Xenix originated from SCO, and was available even for 8086 processor machines. One of the hard drive format options for my CP/M-86/MS-DOS 2.2 machine (NEC APC-1) was a Xenix one. Dunno what Xenix would have thought of the 128 kb RAM available though. (it was extensible, but not by much)
Rather than Minority Report or the Foundation series, I would recommend two works to anyone interested about the free will aspect of this all...
The Mike Resnick trilogy consisting of Soothsayer, Oracle and Prophet. (I forget the exact sequence in which those books are in the series, but you knew that, right?) Although in this case the mutant able to predict peoples actions does so by simply projecting an immense tangle of futures possible by her choosing her own actions, the treatement of all the ramifications stemming from such an ability is not merely profound, but is genuinely philosophically exhaustive. (IMO Minority report takes a very narrow morality driven look at the issue.)
And the second one is Figments of Reality by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. This non-fiction book on deep epistemology and phenomenology has an exquisitely titled chapter "We Decided Not To Have a Chapter On Free Will, So Here It Is", which easily lives up to the promise of the title.
Not totally historically void question, even though it might appear so on the surface.
The story goes that Hawking met the pope and was asked if there was any specific request he might have of the vaticans resources (or something on those lines, I am too lazy to google or wikipedia for the details), and he asked to see the interrogation documents of Galileo Galilei. Apparently as the interrogation was translated to him, Hawking made several sarcastic comments. Not necessarily totally unrelated to this encounter, the catholic church did infact 400-500 years later issue a non-apology-apology to both the sequestering of Galileo Galilei and the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, formally overturning at least the judgement against Galilei (not sure about Bruno; whether it was a statement about the doctrine at the time being correctly applied, but deficient; or that the doctrine was falsely applied).
Don't know about the other science fiction authors mentioned, but I know for a fact that at the very least John Barnes adressed this head on in one of his short works.
In his tale some theocratic government deliberately shot junk into orbit on the theory that some line in the bible or another forbade space travel. The solution people who wanted to reclaim space travel found was launching a giant ball(s) of some silly putty like substance to sweep the debris away.
GMTA, that was my first thought too. But realistically, given that it is very heavy, and has to be kept at a constant temperature, I would say it could only usefully be used for the very lowest part of the space elevator. And that is assuming it can be economically manufactured to such a scale that it would be an affordable megastructure material.
IMO, much more interesting would be if it could be used to reduce sway of skyscrapers or even enable scaling up to arcologies. Those both applications would have a much lesser premium on lightness of construction materials, and generally allow easier control of temperature of the structures. The downside for using this for those purposes is of course that causing such a megastructure to crumple like a house of cards might be as easy as warming or cooling (by accident or intentionally) the supporting framework by a few degrees at the right time (during natural stress from wind for instance) and at the right (critical) places.
Thus ideally it would not be a vital part of maintaining structural integrity, but only reducing discomfort to the inhabitants (from sway induced by winds and or seismic activity) and continuous stress to the support structure due to the sway, and likely the underlying structure would have to be designed to be resistant to the extreme stresses for a reasonable time even without the assistance of the added stiffening the material could impart. Basically a "belts and braces" approach.
The way to get over the six month limit (due to bone degradation and muscle atrophy), is to send people who have that happen naturally anyway, retirees that is. The moon may well end up with very similar demographics to Florida back here on Earth. A Sunset Resort which will let the elderly feel an extra spring in their step, and allow them to remain physically active for years, or even decades longer than here on earth.
If a good part of these are one-way tripper elderly (experienced that is) scientists, those youthful visitors who go on those 6 month rotation gigs may well go there partly for personal tutorship from these grayhaired eminent research scientists.
Less seriously, I would predict that the location on a crater _rim_ on the _moon_, will swiftly lead towards the colloquial nicknames of most places and facilities acquiring allusions to the human posterior, in unending variations, no matter what the designated official nomenclature for same will be. Moon or earth, human nature is much the same, puerile humour will find a way.
Missed the obvious: "There's no such thing as a free launch" Also "That depends on what your meaning of the word 'Free' is."
For my part I call something that puts you out of pocket 25 grand being advertised as "Free" misleading advertising. But I also don't think this is USA specific, happens in less enlightened parts of the world all the time.
I can't speak for the Netherlands, but at least in Finland, the way it worked out is that the central bank did mint (and continues to mint) the 1 and 2 cent coins, in a limited fashion, but they weren't put into circulation in the normal fashion, but only sold as collectors items. Shops will and do round up all sums to the closest rounded five cent sum, upwards if the sum ends in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents, downwards otherwise. The prices of individual items in the shops do use more precise prices, but the rounding is done at the cash register.
As regards the coins themselves, which they still mint for collectors, immediately around the conversion to Euros in the new year (actually a bit before, since the mint sold sample bags of the new coin set (including each coin including one and two cents) to familiarize the populace on what the genuine article loos like, which sold for up to 50 euro when completist numismatists held them in great demand on eBay.
I'm actually starting to get a little paranoid. It almost seems like WMD-II. "There's water on Mars — we must go!". I'm beginning to wonder if someone's got a real reason for wanting to go, and it's got nothing to do with water.
Happens to me often. I hear flowing water, and I have to go.
As stupid as it sounds, original submission is entirely redundant, as one scientist already found matching snowflakes. And the scientist wasn't even a guy but a woman scientist. Yes, Virginia, there really is serious study on the shapes of snowflakes.
"Radio Caroline is a European radio station that originally commenced transmissions as an offshore radio station broadcasting from a ship anchored off the coast of South East England in international waters. Unlicensed by any government for the majority of its life, it was labelled as a pirate radio station.
A number of unlicensed radio stations have been located on ships anchored off Britain's coasts. Radio Caroline was the first such station to broadcast all-day using the English language. This, together with the station's tenacity in surviving for some forty years, has established Radio Caroline as a household name for offshore radio."
Down further in the same article:
"Radio Caroline is now broadcasting over the airwaves, via satellite and on the Internet. The station now uses onshore studios in the south-east English town of Maidstone in Kent. A website and internet audio stream are also available. Caroline began broadcasting via Astra satellites from 19 and 28 degrees east, covering the whole of Western Europe, first with an analogue, and then later digital service."
So this is neither unprecedented nor unique even at the moment, if it comes to be. For a more general treatment on pirate radio read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio.
On the same lines, I bought a package of sleeping bills in the US, which contained a warning in 24 point letters. "Warning, may cause drowsiness!!!"
Well, DUH!
I never got the fascination of Colossal Cave on my Vic-20. But losing a long played Moria character at level 24 (1200 feet) on a VMS box using a 300 bps speed just because of a loss of carrier, really got on my nuts. I mean *really* got on my nuts. Sure, I got my revenge by killing the Balrog seven times over later on my own box, but... As for Nethack, it died, when they added the fountains. Sorry, but that is my view. Even games can get freeping creaturism. Nethack bloated in a spectacular way, when they added the fountains, not even a creep there.
Actually this story is a little old, people have had the Antikythera device scoped out for a couple of years now. It's a sort of geared astrolabe using an epicyclic model (an astronomical paradigm adopted in Ptolomy's ptime) and the parts inside the corroded find were derived by some good ol'fashioned NMI scanning.
I think you misread the article. It didn't say they used an epicyclic model but an epicyclic mechanism (instead of differential gearing). That is, they weren't specifically using an epicyclic mathematic model of stellar movements. What the story claims is that the physical mechanics of the machine worked like those spirograph things you get in cereal boxes, rather than the clockwork mechanisms we are all so familiar with.
Re:Not offtopic, but shows misperceptions
on
The Web Is 16 Today
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· Score: 1
Most "histories" of the internet I've seen are pretty scattered and it's hard to get a grasp of how things really came together. The wikipedia article, for example, barely discusses DNS and the sections aren't really tied together into a "big picture" of the internet.
Not to mention dialup timeshare systems. My first memory relating to computer networking is seeing a custom homebrew on a prototype breadboard connect via an acoustic modem with 75/110 speed to the finnish state scientific centres timeshare computer. This was in the early 1970's.
So yes, www may be sixteen years old, but computer connectivity as a concept, hardly. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the nascence of WWW as the graduation of networking technology. So that makes networking a stolid adult, perhaps going through a mild mid-life crisis.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no. They mispelled the wrod "transexual" in the article aboiut Fidel Castro.
Xenix originated from SCO, and was available even for 8086 processor machines. One of the hard drive format options for my CP/M-86/MS-DOS 2.2 machine (NEC APC-1) was a Xenix one. Dunno what Xenix would have thought of the 128 kb RAM available though. (it was extensible, but not by much)
All the questions asked here are pretty much covered at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Harvesting#Pie zoelectric_energy_harvesting
FWIW, the DEC PDT-11 did run RT-11. A pure curiosity, but...
By urban legend, the speaking podiums for the government and loyal opposition are set apart by two swordslengths and a foot, to prevent duelling.
Childhoods end would be sort of cool, if they had Lordi play the lead on that one.
What would really be cool though is if they filmed The Dark Lightyears by
Brian Aldiss... even though it wouldn't be the same without reall smells...
Rather than Minority Report or the Foundation series, I would recommend two works to anyone interested about the free will aspect of this all...
The Mike Resnick trilogy consisting of Soothsayer, Oracle and Prophet. (I forget the exact sequence in which those books are in the series, but you knew that, right?) Although in this case the mutant able to predict peoples actions does so by simply projecting an immense tangle of futures possible by her choosing her own actions, the treatement of all the ramifications stemming from such an ability is not merely profound, but is genuinely philosophically exhaustive. (IMO Minority report takes a very narrow morality driven look at the issue.)
And the second one is Figments of Reality by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. This non-fiction book on deep epistemology and phenomenology has an exquisitely titled chapter "We Decided Not To Have a Chapter On Free Will, So Here It Is", which easily lives up to the promise of the title.
Not totally historically void question, even though it might appear so on the surface.
The story goes that Hawking met the pope and was asked if there was any specific request he might have of the vaticans resources (or something on those lines, I am too lazy to google or wikipedia for the details), and he asked to see the interrogation documents of Galileo Galilei. Apparently as the interrogation was translated to him, Hawking made several sarcastic comments. Not necessarily totally unrelated to this encounter, the catholic church did infact 400-500 years later issue a non-apology-apology to both the sequestering of Galileo Galilei and the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, formally overturning at least the judgement against Galilei (not sure about Bruno; whether it was a statement about the doctrine at the time being correctly applied, but deficient; or that the doctrine was falsely applied).
Don't know about the other science fiction authors mentioned, but I know for a fact that at the very least John Barnes adressed this head on in one of his short works.
In his tale some theocratic government deliberately shot junk into orbit on the theory that some line in the bible or another forbade space travel. The solution people who wanted to reclaim space travel found was launching a giant ball(s) of some silly putty like substance to sweep the debris away.
GMTA, that was my first thought too. But realistically, given that it is very heavy, and has to be kept at a constant temperature, I would say it could only usefully be used for the very lowest part of the space elevator. And that is assuming it can be economically manufactured to such a scale that it would be an affordable megastructure material.
IMO, much more interesting would be if it could be used to reduce sway of skyscrapers or even enable scaling up to arcologies. Those both applications would have a much lesser premium on lightness of construction materials, and generally allow easier control of temperature of the structures. The downside for using this for those purposes is of course that causing such a megastructure to crumple like a house of cards might be as easy as warming or cooling (by accident or intentionally) the supporting framework by a few degrees at the right time (during natural stress from wind for instance) and at the right (critical) places.
Thus ideally it would not be a vital part of maintaining structural integrity, but only reducing discomfort to the inhabitants (from sway induced by winds and or seismic activity) and continuous stress to the support structure due to the sway, and likely the underlying structure would have to be designed to be resistant to the extreme stresses for a reasonable time even without the assistance of the added stiffening the material could impart. Basically a "belts and braces" approach.
The way to get over the six month limit (due to bone degradation and muscle atrophy), is to send people who have that happen naturally anyway, retirees that is. The moon may well end up with very similar demographics to Florida back here on Earth. A Sunset Resort which will let the elderly feel an extra spring in their step, and allow them to remain physically active for years, or even decades longer than here on earth.
If a good part of these are one-way tripper elderly (experienced that is) scientists, those youthful visitors who go on those 6 month rotation gigs may well go there partly for personal tutorship from these grayhaired eminent research scientists.
Less seriously, I would predict that the location on a crater _rim_ on the _moon_, will swiftly lead towards the colloquial nicknames of most places and facilities acquiring allusions to the human posterior, in unending variations, no matter what the designated official nomenclature for same will be. Moon or earth, human nature is much the same, puerile humour will find a way.
For my part I call something that puts you out of pocket 25 grand being advertised as "Free" misleading advertising. But I also don't think this is USA specific, happens in less enlightened parts of the world all the time.
I can't speak for the Netherlands, but at least in Finland, the way it worked out is that the central bank did mint (and continues to mint) the 1 and 2 cent coins, in a limited fashion, but they weren't put into circulation in the normal fashion, but only sold as collectors items. Shops will and do round up all sums to the closest rounded five cent sum, upwards if the sum ends in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents, downwards otherwise. The prices of individual items in the shops do use more precise prices, but the rounding is done at the cash register.
As regards the coins themselves, which they still mint for collectors, immediately around the conversion to Euros in the new year (actually a bit before, since the mint sold sample bags of the new coin set (including each coin including one and two cents) to familiarize the populace on what the genuine article loos like, which sold for up to 50 euro when completist numismatists held them in great demand on eBay.
Happens to me often. I hear flowing water, and I have to go.
It's a crap!
As stupid as it sounds, original submission is entirely redundant, as one scientist already found matching snowflakes. And the scientist wasn't even a guy but a woman scientist. Yes, Virginia, there really is serious study on the shapes of snowflakes.
I think this whole convo is forgetting "pirate" can refer to more than just copyright sidestepping...
:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline
"Radio Caroline is a European radio station that originally commenced transmissions as an offshore radio station broadcasting from a ship anchored off the coast of South East England in international waters. Unlicensed by any government for the majority of its life, it was labelled as a pirate radio station.
A number of unlicensed radio stations have been located on ships anchored off Britain's coasts. Radio Caroline was the first such station to broadcast all-day using the English language. This, together with the station's tenacity in surviving for some forty years, has established Radio Caroline as a household name for offshore radio."
Down further in the same article:
"Radio Caroline is now broadcasting over the airwaves, via satellite and on the Internet. The station now uses onshore studios in the south-east English town of Maidstone in Kent. A website and internet audio stream are also available. Caroline began broadcasting via Astra satellites from 19 and 28 degrees east, covering the whole of Western Europe, first with an analogue, and then later digital service."
So this is neither unprecedented nor unique even at the moment, if it comes to be. For a more general treatment on pirate radio read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio.
On the same lines, I bought a package of sleeping bills in the US, which contained a warning in 24 point letters. "Warning, may cause drowsiness!!!" Well, DUH!
I never got the fascination of Colossal Cave on my Vic-20. But losing a long played Moria character at level 24 (1200 feet) on a VMS box using a 300 bps speed just because of a loss of carrier, really got on my nuts. I mean *really* got on my nuts. Sure, I got my revenge by killing the Balrog seven times over later on my own box, but... As for Nethack, it died, when they added the fountains. Sorry, but that is my view. Even games can get freeping creaturism. Nethack bloated in a spectacular way, when they added the fountains, not even a creep there.
http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/kangaroo.htm Just about says it all. Nothing new under the sun.
So yes, www may be sixteen years old, but computer connectivity as a concept, hardly. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the nascence of WWW as the graduation of networking technology. So that makes networking a stolid adult, perhaps going through a mild mid-life crisis.