It's 7.06 pm in China now (where I am) and I have just switched on my tv to check. I get around 50 channels on cable here, but today they are ALL showing the same programming - except the solitary English language channel which has a diffent show, but on the same theme.
It won't make much difference to me as I can still download my P2P files, and although Chinese download sites may be suspended, the DVD stores (at least those near my home) are still open for business selling pirated DVDs for the equivalent of 85cents US.
The 3 minutes silence was interesting and well observed, but curiously the end of that three minutes was marked by the sounding of air raid sirens and much honking of car horns.
As Google maps are satellite based, how inaccurate can they be?
The borders go onto the map after the satellite takes the picture. Like, say, the border between China and Tibet.
rj
China disputes it's land borders with almost all of it's neighbours, and also disputes ownership of islands in the South China sea with Vietnam, Phillipines, and Malasia. Then of course there's the Taiwan issue.
This boat is only 3.65 meters long - that's a mere twelve feet, which is smaller than many dingies I have sailed. Normally sailing craft have to be much bigger to withstand the ferocity of ocean winds and waves,which simply swamp craft of this size. So how can it possibly stay afloat for several months?
Actually, bittorrent is not yet a mainstream, but it will be. An average of 8.2 million downloaders at any one time may seem a lot until you consider that there are nearly 350 million broadband subscribers worldwide (wikkepedia). So only 2.4 percent are downloading at any one time. This percentage can only grow and surely will grow considerably, not because people want stuff for free (but that is nice), but because only bittorent can truly let us watch what we want when we want. Who wants to go back to old tv, that dictates to you when you watch, when watching bittorent files is so more flexible? Not me. I'm really suprised that more people don't use it, but I know as soon as people try it, theyr'e hooked and there's no going back. The tide will be unstoppable and those folk blind to its inevitability are just a bunch of Canutes.
Just because a location is afforded the terms military and base does not, in itself, mean than that location has any secrets, which might compromise national security if disclosed. We are, perhaps, getting too hung up on words rather than facts here. It seems to me that those granting permission to Google were simply using their best judgment, based on their first hand understanding of the actual situation. We should also not assume that military bases are necessarily more of a target to terrorists, etc. than other locations. Indeed, the enemies of the free world are more likely to choose soft targets, such as, for example, the Madrid and London transportation systems and Bagdad markets. Censorship should only occur when it is absolutely necessary and can be shown to be justified, otherwise this incident could be the thin end of the wedge. First military bases are excluded from mapping, then government buildings, then, hey what about schools we must protect the kids eh? Maybe the only solution is to move underground (remember Logans run?)
"This is a gamble on Putin's behalf, but it can pay off big for Russia, because people will be contracting with them for launches of private satellites (new ones, and replacements for existing satellites.)"
That's not what the Russians seem to have in mind. First deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov has stated that "urgent measures needed to be taken to develop the country as a leading space power, rather than as a provider of launch services for other countries." and "Russia should not turn into a country providing only launching services". In addition manned launches will not be made from the new base until 2018, and the Khazak base is only guaranteed to remain in use until 2020. This is about Russia re-establishing itself as a world power and as such is driven by nationalism, so who needs, or rather wants, the cooperation of a renegade break-away state?
Source of my info is domainb,com <domainb.com/industry/aerospace/20071121_vostochny.htm>
Well, actually I'm in China too. The interesting aspect of internet access in China is that ISPs here always provide much higher upload speeds than download speeds, by a ratio of about 3 or 4 to 1. This is to serve the interests of Chinese exporters, by making Chinese based websites more accesable to the outside world. That is to say the internet in China is more about exporting data -good or bad- rather than importing. So China is rather a logical location for those hackers, especially as policing of the internet here is almost non-existant ( no fears about P-2P downloading here).Incidentally, download speeds, while slower than North America or Europe are not always painfully slow. Speed depends largely on where you live: I live a a modern building in a modern city and can get download speeds of 100k/s no problem.
The key to this system is that one can travel only from one renting point to another, all of which will be in the city centre. It's all about travelling from A to B within the same city. But people will still need altenative transportation to get from home into and out of the city, so they'll still be taking their cars to work every day, which of course will still be taking up parking space somewhere. Well, presumably they could drive the folding car home and take it back the next day, but that would defeat the point as renting would become prohibitavly expensive and the vehicle wolud not be available for use by another. So, it seems it won't do anything to relieve parking congestion, and it's not an alternative to mass car ownership either, but just another form of local public transportation, a bit like a taxi, but one you have to drive yourself, but not really like a taxi as you won't get dropped off at the door. Why not simply allow people to own these things, then they could leave their 'big' car at home.
Why the surprise? 'Silver Surfers' as the article describes these over 50 internet users, surely have more of a need to make new friends and less traditional opportunities than young people. It's precisly because dad can't 'turn up at the disco', that on-line socializing is more attractive. Over-fifties need to make new friends: as the article points out people lose around half of their social network when they retire. I retired at 50 and can vouch for this. Over-fifties also become widowed and divorced over-fifties are less likely to re-marry, so many end up being 'grumpy old men (and women).
Maybe there is merit in tagging all children. Millions of children go missing every year around the world, around 800000 do so in the US alone (http://www.usd.edu/~mcarroll/missing_children_statistics.htm).
Better make the clothing reversable! Remember, the shiny side reflects and the dull side absorbes. Wear the shiny side out and not only do you stay cool, you will also reflect the surveyling beam back to the operator, so he/she then unwittingly reads their own thoughts. Er no, "hey this guy seems to harbour a lot of suspicions; must be a threat; lets move in now!"
If this is properly implimented and the operators are trained to do the job impartially, then this should be useful. Surely the whole idea is to avoid racial predudice by using objective criteria. Profiling is difficult and may be ineffective: Some of those alleged UK airport bombers are white or afro-carribean, and some married. Airport security has to be made more effective. At the moment it isn't, particulary in the UK, where stringent measures have caused considerable delays inconvnience and discomfort to everyone. I expect its the same in the US, thus the introduction of this scheme. As for keeping statistics like the UK police do for stop-and-search, we really do not want to go down that road as it'll just create more bureacracy and deviate resourses away from the real task towards paper filling, a reality that UK police forces are facing.
So "A man beaten and left for dead has recovered the power of speech thanks to the use of electrodes to stimulate brain activity." Nothing new here, Doctor Frankenstein pioneered this technology long ago.Of course the monstor was a parody of human life. And that's the point; this is scientific expermentation playing on the emotions of the patients and their relatives, who quite often are more concerned with their inability to let go rather than the patient's real welfare. If we are honest with ourselves, how many of us would not rather be dead if we were unfortunate to be such a state? Life is sacred, but so is death. Ultimatly science may be capable of anything, but it should not be at the expense of human dignity.
Yes. The vast majority of fledling Chinese businesses simply cannot afford the genuine artice, so pirated versions are the only option. Both Microsoft and the Chinese government are well aware of this. Microsoft tolerate it because they view it as a kind of loss leader. It's a bit like offering interest free credit on your new PC. Initially the corporation loses money, but in the long run the consumer pays more, and the corporation has a much larger market sown-up than it would have had if the consumers had paid a market price (because effectively their getting the same product, but at a discount)if the first place.
"Much of the next influx of ideas to Sand Hill Road will come not just from former Google employees, but also from groups of former Google employees who are planning their future companies over free sushi and Diet Coke late at night in Google cafeterias.'"
---
Good ideas come from inspiration. The delacate flavours of suchi would normally relax and entice the mind to realms of wonderful inspiration. But Diet Coke surely must ruin those flavours. Good suchi should only be accompanied by the best saki, and don't the best deserve the best? Google should have nothing to worry from these folk, but just to be sure, they could serve their retained staff saki and serve the exiles coke. How's that for an employee loyalty programme?
Well, I'm reading this from China, where slashdot is NOT blocked. Yes the BBC article is, but then most BBC stuff is, but the original Open Net initiative isn't.
Good point! Maybe the Premiership should consider charging more for the advetising space on players' shirts, and those around the perimiter of the pitch (i.e field),given the extra viewers (read: customers) Youtube provides.
There seems to be great marketing value here: general spam; rerouting via new shopping malls etc. Just imagine you're the owener of a gas station with decling sale: all you need to do is send messages that divert more traffic along your street and business picks up. Billbord advertising rates depend on the volume of traffic passing; ok, just re-route traffic when the traffic survey is being done. Late for work? Get everybody else out of your way. Just as long as you ignore your own 'advise' you'll get there on time.
Hooray for geeks with way too much time on their hands.....
Obviously way too much time. 6400 notes, 10 people, 5 hours equates to only one note posted every 28 seconds, or around two a minute. Anybody want to offerr these guys a job??
What does ".eu" represent: the European Union or Europe in general? Perhaps there should be two new domain suffixes.Eu and.EU (note the case). Is this possible? And what about the EEA (European Economic Area? (This is essentially the EU with some others like Switzerland and Norway).Perhaps there could also be a distinction between the old EU countries such as France and Germany and the new such as Bulgaria and Romania. Maybe.neweu and.oldeu. The possibilities are endless
Unfortunatly, there has grown up a culture of yobbish behaviour amoung a small but significant minority of manily young people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to express their anti-social anti-establisment feelings at every opportunity. There is a TV program in the UK called "police Camera action" which is a little like America's 'worlds wildest police videos' (or whatever). This has led to an increace of car theft and speeding, wreckess driving etc. also the UK courts award "Anti-social behaviour" (ASBO) notices to yobs who wander the streets drunk or stoned carring out vandalism and other petty thefts. This has led to an increase in crime and the offenders wear these ASBOs as "badges of honour". The types of people whom the talking cameras are targeted at will react with a similar negativity. These yobs will deliberatly act anti-socially so that they can promp a response. Why is all this so? Well in the UK the law gives insufficient protection to the state and the law-abiding masses and too much to the criminals. Crazy eh?
It's very easy to see electricity as a viable alternative to oil based products for vehicle fuel. after all, electricity is clean, isn't it? Well not always. Granted an electric vehicle gives out no exhaust fumes, but we also need to consider how that electricity is made. The world is experiencing a considerable rise in the demand for electricity, and, despite all the hype, wind, solar, wave power etc can only fill a tiny propartion of that demand. Nuclear fuel is still unfashionable, so electricity generators are forced to look at hydro and fossil fuels (maily coal) to meet the demand. Hydro has its problems as it displaces peoples. In many parts of the develloping world, especially China and India coal is the major source of generating fuel. The burning of this coal creates horrendous amounts of acric pollution in many cities. So, electric cars can only be a long-term 'green' replacement for gasolean ones provided the world has a sufficient supply of 'clean' electricity: which it does not. We (the human race) need to have a complete mind change over, not just how we power our cars, but how we live our lives in general, and we must challenge our expectations of what we can reasonable expect from this planet of ours if we want it to remain somewhere worth living. Forget the car and take the bus - or walk!
Remember Arthur C Clarke? He wrote 2001 A Space Oddesy which was later made into the classic sci fi movie of the same name. Few Sci fi authors have garnered as much interest in the "real' community as Clarke. Many of his ideas have been taken up for serious research. indeed, a scientific bresearch body exists in his name! (www.arthurcclarkefoundation.org). In his sequal to 2201: 2010 Odyssey Two, planet Earth inherits a second sun. What happens is that Jupiter is blown up (don't ask why) and spontaniously becomes a supernova and then a sun. however, it dosn't change orbit, so planet earth has the weird experience of obiting just one sun: the other pulling earth periodically further away from the original sun by its gravitational powers as its orbit (around the first sun) gets closer to earth's. The influence of the new sun is minimal when it is on the 'far' side of the original sun from the position of earth, but causes all manner of havoc as it moves closer to earth. Could this really happen? Does the existance of two suns elsewhere prove the 'meddling' of 'intelligent' lifeforms?
Slashdot Mirror
It's 7.06 pm in China now (where I am) and I have just switched on my tv to check. I get around 50 channels on cable here, but today they are ALL showing the same programming - except the solitary English language channel which has a diffent show, but on the same theme. It won't make much difference to me as I can still download my P2P files, and although Chinese download sites may be suspended, the DVD stores (at least those near my home) are still open for business selling pirated DVDs for the equivalent of 85cents US. The 3 minutes silence was interesting and well observed, but curiously the end of that three minutes was marked by the sounding of air raid sirens and much honking of car horns.
The borders go onto the map after the satellite takes the picture. Like, say, the border between China and Tibet.
rj
China disputes it's land borders with almost all of it's neighbours, and also disputes ownership of islands in the South China sea with Vietnam, Phillipines, and Malasia. Then of course there's the Taiwan issue.This boat is only 3.65 meters long - that's a mere twelve feet, which is smaller than many dingies I have sailed. Normally sailing craft have to be much bigger to withstand the ferocity of ocean winds and waves,which simply swamp craft of this size. So how can it possibly stay afloat for several months?
Actually, bittorrent is not yet a mainstream, but it will be. An average of 8.2 million downloaders at any one time may seem a lot until you consider that there are nearly 350 million broadband subscribers worldwide (wikkepedia). So only 2.4 percent are downloading at any one time. This percentage can only grow and surely will grow considerably, not because people want stuff for free (but that is nice), but because only bittorent can truly let us watch what we want when we want. Who wants to go back to old tv, that dictates to you when you watch, when watching bittorent files is so more flexible? Not me. I'm really suprised that more people don't use it, but I know as soon as people try it, theyr'e hooked and there's no going back. The tide will be unstoppable and those folk blind to its inevitability are just a bunch of Canutes.
Just because a location is afforded the terms military and base does not, in itself, mean than that location has any secrets, which might compromise national security if disclosed. We are, perhaps, getting too hung up on words rather than facts here. It seems to me that those granting permission to Google were simply using their best judgment, based on their first hand understanding of the actual situation. We should also not assume that military bases are necessarily more of a target to terrorists, etc. than other locations. Indeed, the enemies of the free world are more likely to choose soft targets, such as, for example, the Madrid and London transportation systems and Bagdad markets. Censorship should only occur when it is absolutely necessary and can be shown to be justified, otherwise this incident could be the thin end of the wedge. First military bases are excluded from mapping, then government buildings, then, hey what about schools we must protect the kids eh? Maybe the only solution is to move underground (remember Logans run?)
"This is a gamble on Putin's behalf, but it can pay off big for Russia, because people will be contracting with them for launches of private satellites (new ones, and replacements for existing satellites.)"
That's not what the Russians seem to have in mind. First deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov has stated that "urgent measures needed to be taken to develop the country as a leading space power, rather than as a provider of launch services for other countries." and "Russia should not turn into a country providing only launching services". In addition manned launches will not be made from the new base until 2018, and the Khazak base is only guaranteed to remain in use until 2020. This is about Russia re-establishing itself as a world power and as such is driven by nationalism, so who needs, or rather wants, the cooperation of a renegade break-away state?
Source of my info is domainb,com <domainb.com/industry/aerospace/20071121_vostochny.htm>
Well, actually I'm in China too. The interesting aspect of internet access in China is that ISPs here always provide much higher upload speeds than download speeds, by a ratio of about 3 or 4 to 1. This is to serve the interests of Chinese exporters, by making Chinese based websites more accesable to the outside world. That is to say the internet in China is more about exporting data -good or bad- rather than importing. So China is rather a logical location for those hackers, especially as policing of the internet here is almost non-existant ( no fears about P-2P downloading here).Incidentally, download speeds, while slower than North America or Europe are not always painfully slow. Speed depends largely on where you live: I live a a modern building in a modern city and can get download speeds of 100k/s no problem.
The key to this system is that one can travel only from one renting point to another, all of which will be in the city centre. It's all about travelling from A to B within the same city. But people will still need altenative transportation to get from home into and out of the city, so they'll still be taking their cars to work every day, which of course will still be taking up parking space somewhere. Well, presumably they could drive the folding car home and take it back the next day, but that would defeat the point as renting would become prohibitavly expensive and the vehicle wolud not be available for use by another. So, it seems it won't do anything to relieve parking congestion, and it's not an alternative to mass car ownership either, but just another form of local public transportation, a bit like a taxi, but one you have to drive yourself, but not really like a taxi as you won't get dropped off at the door. Why not simply allow people to own these things, then they could leave their 'big' car at home.
Why the surprise? 'Silver Surfers' as the article describes these over 50 internet users, surely have more of a need to make new friends and less traditional opportunities than young people. It's precisly because dad can't 'turn up at the disco', that on-line socializing is more attractive. Over-fifties need to make new friends: as the article points out people lose around half of their social network when they retire. I retired at 50 and can vouch for this. Over-fifties also become widowed and divorced over-fifties are less likely to re-marry, so many end up being 'grumpy old men (and women).
Maybe there is merit in tagging all children. Millions of children go missing every year around the world, around 800000 do so in the US alone (http://www.usd.edu/~mcarroll/missing_children_statistics.htm).
Better make the clothing reversable! Remember, the shiny side reflects and the dull side absorbes. Wear the shiny side out and not only do you stay cool, you will also reflect the surveyling beam back to the operator, so he/she then unwittingly reads their own thoughts. Er no, "hey this guy seems to harbour a lot of suspicions; must be a threat; lets move in now!"
If this is properly implimented and the operators are trained to do the job impartially, then this should be useful. Surely the whole idea is to avoid racial predudice by using objective criteria. Profiling is difficult and may be ineffective: Some of those alleged UK airport bombers are white or afro-carribean, and some married. Airport security has to be made more effective. At the moment it isn't, particulary in the UK, where stringent measures have caused considerable delays inconvnience and discomfort to everyone. I expect its the same in the US, thus the introduction of this scheme. As for keeping statistics like the UK police do for stop-and-search, we really do not want to go down that road as it'll just create more bureacracy and deviate resourses away from the real task towards paper filling, a reality that UK police forces are facing.
So "A man beaten and left for dead has recovered the power of speech thanks to the use of electrodes to stimulate brain activity." Nothing new here, Doctor Frankenstein pioneered this technology long ago.Of course the monstor was a parody of human life. And that's the point; this is scientific expermentation playing on the emotions of the patients and their relatives, who quite often are more concerned with their inability to let go rather than the patient's real welfare. If we are honest with ourselves, how many of us would not rather be dead if we were unfortunate to be such a state? Life is sacred, but so is death. Ultimatly science may be capable of anything, but it should not be at the expense of human dignity.
Yes. The vast majority of fledling Chinese businesses simply cannot afford the genuine artice, so pirated versions are the only option. Both Microsoft and the Chinese government are well aware of this. Microsoft tolerate it because they view it as a kind of loss leader. It's a bit like offering interest free credit on your new PC. Initially the corporation loses money, but in the long run the consumer pays more, and the corporation has a much larger market sown-up than it would have had if the consumers had paid a market price (because effectively their getting the same product, but at a discount)if the first place.
"Much of the next influx of ideas to Sand Hill Road will come not just from former Google employees, but also from groups of former Google employees who are planning their future companies over free sushi and Diet Coke late at night in Google cafeterias.'" --- Good ideas come from inspiration. The delacate flavours of suchi would normally relax and entice the mind to realms of wonderful inspiration. But Diet Coke surely must ruin those flavours. Good suchi should only be accompanied by the best saki, and don't the best deserve the best? Google should have nothing to worry from these folk, but just to be sure, they could serve their retained staff saki and serve the exiles coke. How's that for an employee loyalty programme?
Well, I'm reading this from China, where slashdot is NOT blocked. Yes the BBC article is, but then most BBC stuff is, but the original Open Net initiative isn't.
Good point! Maybe the Premiership should consider charging more for the advetising space on players' shirts, and those around the perimiter of the pitch (i.e field),given the extra viewers (read: customers) Youtube provides.
There seems to be great marketing value here: general spam; rerouting via new shopping malls etc. Just imagine you're the owener of a gas station with decling sale: all you need to do is send messages that divert more traffic along your street and business picks up. Billbord advertising rates depend on the volume of traffic passing; ok, just re-route traffic when the traffic survey is being done. Late for work? Get everybody else out of your way. Just as long as you ignore your own 'advise' you'll get there on time.
Invoke conscription for females and send them to Iraq. That should even things up a little!
Hooray for geeks with way too much time on their hands. ....
Obviously way too much time. 6400 notes, 10 people, 5 hours equates to only one note posted every 28 seconds, or around two a minute. Anybody want to offerr these guys a job??
No doubt the transmissions are being used to attemp to justify the illegal war being waged. Very Foxey! I wonder where they got that idea from?
What does ".eu" represent: the European Union or Europe in general? Perhaps there should be two new domain suffixes .Eu and .EU (note the case). Is this possible? And what about the EEA (European Economic Area? (This is essentially the EU with some others like Switzerland and Norway).Perhaps there could also be a distinction between the old EU countries such as France and Germany and the new such as Bulgaria and Romania. Maybe .neweu and .oldeu. The possibilities are endless
Unfortunatly, there has grown up a culture of yobbish behaviour amoung a small but significant minority of manily young people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to express their anti-social anti-establisment feelings at every opportunity. There is a TV program in the UK called "police Camera action" which is a little like America's 'worlds wildest police videos' (or whatever). This has led to an increace of car theft and speeding, wreckess driving etc. also the UK courts award "Anti-social behaviour" (ASBO) notices to yobs who wander the streets drunk or stoned carring out vandalism and other petty thefts. This has led to an increase in crime and the offenders wear these ASBOs as "badges of honour". The types of people whom the talking cameras are targeted at will react with a similar negativity. These yobs will deliberatly act anti-socially so that they can promp a response. Why is all this so? Well in the UK the law gives insufficient protection to the state and the law-abiding masses and too much to the criminals. Crazy eh?
It's very easy to see electricity as a viable alternative to oil based products for vehicle fuel. after all, electricity is clean, isn't it? Well not always. Granted an electric vehicle gives out no exhaust fumes, but we also need to consider how that electricity is made. The world is experiencing a considerable rise in the demand for electricity, and, despite all the hype, wind, solar, wave power etc can only fill a tiny propartion of that demand. Nuclear fuel is still unfashionable, so electricity generators are forced to look at hydro and fossil fuels (maily coal) to meet the demand. Hydro has its problems as it displaces peoples. In many parts of the develloping world, especially China and India coal is the major source of generating fuel. The burning of this coal creates horrendous amounts of acric pollution in many cities. So, electric cars can only be a long-term 'green' replacement for gasolean ones provided the world has a sufficient supply of 'clean' electricity: which it does not. We (the human race) need to have a complete mind change over, not just how we power our cars, but how we live our lives in general, and we must challenge our expectations of what we can reasonable expect from this planet of ours if we want it to remain somewhere worth living. Forget the car and take the bus - or walk!
Remember Arthur C Clarke? He wrote 2001 A Space Oddesy which was later made into the classic sci fi movie of the same name. Few Sci fi authors have garnered as much interest in the "real' community as Clarke. Many of his ideas have been taken up for serious research. indeed, a scientific bresearch body exists in his name! (www.arthurcclarkefoundation.org). In his sequal to 2201: 2010 Odyssey Two, planet Earth inherits a second sun. What happens is that Jupiter is blown up (don't ask why) and spontaniously becomes a supernova and then a sun. however, it dosn't change orbit, so planet earth has the weird experience of obiting just one sun: the other pulling earth periodically further away from the original sun by its gravitational powers as its orbit (around the first sun) gets closer to earth's. The influence of the new sun is minimal when it is on the 'far' side of the original sun from the position of earth, but causes all manner of havoc as it moves closer to earth. Could this really happen? Does the existance of two suns elsewhere prove the 'meddling' of 'intelligent' lifeforms?