Posts by Christoph

Collagen supporting structure

I wonder if they could print that collagen structure with a 3-D printer?

That would give them more consistent and better tailored results. And they could tweak things like the surface structure to encourage cells to attach, or add in growth-promoting chemicals and similar optimisations.

What have they been smoking?

"the GAC states its concern that domains such as .xxx, which may end up being blocked by some censorious regimes"

Are they living on the same planet? "May end up"? It will be blocked the instant they confirm that it will go ahead.

Household Items

"We look forward keenly to more robots assembled from common household or office items in coming years. "

Balloons, fine. Coffee grounds,fine. Just don't let them near the sink plungers, or we'll all be exterminated!

Because they can

It's technically possible for them to grab this information. Therefore suddenly it's necessary - the country is doomed unless they are allowed to grab it.

They have to destroy our freedom in order to defend it against all the threats they loudly claim are trying to destroy it.

Perhaps they would like to publicly state what information about us they would *not* demand to grab if it were technically possible and not legally forbidden? Could there be any such thing? At all?

Or what conditions would have to apply for the country to *not* be threatened by bogey-men, so they wouldn't need all those powers? Again, could there be any such thing?

Spurious 'accuracy'

"two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h)"

You don't think that original figure might possibly have been rounded? (From an original rough estimate). I really doubt it was accurate to 1 km/h.

58,000

Fifty. Eight. Thousand. Photos. And no criminal intent.

So what *was* their intent? What did they think they were doing it for? That's not any kind of casual operation, it must have had some specific reason.

If it wasn't to get photos of undressed students, then the only thing that seems to make sense is that they were spying on students simply because they could.

They had the ability to watch students without them knowing, so they just went ahead and did so. Presumably convincing themselves that they were in charge of the students and supposed to look after them so it was OK to do this.

After all, children don't have any real rights, and the school knows what's best for them better than they or their parents do.

Grab all the information possible, just in case someone somewhere is doing something you don't approve of.

That would certainly fit with the way they were found out. They saw a student eating something and decided "Oh! It must be Drugs!". Because that's how they were justifying it to themselves - that they might spot just that kind of thing happening, and could Save that poor child.

And they'd persuaded themselves of this so much that they went ahead and accused him, and blew the whole thing. They had convinced themselves so strongly that they were justified that they didn't realise the rest of the world might not agree.

It's for their Own Good!

How good are they so far?

The important point is how often do the emergency drivers have to take over, and in what circumstances? That eight year figure implies there's still a lot of problems.

The really difficult bit will come when they are better than humans in most circumstances. You might find that they would reduce accidents overall, but fail in a few rare circumstances where a human could have coped. Do you then deploy them? And what is the legal position for the victims of those rare accidents? It could get very messy, especially with US lawyers involved.

We're all doomed!

According to that highly reputable source the BBC in this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11492387

it contains Calcium Oxide, CaO "'Quicklime', can cause skin irritation, burns and sickness."

They are quite correct, that stuff is pretty dangerous, mostly because of the extremely violent way it reacts with water.

So if it's been sitting around in a mud bath and is now in the river, can we see a slight error here children?

Silicon dioxide? "Can cause lung diseases and cancer if inhaled as dust" - ever tried inhaling dust out of a river? Don't go near any beaches, sand is made of the stuff!

Titanium dioxide: "Caused cancer when tested on animals" - that would be the stuff used in white paint?

What's the bandwidth ...

... of a truck with 10,800 disk drives?

There's an old quote about never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes, but that must be even better.

They've got a real problem

"We want super-keen, clean living dedicated people who will obey any order no matter how stupid.

We will reject anyone with a bad record, such as having once been a litterbug.

Hey, does anyone know why we can't hire any techie geeks?"

Hi-tech solutions

"the Vdara is mulling hi-tech solutions"

Have they considered "Warning the guests"?

Suppression is not the way t o help women

"If you look at the industry in which these sort of films get made, women are hurt, exploited and damaged."

And she's going to improve this by oppressive legislation to keep it under cover? Rather than making it legal and open, so the women can have the same rights and status as everyone else, and any exploitation will get exposed and punished?

Other applications - Venus?

Will this be enough to get a Venus lander to last more than a few minutes?

Here we go again

It's much the same as that old trick of charging extra for every tape because a few of them would be used to copy records.

It's not the ISPs that will pay, it's their customers who will all have to pay increased charges.

So the private music and film industries get to impose a private tax on everyone's communications, to help out their profits.

Place your bets - how long after this is implemented will it be before the first call (from the biggest, richest companies, not from the independents) for the amount we all pay to be increased? Probably as part of the same package as the next extension of the time that copyright lasts for.

Market speak

-- a sensor "rivalling those found in compact digital cameras"

As I read it, that means "Not quite as good as the sensor in a bottom-of-the-range compact digital camera".

Just what we needed

Every time you cross a local authority boundary you'll have to know about a different set of rules - most of them passed more for petty politicians to show off their power than for any sensible reason.

They may even contradict the ones from the next-door authority.

And they'll get all changed over to a different set each time a different party gets into power.

The politicians will be able to pass these much faster than pressure groups can organise to get rid of the worst of them.

Don't these idiots realise just how stupid, incompetent, inexperienced, and petty some local politicians are? Or how corrupt some local authorities are?