We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of human consciousness.
-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"The Feedback Principle"
No, no. Kit's neural circuitry was reverse engineered from the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica.
The crew of the Galactica must have made it here, because ever since the show went off the air, we've been inundated with coffee shops named "Starbuck's".
A feature length, rotoscope like, porn movie would be too far...
Laugh, but with the amount of makeup and lighting that goes into a Vivid video production, to more or less wash out any shred of detail... er blemish... from the actors, you might as well shoot it in rotoscope.
I've always wondered if there were expected electrical anomalies. Come one folks, an anomaly is unexpected. Otherwise it would be a phenominon, be it random, periodic, or chaotic.
Contests like this won't work. There is too specific a goal. You also are running with the implicit assumption that the cheapest is somehow the best. A shoebox with a lense and a CCD would be a pretty cheap space based telescope. But it would not be very useful.
You also run into the problem of launch platforms. Are you going to force the teams to use an existing platform, and which one (Soyuz, Atlas, etc.) If you pick the launch platform, then you have done a good chunk of the R&D, at which you have to ask why bother.
And if not, then you would be better off simply holding a space lift contest. Because you either end up with a shitty launcher, or a shitty telescope. It's hard for a design team to do both well.
I'd be willing to wager that if NASA came out and asked for money to research orbital robotic technology they would have gotten it. One of the early designs for the Shuttle was a low Earth orbit system, similar to the shuttle of today, coupled with a permanently orbiting robotic booster. The booster would carry payloads into higher orbits.
That project was canned because it more or less put human pilots in the back seat. I don't blame NASA. Once you take humans out of the loop, you kinda remove 90% of the expense of space travel. And 90% of NASA's reason for being.
I hate to bust your bubble, but most of the pictures you see from the hubble are false-color. The engineers at JPL recieve packets of data that are fed into a pile of transform equations before pictures pop out.
I dare say that while robotics research is a lofty goal, this is the wrong mission for it. We can study telerobotics just fine on Earth, and there are a pile of undersea applications that are far more technicalogically challenging, with more direct applications to everyday problems.
When we say that 1 or 2 billion is going to research, that is the opening bid. Spending 1 or 2 billion to keep an obsolete telescope aloft is a bad use of R&D. Bad with a capital B. Especially since there is no advantage to keeping the old station aloft, nor is there any danger (more than any other satellite at least) in bringing it down.
If the thing had a radioactive power source, or there was a super-expensive rare metal apparatus that we can't manufacture anymore I'd say sure. Otherwise, drop the thing and spend your budget on a new telescope using the lessons learned from the old, and technology that did not exist in the 30 years since the unit left the drawing board.
I think the very fact that Apple is still in business, AND selling non-x86 computers running their own proprietary OS is success enough. Think about how many other computer companies have either died out or capitulated to the Wintel camp.
They don't have to put anyone out of business. They just have to sell a few million machines a year. Comparing Apple to most other computer companies is like comparing a Diamler/Benz to a GM. People by other brands because they need a car. People by a Benz because they want a Benz.
While there may me no causal relationship, we find a casual relationship. Indeed, some relationships have even gone beyond casual into friendly, or downright intimate.
I dare say after 10 years on the net, most of them adminning linux boxes, I qualify as a big techie.
I'm posting this from my iBook, which is currently running a perl script to migrate about 200 users from an old Gentoo imap server running Courier to an Xserve running cyrus.
If that doesn't qualify me as a techie, then how about the fact that 2 days ago I didn't know Perl. (I normally hack in TCL.)
Oh yeah, the guys with the bandannas and the slimjim are members of bomb squad. They will also need to examine your radio for radiation output, and take your tires back to the lab for testing.
Don't kid yourself. Government also likes to throw a bone to their more upscale residents. There are many municipal golf courses around this country, not to mention marinas.
What kept me out of the business is quality of service. If someone is paying you for the service, they don't want to hear about weather, theft, or vandalism. They also don't want to hear that putting a potted plant in front of the reciever is going to knock out their service, as will a truck parked in front of their apartment,
For about 2 years I shot a wireless signal from the roof of my Office to my apartment about 2 blocks away. While it worked well, when it was windy and rainy the signal kinda died. It also required a rather unsightly boom that hung out of my apartment window, and a tangle of cable that ran down to the computer. I also ran into frequent problems with loose cables, which while it was no problem for me to fix, your average Joe would be frustrated and annoyed.
In the case of Philadelphia though, the city had gone in and cut a sweethard deal with a big monopoly. I was in the process of starting a business that provided access points with special lockdown provisions for coffee shop owners. Then our fine mayor announced that the city would be blanketed with "free or low cost" wireless everywhere.
2 years later, there is a fuzzy access point outside city hall, that is more or less blasted out by access points in a nearby a apartment building. On South Street there is a "free till November, then we are going to charge you" wifi system that only seems to work next to the fountain in Headhouse Square.
It's the same provider as Starbucks, though the name escapes me at the moment. I'm just glad I didn't quit my day job.
Slashdot Mirror
A slightly different idea: xerox your soul into a temporary copy of your body. A really good book exploring the idea was David Brin's The Kiln People.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of human consciousness.
-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov "The Feedback Principle"
A computer's attention span is only as long as its power cord.
Because anyone who would randomly grab a breast is not in it for enjoyment. He's in it for the sheer degredation of the other person involved.
Wouldn't Capitol punishment generally mean making them drive in D.C. traffic?
The crew of the Galactica must have made it here, because ever since the show went off the air, we've been inundated with coffee shops named "Starbuck's".
Laugh, but with the amount of makeup and lighting that goes into a Vivid video production, to more or less wash out any shred of detail ... er blemish ... from the actors, you might as well shoot it in rotoscope.
Most geeks can type 40-80 words a minute. If you remove the backspace key, that rate drops tremendously.
I've always wondered if there were expected electrical anomalies. Come one folks, an anomaly is unexpected. Otherwise it would be a phenominon, be it random, periodic, or chaotic.
You also run into the problem of launch platforms. Are you going to force the teams to use an existing platform, and which one (Soyuz, Atlas, etc.) If you pick the launch platform, then you have done a good chunk of the R&D, at which you have to ask why bother.
And if not, then you would be better off simply holding a space lift contest. Because you either end up with a shitty launcher, or a shitty telescope. It's hard for a design team to do both well.
That project was canned because it more or less put human pilots in the back seat. I don't blame NASA. Once you take humans out of the loop, you kinda remove 90% of the expense of space travel. And 90% of NASA's reason for being.
I hate to bust your bubble, but most of the pictures you see from the hubble are false-color. The engineers at JPL recieve packets of data that are fed into a pile of transform equations before pictures pop out.
When we say that 1 or 2 billion is going to research, that is the opening bid. Spending 1 or 2 billion to keep an obsolete telescope aloft is a bad use of R&D. Bad with a capital B. Especially since there is no advantage to keeping the old station aloft, nor is there any danger (more than any other satellite at least) in bringing it down.
If the thing had a radioactive power source, or there was a super-expensive rare metal apparatus that we can't manufacture anymore I'd say sure. Otherwise, drop the thing and spend your budget on a new telescope using the lessons learned from the old, and technology that did not exist in the 30 years since the unit left the drawing board.
They don't have to put anyone out of business. They just have to sell a few million machines a year. Comparing Apple to most other computer companies is like comparing a Diamler/Benz to a GM. People by other brands because they need a car. People by a Benz because they want a Benz.
While there may me no causal relationship, we find a casual relationship. Indeed, some relationships have even gone beyond casual into friendly, or downright intimate.
No joke, one of the documented installation methods for a headless Xserve is via an iPod.
Nope, I guess it doesn't.
Join the non-sequitor club. We don't make sense, and who wants pizza?
I'm posting this from my iBook, which is currently running a perl script to migrate about 200 users from an old Gentoo imap server running Courier to an Xserve running cyrus.
If that doesn't qualify me as a techie, then how about the fact that 2 days ago I didn't know Perl. (I normally hack in TCL.)
Oh yeah, the guys with the bandannas and the slimjim are members of bomb squad. They will also need to examine your radio for radiation output, and take your tires back to the lab for testing.
...Or the Ford Pinto, or the Chevy Corvair...
Reach out, reach out, and touch someone. Reach out call up and just say !$#%!#$QRTWQER^WERGAGAQ#$T^Q
*** NO CARRIER ***
Don't kid yourself. Government also likes to throw a bone to their more upscale residents. There are many municipal golf courses around this country, not to mention marinas.
For about 2 years I shot a wireless signal from the roof of my Office to my apartment about 2 blocks away. While it worked well, when it was windy and rainy the signal kinda died. It also required a rather unsightly boom that hung out of my apartment window, and a tangle of cable that ran down to the computer. I also ran into frequent problems with loose cables, which while it was no problem for me to fix, your average Joe would be frustrated and annoyed.
Here are some pictures of my setup. I've sinced moved, so I broke down and pay for DSL now.
2 years later, there is a fuzzy access point outside city hall, that is more or less blasted out by access points in a nearby a apartment building. On South Street there is a "free till November, then we are going to charge you" wifi system that only seems to work next to the fountain in Headhouse Square.
It's the same provider as Starbucks, though the name escapes me at the moment. I'm just glad I didn't quit my day job.