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Comment: Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score 2) 272

by AdamThor (#43671055) Attached to: Sleep Deprivation Lowers School Achievement In Children

Try This:
http://stereopsis.com/flux/

Super cool app to change the color temp of your computer screen automatically toward red in the evening so that you can go to sleep. I run it and I normally don't even notice it in action. As it gets dark outside the colors still look correct. But I don't feel like my eyes get burned by the computer at night.

It's way cool.

Comment: Re:Privacy? (Score 1) 508

by AdamThor (#43564155) Attached to: NYC Police Comm'r: Privacy Is 'Off the Table' After Boston Bombs

"I'm sure New York has deeper pockets and can afford more than the small jurisdiction I work for, but in our case camera footage ends up deleted for very practical reasons: storage space."

Therein lies the rub, my friend. 'We needn't consider this case because it isn't possible' leads to a creeping precedent that allows it. You don't have a right to not be recorded every time you go out in public why? Because it wasn't possible when the founding fathers were codifying rights. Had they read Orwell or seen what the paparazzi were capable of maybe it would have turned out differently, but that wasn't possible.

1) we just have a security camera by the register, in case something happens, but it's not like they're everywere.
2) ok, cameras are a lot cheaper, so they are everywhere, but it's not like we can keep the data for long
3) ok, storage is getting really cheap, so we can keep the data for a long time, but it's not like we can really process that much data to mine personal info about you.
4) ok, so google actually can process all that data and mine personal information, but they can't link it to your phone to identify -- oh. uh. nevermind what I just said there... Look at these coupons that we have special for you! Coupons are nothing like oppression. That could never happen.

Government

+ - U.S. Congress Quietly Criminalizes Protesting->

Submitted by CanHasDIY
CanHasDIY writes "From Huffington Post:

H. R. 347, better known to those in the DC beltway as the 'Trespass Bill' — potentially makes peaceable protest anywhere in the U.S. a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. H. R. 347, and it's companion senate bill S. 1794, make protest of any type potentially a federal offense with anywhere from a year to 10 years in federal prison, providing it occurs in the presence of elites brandishing Secret Service protection, or during an officially defined 'National Special Security Event' (NSSE). NSSEs , ( an invention of Bill Clinton) are events which have been deemed worthy of Secret Service protection, which previously received no such treatment... Past NSSE events included the funerals of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and the national security concern that was Superbowl XXXVI. Other NSSE protected events include the Academy Awards and the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions... HR 347 & S. 1794 insulates such events as the G-8, WTO and presidential conventions against tough questions and politically justified protests.

"

Link to Original Source
AMD

+ - New Opterons target low-cost servers->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "AMD has released a new line of processors designed for low-cost servers. The Opteron 3200 series plugs into the same AM3+ socket as the company's FX desktop family, and it's based on the same Bulldozer architecture. However, the server-grade CPUs have received additional validation testing and consume much less power. The quad- and eight-core parts boast 45W and 65W thermal envelopes, respectively, while similar desktop chips have 95-125W TDPs. AMD isn't specific about the clock speeds of the incoming models, but it does say they have a base clock of 2.7GHz with a 3.7GHz Turbo peak. Expect 16MB of cache in the eight-core flavors and half that for the quads. Although AMD hasn't updated its official price list with the new chips, the official press release notes a handful of models priced between $99 and $229."
Link to Original Source
Mars

+ - Elon Musk: Future Round-Trip To Mars Could Cost Under $500,000->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Rocket entrepreneur Elon Musk believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars down to about half a million dollars. The SpaceX CEO says he has finally worked out how to do it, and told the BBC he would reveal further details later this year or early in 2013. ... 'My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars — this is very important — so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there,' he said. 'The whole system [must be] reusable — nothing is thrown away. That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant.' ... He conceded the figure was unlikely to be the opening price — rather, the cost of a ticket on a mature system that had been operating for about a decade. Nonetheless, Musk thought such an offering could be introduced in 10 years at best, and 15 at worst."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Why not just have sex? (Score 1) 128

by AdamThor (#39326485) Attached to: Profile of a Real-Life Jedi Academy

I recently had a though about how society values women and sex... Totally unrelated to TFA...

Consider that a large percentage of women used to die in childbirth. Also that sex causes pregnancy. Therefore sex causes women to die.

Natural conclusions (for people of the time) are that sex is bad, or that women are flawed / weak / worthless. Both of these we see in some prominent value systems from the past.

Happily, unwanted pregnancy and death in childbirth are way down from historical levels. Presuming the politicians don't screw up health care and access to birth control perhaps we can outgrow these attitudes about sex and women also.

Comment: Privacy (Score 1) 98

by AdamThor (#39300737) Attached to: The Numbers of a Life

This is pretty sweet. I'll bet you could get all sorts of insight about a life in this fashion. But what are the chances that (the average) someone will be able to gather this data and run the analysis and then keep the resulting insight under their own control? What are the chances that this data could be used by a person to improve their quality of life, as opposed to used by a corporation to more effectively vacuum up the money and utility people shed?

Comment: Porsche 911? (Score 1) 306

by AdamThor (#38999507) Attached to: Tesla Reveals Its Model X Gullwing SUV

Faster that which porsche 911?

http://www.zeroto60times.com/Porsche-0-60-mph-Times.html

Faster than any Pre1990 Porsche? Yes, I guess so. That would be pretty impressive if it were 1990. Really, 4.4s is still very impressive, for any car. But...

1993 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6 0-60 mph 4.3 Quarter mile 12.5
1995 Porsche 911 Turbo 0-60 mph 3.8 Quarter mile 12.3
1997 Porsche 911 Turbo 0-60 mph 3.6 Quarter mile 12.1
1997 Porsche RUF CTR-2 0-60 mph 3.4 Quarter mile11.2
2011 Porsche 911 Turbo S 0-60 mph 2.9 Quarter Mile 10.6

There are a lot of Porsche 911 variants out there. A large fraction of the modern ones list sub 4.4s times.

(0-60 times often have largeish error bars)

Comment: Re:The ocean frontier - not (Score 3, Informative) 138

by AdamThor (#38943483) Attached to: Remembering Sealab

BTW, you have that exactly backwards.

hmmm I'm not sure he does? Consider:

At 30 feet depth, you need to handle a 14psi differential
This is your own statement, and (without checking your actual #) it's true, because water is so heavy (massive). But change your depth 30 ft in the atmosphere and there is relatively little pressure difference. You can go up and down in an elevator all day and you won't explode. This is because air is so light (lacking mass).

The GP's point - I think - is that if you have a 30 foot tall underwater structure filled with pressurized gas, the pressure created by the water will be (by your number) 14psi greater at the bottom part than at the top part. But because the gas pressure differential is much less variant by depth the gas pressure at the top is the same as at the bottom. So you actually have to worry about blowing out the top of your open-on-the-bottom underwater highrise. There goes the whole 0 psi differential idea, but in the opposite direction one might expect. Maybe an easier problem to deal with (if you keep your structure squat), but still something to make sure the engineers account for.

Unless I've got it all wrong?

Comment: Re:Oh yes, software (Score 5, Insightful) 630

by AdamThor (#38841879) Attached to: America's Future Is In Software, Not Hardware

In all fairness, there is a heck of a lot more value in software than in hardware.

You know why? Artificial scarcity. The more America decides to make it's economy around software, the more software patents we're going to need to set up and defend. Don't Copy That Floppy! I've got a patent on 1-click checkout nobody else can do it! Get used that, if you want an economy based on software.

And in other news, this is one of the very very rare piece of wisdom to make it up the front page of slashdot in a long time.

This is a terrible idea. Manufacturing requires tooling and raw materials. And at the end is a physical thing that needs to be sent to wherever it is needed. And that all got sent overseas! All software needs is a computer. Oh, sure, and the knowledge to program it. The USA has an advantage there today, but there's no reason for it to persist. We have a head start over the Chinese, but they're not stupid. They'll have to transition from their cheap labor model to a well-educated labor model to become a software power. That's coming.

Easier than trying to control ideas (which is all software is anyway), would be to abandon the free trade that has moved out all our manufacturing anyway. Objects are easier to control than ideas. Taxes on imports would bring manufacturing back, and would also cut the power of international corporations over our government. It would be a huge change, and not an easy one. I think we'd be healthier for it though.

"Oh my! An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame? Never heard of such a thing..." -- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM

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