best, a snobbish, classist, racist, ignorant argument cynically reinforced from time to time by by FauxNews and their ilk who seek out then serve up for public horror exemplars that fit the pattern. .

More cooly, it's an excuse to exploit others by arranging the system of contingencies which govern their lives to be as punitive as possible for them and as profitable as possible for yourself and your cronies.

BMW Werk Leipzig Germany, where the electric and hybrid BMW i3 and i8 are manufactured, has 4x 2.5 MW wind turbines that more than cover the 36GWHr/year electricity used. The Leipzig Werk also manufactures X1, 1er and 2er series gas burners.
The factory tour to watch the birth of an i3 is awesome. There are a number of youtube video of the process as well.

It is what some young people need, but it's very very expensive. If you teach 8 kids, the maximum (let's guess) you could actually give tutorial - mentor attention to over the course of 8 hours, how much does each family need to pony up to keep YOU happy?

$9,000, not including any benefits, workman's comp, administrative overhead, just here's 9k cash in your hand and thanks for teaching my kid.

Education is a loss leader for people who give it, that is, the state, the taxpayer. People just have to accept the true price of education, so we don't end up having to pay the cost of an uneducated population.

Well, perhaps Zuckerberg's idea raiding, via H1B immigration, other nation's state sponsored educational products is an alternative....

Seriously, the idea is we lose money on education but make it up having a capable citizenry.

Yes, it's unfortunate that some players attempt to maximize their profits any way they can and screw the actual effect they have on education. It's the "I'm going to get mine" mentality that American's have always had towards each other. This goes by the polite name of "ambition" in some political circles and the resultant widespread destruction and concentration of wealth is called "success".

Privatization can't work on a widespread scale for everyone, the numbers just aren't there. Only rich people can afford the 20k a year for little Jamie's education. For a lot of people, that's everything they make.

This problem is already solved. It's called the "ignore user " button. Push it and you no longer see the posts from the offending troll. Troll can see your posts, but you can't see theirs. So troll has unpleasant (for a troll) experience of seeing a conversation carried on as though what he was posting simply didn't exist, because it didn't for anyone who regarded him as a troll.

If a troll is like porn, we know it when we see it, then this solution works very well. Everyone sees and ignores the troll, depriving the troll of their motivation for trolling in the first place.

The only problem we have is sites don't use the available technology.

I have been on sites where this virtually eliminated the troll problem. Of course the automated accounts that are spamming viagra require something else, but that is not what the article was complaining about. The article was complaining about civility.

I really have to wonder if there are ulterior motivations at work here. Trolls are the new "we must save our children" rallying cry, an argument designed to force people into ID ing themselves, tagging themselves as "legitimate" so they can be better tracked and monetized. I feel like these pieces are set pieces, ready to roll out as soon as their beneficiaries and creators think their might be some temporary, rising sentiment against anonymity on the web.

Current example- Robin William's daughter's recent Twitter experience.

Sure, a troll gets one off but that is all anyone will see of him.

There is no free speech without anonymity and giving it up because some asshole made someone cry is ceding my freedom to assholes. That wont' be happening.