"I'm sorry sir, but if you can't spell 'Cholesterol' you are too dumb to be allowed to eat pitza" How the hell did you spell 'cholesterol' correctly and yet mis-spell 'pizza'? O.o
Wasn't the public education system created to protect people from their parents? Quite the opposite, it was created to provide a baseline 'adequate' education while keeping children out of their parents' hair while said parents earn money.
I meant "novel" and "interesting" and "brilliant" and "amazing" and "cool" and "neat" and "awesome"... Ass. I must see this ass. It sounds impressive.:)
And then, if you use the candyfab thingy that everyone's linking... you could EAT any miniatures that are killed in combat! Now we're getting somewhere!:D
If they automatically install, wouldn't they be viruses / worms? I thought the defining feature of a trojan is that it's a malicious piece of software masquerading as benign software, thus fooling the user into running it?
Anyway, the term 'Trojan' is annoying. In fact 'Trojan' should refer the compromised computer, and 'Trojan horse' should refer to the malicious software. Anyway... THIS IS MADNESS. >.>
Although that approach can be taken too far - you want a good mix, a car that will protect you in a collision even if it primarily survives by letting you avoid said collision. The topic brings to mind a quote that I read once by the designer of the original Mini. It was something along the lines of "we have built a car with such good acceleration, such good handling and such good braking that if you crash it you DESERVE to die!".:P
Having said that, I fully agree that hard drives are getting closer to an end. Mechanical components in a computer are not going to survive much longer - and that includes media players (DVD, BR, HDDVD, etc). Eventually, hard drives will be chips and media content will be streams or sources over the air and by wire. Unless you're suggesting storing data as a pattern of photons traveling through space we'll need to have physical storage somewhere. For now it'll be electrical or magnetic (as with current hard drives and various types of flash memory) but eventually I can see all computing taking place physically on a nano scale. Mechanical devices at that scale don't suffer from wear and tear in the same way that macromechanical devices do (for instance DMD chips in projectors have the micromirrors moving thousands of times a second and yet don't 'wear out'). I can imagine a future with computers composed of nano-scale automated abacii.:)
I'd be satisfied if it could just print me up a finite improbability generator. Obviously you don't have any trouble getting invites to 'those' sorts of parties, then!;)
The thing that stumps me with Apple is they would probably do very well even if they sold the parts separately. Honestly, a lot of people would pay $500-600 for a sexy Apple "barebone" system (chassis + mb + power), because they already pay those absurd prices for ghetto barebone kits from Asus and Supermicro. They'd even pay $200-300 for OS-X, because they pay that for Vista and they don't even like it. I'd much sooner buy OS-X for my beefy PC than Vista, but I don't want to give up the freedom of building a machine that's specifically tailored to my hardware desires. I'd so buy one if they did that, and I loathe certain aspects (marketing, rabid evangelical fanboyism, the interface, the markup on peripherals) of Apple with a passion. Those new desktop cases they use are sexy as, though, and as my PC is right next to the TV it can be loud when watching movies. Plus I have four hard drives in my machine now, and I need somewhere to actually mount them all, having them just sitting loose in the case is dodgy.:P
To be fair, I don't consider this that elementary a fallacy... Ah, but don't mathematicians divide all problems into either 'elementary' or 'intractable'?:P
Without it going door-to-door, people won't give up the convenience of their cars in any significant numbers. Without being able to have their car which they can leave their stuff in, whose design suits their preferences and needs, and hasn't been trashed by someone else, they won't give up their use of a personal car. Don't get me wrong, here in Australia we HATE public transport and as such, try to avoid implementing it wherever possible, but still... Door to door isn't a necessity. Street corner to street corner is fine. Think of these systems as trying to replace a taxi service rather than replacing your personal car; It's not for 100% of journeys, just for regular commuting. Obviously if you're a tradie with a truckful of tools, you won't use it, but if you're just a regular Joe trying to get to his job in the city, it's perfect.
I can see how a gradual transition such as you describe would work, but it still seems to me that a lot of the intermediate stages are awkward and clunky compared to the start and end products. I can see these personal automated pod transport thingies growing up mainly in the very centers of large cities, then slowly being extended until they cover most of the extended city. You would still have a car if you lived 'in the boonies' but instead of driving in to the city or in to a train station, you'd drive to a pod rank and take the next pod.
Add a 3G phone with unlimited dataplan... Where do you get one of these magical 'unlimited dataplan' thingies from? How much for? I (in Australia) have to pay $0.50/MB for my net access! Not that I ever go over my 10mb, it's just used for email, but still...
..because terabytes of data is more damaging than a few grams of cocaine? I don't think so.:P
Or, to compare oranges to oranges, a 1gb thumb drive could already store enough, erm, incriminating evidence to destroy a career, no need to get fancy.:P
Slashdot Mirror
You know that to three significant figures? You MUST be right!! :O
No, no, no! I wanted an ARGUMENT! This seems to be Abuse...
You know you play too much WoW when you read 'kek' as 'lol'. At least you didn't say 'bur'... because then I'd have to kill you. :)
Why do I get the sudden urge to start repeating "Chewbacca is a Wookiee on Endor!" over and over?
And then, if you use the candyfab thingy that everyone's linking... you could EAT any miniatures that are killed in combat! Now we're getting somewhere! :D
If they automatically install, wouldn't they be viruses / worms? I thought the defining feature of a trojan is that it's a malicious piece of software masquerading as benign software, thus fooling the user into running it?
Anyway, the term 'Trojan' is annoying. In fact 'Trojan' should refer the compromised computer, and 'Trojan horse' should refer to the malicious software. Anyway... THIS IS MADNESS. >.>
You're making too much sense, stop it!
:P
Although that approach can be taken too far - you want a good mix, a car that will protect you in a collision even if it primarily survives by letting you avoid said collision. The topic brings to mind a quote that I read once by the designer of the original Mini. It was something along the lines of "we have built a car with such good acceleration, such good handling and such good braking that if you crash it you DESERVE to die!".
Sounds like you're trying to produce the works of Shakespeare in the process. I approve. ;)
And the two girls you'd need to fully utilize it with you. :)
Might save some altar boys from posterior stretching while you're at it. ;)
You can't say that about Apple!! Mods! Arrest that man!
Go build me 1% of a sun and put it on an Arctic island, then get back to me. :P
This will not happen until the future. Nowadays trams run on flat ground, but when I were a lad they were uphill both ways, so...
I can see how a gradual transition such as you describe would work, but it still seems to me that a lot of the intermediate stages are awkward and clunky compared to the start and end products. I can see these personal automated pod transport thingies growing up mainly in the very centers of large cities, then slowly being extended until they cover most of the extended city. You would still have a car if you lived 'in the boonies' but instead of driving in to the city or in to a train station, you'd drive to a pod rank and take the next pod.
OH SHIIIIIIIT! IT'S DOCTOR SKYTRAN!!!!
That looks far too cool to ever be implemented. I bet it's not even a real doctor.
Sorry, how many human hairs was that?
..because terabytes of data is more damaging than a few grams of cocaine? I don't think so. :P
:P
Or, to compare oranges to oranges, a 1gb thumb drive could already store enough, erm, incriminating evidence to destroy a career, no need to get fancy.