How cool would it be to design and build huge projects in 1/6 gravity? There would have to be some incredible designs that would just be too fragile to stand up under Earth atmosphere and gravity, and the range of materials you could use would seem limitless. Maybe a nest of lasers to give a long-term boost to an interstellar probe?
There's got to be huge advantages to building in a lunar environment, with raw materials available right there, and the chance to create living space just by drilling and sealing instead of fabricating from scratch.
A cynic might suggest that someone who wanted to ensure they didn't get caught manipulating the vote would surely seek input from a community uniquely suited to catching them out or, for that matter, hacking the system.
I can't imagine that the person honestly doesn't know any shenanigans would take place long before the machines were on public display.
The United States has already said that pretty much any private communication it can get hold of is fair game. Does anybody have the feeling that a lot of other countries are responding by taking the view that, "If you read my mail, I"m sure as hell going to read yours."
Please tell me you aren't really one of those irritating little snots who likes to pretend you're on a first-name basis with Linus and his buddies when your only real ability is strutting and preening as you loudly proclaim your marginally-greater knowledge of Linux over the newbies.
You sure sound like one, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
FYI, many people who have never used Linux can't afford to fuck around with it for a week until they figure out how to install and configure programs and drivers that let them do real work with it. Some of those people are thinking about making the leap from XP instead of dealing with Vista and whatever bastard offspring it eventually whelps. They use their computers as tools, not as a sex toys.
This kind of story helps and encourages them. So put your attitude away before you develop bad habits. If you let it show in the wrong place, you might piss off a 90-pound secretary who's scared Linux will make her screw up somehow, and she'll show her appreciation of your vast knowledge by beating the crap out of you.
"two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted."
I suspected something like this might happen, I just didn't dream that they'd go so far.
I mean, you have to be just a little suspicious about whether all star-forming arms are on an equal footing when you look at the names. There's Perseus and Sagittarius. Then we get to Scutum-Centaurus, and you have to wonder if the astronomers needed a leg up in the imagination department. And then all doubt vanishes when we get to the fourth arm...Norma. Yes, Norma. Like the girl who couldn't wait to get old enough to disown her parents, legally change her name to Chantal and get a job at the brass-pole ballet.
You just had to know they were having their doubts about arm number 4.
On a more positive note, the same bunch of guys who just slammed Scutum-Centaurus and, um, "Norma", are also telling us that they "obtained detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the centre of the galaxy than previously thought".
A bar that's closer to the house than you thought can't be a bad thing. Especially when you need to walk home.
About lawyers...me, too. Some of my best e-mail "customers" for nasty lawyer jokes are lawyers. They often have to deal with the real dickheads that give rise to the stereotypes, and they love to skewer them as much as we do.
If you put the bacteria into a radioactive, poisonous desert with a rat, a cockroach, Cher and a lawyer, which would survive longest, and would it actually eat the others?
Why not? It isn't far off the widely-accepted definitions. And I suspect, as God, that I'd be at least as much of a jerk as the current model is reputed to be.;)
If you take a look at the miracles ascribed to God in the Bible, we're pretty close to sending in resumes for his job already. We can even resurrect dead people, if we get to them in time.
It's not difficult to imagine a scenario where we create a universe inside a sufficiently-complex computer, create neuron-for-neuron duplicates of our minds and associated wetware in the thing, then sit back to watch the fun. I imagine our brains would work pretty fast if they weren't limited by the current electrochemical model. By the gazillion-times-speeded-up standards of our little replicas, we'd be functionally immortal, entirely outside the system, and capable of changing whatever basic rules we wanted at a whim.
"...for such a law to work they would have to effectively make it criminal to not zero erased data."
Don't go giving the evil f#ckers any ideas. Next thing you know, they'll take a baby step toward the ban you mentioned on general purpose computers, and make it illegal to erase anything.
My data drive just isn't big enough to deal with it, and I wouldn't want to get stuck with all that second-rate pr0n.
Come on, now. If the information's on a PDA, anybody with the IT version of a bent paperclip will be able to get it.
What's the first security rule for a PC: If they have physical access to your computer, your data is theirs. I would bet my bottom dollar that 90% of the security problems concerning a PDA result from exactly that: loss of physical control of the device.
...I would think the best way to combat this is to find some way to turn the situation upside down. What's Microsoft's business strategy for next-generation products, and how could this be used to cause problems for them?
If Microsoft's understanding and control of the current arena is so complete that they can pull off something like this, then it's time to change the venue. Microsoft doesn't seem to do well in novel and fluid situations.
You start with a concrete floor, impact-proof walls and a "No Housekeeping Allowed" sign. My buddy couldn't get something like this to work until he had flat-out banned his wife from the garage.
In order to do that, he had to pretty much cede control of every room in the house. That included the rec room, where suddenly the bar had to be spotless, lest a (female) guest lay fault-finding eyes upon water rings and make sniffy comments.
He and his sons own the garage, and it is nerd heaven.
Look up an anarchist/comedy/anti-establishment group called "The Yes Men". They pulled a magnificent prank on the World Trade Organization by putting up a web site that people who didn't read carefully would assume was theirs.
The slagging they gave the WTO was presented in such a fashion that those would would seek such a site out would be well into it before they realized they were being had.
Being able to redirect by controlling DNS servers could raise the bar quite a bit, and you can bet that the organizations any self-respecting prankster would most like to hit are precisely the ones who would be least likely to catch on quickly.
I'm on a curriculum committee for a local college, and the Excel argument holds a certain amount of water...at the community college level.
I agree with the writer that a university-level program in physics or chemistry, especially one involving basic research, needs more. Programming should certainly be included. It's a basic tool of the trade and in addition, the associated skills it teaches will find application throughout the student's life.
And I speak, by the way, as someone whose lack of programming skills has been an impediment at certain times during my career.
Admitting that it's a generalization, and there are many exceptions, he's right. Women in IT are every bit as good as the guys. But when you get into the world most of us inhabit, where all you know is what you've picked up on your own or from a couple of buddies in the field, men rule.
I challenge anybody to find among their non-geek friends and relatives an equal number of women who are willing to swap a video card or install an extra drive, or do minor OS mods. Perfect example: A friend of mine's father (in his 80's) is quite able to make a computer do what he wants and if you drop off a DVD writer at his house, he'll have it properly installed in 10 minutes. His wife loves what you can do with a computer (chatting with relatives "back home", etc.), but was totally stuck when their machine hung on shutdown.
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How cool would it be to design and build huge projects in 1/6 gravity? There would have to be some incredible designs that would just be too fragile to stand up under Earth atmosphere and gravity, and the range of materials you could use would seem limitless. Maybe a nest of lasers to give a long-term boost to an interstellar probe?
There's got to be huge advantages to building in a lunar environment, with raw materials available right there, and the chance to create living space just by drilling and sealing instead of fabricating from scratch.
The fnords may disagree.
No, I can't imagine anyone with more than a Grade 3 education whose fund of general knowledge wouldn't encompass something so basic.
As for my imagination...I'd bet serious coin it's better than yours.
A cynic might suggest that someone who wanted to ensure they didn't get caught manipulating the vote would surely seek input from a community uniquely suited to catching them out or, for that matter, hacking the system.
I can't imagine that the person honestly doesn't know any shenanigans would take place long before the machines were on public display.
The United States has already said that pretty much any private communication it can get hold of is fair game. Does anybody have the feeling that a lot of other countries are responding by taking the view that, "If you read my mail, I"m sure as hell going to read yours."
"If you watch something, it changes its behavior. Any quantum physicist could have told you that!"
That's certainly true, but there's a difference. Instead of Erwin Schrodinger's Cat, the thought experiment is conducted with Eliot Spitzer's Pussy.
If I missed the irony, I must be having an off day. Apologies.
Clearly, I ran into a moderator who's one of those people described in Paragraph 1.
Please tell me you aren't really one of those irritating little snots who likes to pretend you're on a first-name basis with Linus and his buddies when your only real ability is strutting and preening as you loudly proclaim your marginally-greater knowledge of Linux over the newbies.
You sure sound like one, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
FYI, many people who have never used Linux can't afford to fuck around with it for a week until they figure out how to install and configure programs and drivers that let them do real work with it. Some of those people are thinking about making the leap from XP instead of dealing with Vista and whatever bastard offspring it eventually whelps. They use their computers as tools, not as a sex toys.
This kind of story helps and encourages them. So put your attitude away before you develop bad habits. If you let it show in the wrong place, you might piss off a 90-pound secretary who's scared Linux will make her screw up somehow, and she'll show her appreciation of your vast knowledge by beating the crap out of you.
I hope you got a look at the Spitzer view of Andromeda. Check it out:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051017070302.htm
"two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted."
I suspected something like this might happen, I just didn't dream that they'd go so far.
I mean, you have to be just a little suspicious about whether all star-forming arms are on an equal footing when you look at the names. There's Perseus and Sagittarius. Then we get to Scutum-Centaurus, and you have to wonder if the astronomers needed a leg up in the imagination department. And then all doubt vanishes when we get to the fourth arm...Norma. Yes, Norma. Like the girl who couldn't wait to get old enough to disown her parents, legally change her name to Chantal and get a job at the brass-pole ballet.
You just had to know they were having their doubts about arm number 4.
On a more positive note, the same bunch of guys who just slammed Scutum-Centaurus and, um, "Norma", are also telling us that they "obtained detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the centre of the galaxy than previously thought".
A bar that's closer to the house than you thought can't be a bad thing. Especially when you need to walk home.
About lawyers...me, too. Some of my best e-mail "customers" for nasty lawyer jokes are lawyers. They often have to deal with the real dickheads that give rise to the stereotypes, and they love to skewer them as much as we do.
If you put the bacteria into a radioactive, poisonous desert with a rat, a cockroach, Cher and a lawyer, which would survive longest, and would it actually eat the others?
Why not? It isn't far off the widely-accepted definitions. And I suspect, as God, that I'd be at least as much of a jerk as the current model is reputed to be. ;)
Re: "We become GODS"
If you take a look at the miracles ascribed to God in the Bible, we're pretty close to sending in resumes for his job already. We can even resurrect dead people, if we get to them in time.
It's not difficult to imagine a scenario where we create a universe inside a sufficiently-complex computer, create neuron-for-neuron duplicates of our minds and associated wetware in the thing, then sit back to watch the fun. I imagine our brains would work pretty fast if they weren't limited by the current electrochemical model. By the gazillion-times-speeded-up standards of our little replicas, we'd be functionally immortal, entirely outside the system, and capable of changing whatever basic rules we wanted at a whim.
"God" indeed.
"...for such a law to work they would have to effectively make it criminal to not zero erased data."
Don't go giving the evil f#ckers any ideas. Next thing you know, they'll take a baby step toward the ban you mentioned on general purpose computers, and make it illegal to erase anything.
My data drive just isn't big enough to deal with it, and I wouldn't want to get stuck with all that second-rate pr0n.
Come on, now. If the information's on a PDA, anybody with the IT version of a bent paperclip will be able to get it.
What's the first security rule for a PC: If they have physical access to your computer, your data is theirs. I would bet my bottom dollar that 90% of the security problems concerning a PDA result from exactly that: loss of physical control of the device.
When it comes to the subject of appropriate musical selections, sir, there can be no doubt: you are truly "The Man" on the Moon.
"Hey, it really DOES feel like somebody else!"
I see flash mobs. Many, many flash mobs, all obsessed with CCTV cameras. All overcome by a powerful need to bend over and drop trou.
You just KNOW somebody would leak the video before long.
If Microsoft's understanding and control of the current arena is so complete that they can pull off something like this, then it's time to change the venue. Microsoft doesn't seem to do well in novel and fluid situations.
You start with a concrete floor, impact-proof walls and a "No Housekeeping Allowed" sign. My buddy couldn't get something like this to work until he had flat-out banned his wife from the garage.
In order to do that, he had to pretty much cede control of every room in the house. That included the rec room, where suddenly the bar had to be spotless, lest a (female) guest lay fault-finding eyes upon water rings and make sniffy comments.
He and his sons own the garage, and it is nerd heaven.
Look up an anarchist/comedy/anti-establishment group called "The Yes Men". They pulled a magnificent prank on the World Trade Organization by putting up a web site that people who didn't read carefully would assume was theirs.
The slagging they gave the WTO was presented in such a fashion that those would would seek such a site out would be well into it before they realized they were being had.
Being able to redirect by controlling DNS servers could raise the bar quite a bit, and you can bet that the organizations any self-respecting prankster would most like to hit are precisely the ones who would be least likely to catch on quickly.
I'm on a curriculum committee for a local college, and the Excel argument holds a certain amount of water...at the community college level.
I agree with the writer that a university-level program in physics or chemistry, especially one involving basic research, needs more. Programming should certainly be included. It's a basic tool of the trade and in addition, the associated skills it teaches will find application throughout the student's life.
And I speak, by the way, as someone whose lack of programming skills has been an impediment at certain times during my career.
Admitting that it's a generalization, and there are many exceptions, he's right. Women in IT are every bit as good as the guys. But when you get into the world most of us inhabit, where all you know is what you've picked up on your own or from a couple of buddies in the field, men rule.
I challenge anybody to find among their non-geek friends and relatives an equal number of women who are willing to swap a video card or install an extra drive, or do minor OS mods. Perfect example: A friend of mine's father (in his 80's) is quite able to make a computer do what he wants and if you drop off a DVD writer at his house, he'll have it properly installed in 10 minutes. His wife loves what you can do with a computer (chatting with relatives "back home", etc.), but was totally stuck when their machine hung on shutdown.