The FBI put out cyber-crime recruiting press releases in our city last month. It sounded like reasonable psoitions and pay. However, you have to be under 35 years old and be able to pass a fitness test (run 1.5 miles in under 12 minutes). The newspaper thought the latter would be hard on geeks.
Commodity computers are still on "Internet time". The design-to-distribution cycle of a Dell, Gateway etc. is less than sic months. Their performance-per-price nearly doubles annually. Custom computers cannot keep up. Silicon Valley is littered with the wreckage of scientific computing companies and PDAs who fell off this relentless developement trajectory.
Most planes were designed when consumer electronics was in the megahertz range or less.
Now that they are well into the gigahertz and approaching terahertz, you get sidelobes in the radar frequencies among other things.
I find it interesting that one can read French, German, Arab, Chinese, Russian, etc. newspapers and news agencies on the web in the USA, most with decent English translations. These provide substantially different points of view or even greater coverage than the US. For example, U.S. news avoids gruesome war images. Up to 7-8 years ago you had have shortwave radio, or trudge over to some dusty university library and read snail-mail delayed versions. When I lived in one of the above countries, with limited access to US news, it was eye-opening to see other points of view.
Even with this unprecedented access, I still dont do this too often. You have to wade through a lot of local content and strange English. And the news everyone- in and out of the US- has a lot of ingrained editorializing which is grating after a while.
A poll last weekend showed that most Americans believe 9-11 is linked with Iraq war and Saddam sponsored the terrorism. With such blatant ignorance of international events, censorship is unnecessary. Americans got the president and government they deserved.
Cartoonland has been doing unusual prospectives since the 1930s. One highlight is the Beatles yellow submarine trip through fantsyland. Another highlight is Linkletters's recent "waking Life" animation/film hybrid. The film part is that most of the animation is traced from film (rotscoping). However there some interesting distortionsof physical reality, perhaps having to do with the films theme.
Sounds like one of the few sectors where pay is actually increasing. State and local gove worksers being cut. Must be nice to work for an organization where you can print money at will.
Bill wrote a pessimistic piece abut computing taking control of our lives.
Sounds a little like Ellison's "I have no mouth and must scream" story that became the Terminator movies.
On Wednesday it appears that UPN is re-making the Bionic Man as a teen angst series. In this case the young man acquires special powers through accidental nano-technology, rather than military augmentation. I presume when you replace adult superheroes by teens, you exchange crime-fighting and spy plots by identity-searching and budding-romance. Will this series say anthing new that Roswell, Smallville, and Spiderman havent said yet?
I find the 48-year-old Disney theme parks to be a record of our changing idea of the "future".
First was Tommorrow Land from the mid-1950s that contained rocket-rides and advanced cars and appliances, etc. This was a world's fair view of a machine-dominated future.
Then in the early 1970s came the Epcot Dome with a "touchy-feely" view of the future. The Dome ride empahsizes ecology and psychology. e.g. communicating with dolphins. This vision grew after the burnouts of Apollo and Vietnam and the concerns of Earth Day.
Then came the "digital future". This isnt a formal area in Disneyworld, but a number of side areas in Epcot about telcom and PCs are going to change the world, plus the ubiquitous video arcades. This is a less tangible future that the other kinds. Perhaps the world is ready to move beyond this after a decade of dot-com hype.
Of interest is the newest Disney attraction called "Mission Space". This may be a return to classic futurism influenced by the Star Wars and Star Trek space operas and as NASA shuttles and probes.
I've lost track of the names and attempts, but this has been tried a large number of times of times of the past decades. Its a good idea to integrate a DB into the OS. However, computer users seem rather conservation and stick to the old tried-and-true ideas. Look at how attached we are to the 36 year old Engelbart windows GUI, when many alternatives have been tried.
My favorit: "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel"
on
New Heinlein Novel
·
· Score: 1
Although it was in his teenage pulp scifi, I enjoyed when reading it in the 6th grade. I re-read it again when I was at M.I.T. and enjoyed the twist at the end- the hero wins admission to that college.
"Stranger in a Strange Land" has been optioned several times. In its day it was pretty riske- spoofing religion, free sex, and government. A first-year Star Trek episode "What about Charlie?" 'borrowed' part of the plot. I think the novel is soemwhat timeless and has merit as a movie.
Any more Heinlein novels to be movies?
way behind hubbard, toklein and asimov
on
New Heinlein Novel
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Heinlein only has three posthumous novels- the original length "Stranger in a Strange Land",
an autobiography, and this one. Ron Hubbard published at least 13- including the ten volume Mission Earth series. Toklein published at least 15, including the Allakabeth, Simarillian, a book of poetry, and the 12 volume History of Middle Earth series. Asimov had a have dozen in press that came out after his death. Gene Roddenberry had Final Conflict and Anromedea TV series, plus two more rumored in production. Frank Herbert partially completed 7th Dune volume, and an early edition of his origional Dune are supposed to be published in due course by his son.
The above list doesn't include continuations of earlier novels authorized by these authors estates. There have been a dozen of those. Herbert is the most prolific with the 5th New Dune novel due out next week and eight more planned.
Star Trek predicted interfaces, not tech details
on
What's Always Next?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The whole point of the orignal Star Trek was not to predict the details of future technology.
They just presumed that human-machine interfaces would have become convenient. For example a talking computer is much more convenient than typing for the masses of humanity. Star Trek devices were named after the generic action they preformed, e.g. "transport", "communicate", "scan", etc.
rather than some technology (3G) or commercial brand name (Xbox).
what happened to the "36,000 DOW JONES?"
on
What's Always Next?
·
· Score: 1
This was the epitome of the dot-com irrational exuburence in predicting the stock market would go 50% every year when the component companies were faking profits.
Its interesting to look back at futurist predictions of previous decades to see what they got right (little), over-predicted trends and complete misses.
Some of this sillyness is captured at Disneyworld- Tommorrowland, Epcot Dome, Carasoul of Progress, etc. Amusing!
The lunar orbit averages 60 times the radius of the earth (a number calculated by Archimedes).
So the earth's cross-section is (1/60)^2 or 1:3600.
This ignores that gravity pulls an object closer toward earth.
NEOs (near earth objects) are computed in terms of LEDs (lunear earth distances). A LED=1 is started to get serious.
The trend toward shorter work weeks ground to a halt in the latter part of the 20th century. it was common to work 60 hours a week on the farm or in manufactoring in the 19th century.
One cause is worker overhead costs for the employer. These arent much different whther the employee works 10 or 80 hours a week, so the incentive is more hours. This is a prevalent attitude in the software industry.
Another cause is the Calvinist work ethic in US society, every since the Puritans settled there.
Many Europeans dont have this ethic, so they dot mind short 30-some hour weeks and 6-10 weeks of annual vacation.
Any ideas on how to move to a shorter work week?
Knowing MicroSoft's penchant to "borrow" technology, I wouldnt be surprised to find some SCO code deep in Windows. Even though on the surface Windows seems to be completely different OS; (1) MS "owned" PC-UNIX (Xenix) in the 1970s and 1980s until it sold it to SCO and (2) the MS-NT-OS "borrowed" heavily from VMS (formerly DEC-Compaq now HP).
You have to include a people time, building overhead etc. A reserach grant may be billing $500 - $1000 a day for this. If this takes 50 man days to set up, then the cost is is another $50,000.
Slashdot Mirror
The FBI put out cyber-crime recruiting press releases in our city last month. It sounded like reasonable psoitions and pay. However, you have to be under 35 years old and be able to pass a fitness test (run 1.5 miles in under 12 minutes). The newspaper thought the latter would be hard on geeks.
Commodity computers are still on "Internet time". The design-to-distribution cycle of a Dell, Gateway etc. is less than sic months. Their performance-per-price nearly doubles annually. Custom computers cannot keep up. Silicon Valley is littered with the wreckage of scientific computing companies and PDAs who fell off this relentless developement trajectory.
Most planes were designed when consumer electronics was in the megahertz range or less. Now that they are well into the gigahertz and approaching terahertz, you get sidelobes in the radar frequencies among other things.
returns :-)
"Dictionary_exception_error: word not found"
I find it interesting that one can read French, German, Arab, Chinese, Russian, etc. newspapers and news agencies on the web in the USA, most with decent English translations. These provide substantially different points of view or even greater coverage than the US. For example, U.S. news avoids gruesome war images. Up to 7-8 years ago you had have shortwave radio, or trudge over to some dusty university library and read snail-mail delayed versions. When I lived in one of the above countries, with limited access to US news, it was eye-opening to see other points of view.
Even with this unprecedented access, I still dont do this too often. You have to wade through a lot of local content and strange English. And the news everyone- in and out of the US- has a lot of ingrained editorializing which is grating after a while.
A poll last weekend showed that most Americans believe 9-11 is linked with Iraq war and Saddam sponsored the terrorism. With such blatant ignorance of international events, censorship is unnecessary. Americans got the president and government they deserved.
Cartoonland has been doing unusual prospectives since the 1930s. One highlight is the Beatles yellow submarine trip through fantsyland. Another highlight is Linkletters's recent "waking Life" animation/film hybrid. The film part is that most of the animation is traced from film (rotscoping). However there some interesting distortionsof physical reality, perhaps having to do with the films theme.
Sounds like one of the few sectors where pay is actually increasing. State and local gove worksers being cut. Must be nice to work for an organization where you can print money at will.
The decade of the "Bill's" is fading.
Bill C.
Bill J.
Bill G.
Bill wrote a pessimistic piece abut computing taking control of our lives. Sounds a little like Ellison's "I have no mouth and must scream" story that became the Terminator movies.
On Wednesday it appears that UPN is re-making the Bionic Man as a teen angst series. In this case the young man acquires special powers through accidental nano-technology, rather than military augmentation. I presume when you replace adult superheroes by teens, you exchange crime-fighting and spy plots by identity-searching and budding-romance. Will this series say anthing new that Roswell, Smallville, and Spiderman havent said yet?
I find the 48-year-old Disney theme parks to be a record of our changing idea of the "future".
First was Tommorrow Land from the mid-1950s that contained rocket-rides and advanced cars and appliances, etc. This was a world's fair view of a machine-dominated future.
Then in the early 1970s came the Epcot Dome with a "touchy-feely" view of the future. The Dome ride empahsizes ecology and psychology. e.g. communicating with dolphins. This vision grew after the burnouts of Apollo and Vietnam and the concerns of Earth Day.
Then came the "digital future". This isnt a formal area in Disneyworld, but a number of side areas in Epcot about telcom and PCs are going to change the world, plus the ubiquitous video arcades. This is a less tangible future that the other kinds. Perhaps the world is ready to move beyond this after a decade of dot-com hype.
Of interest is the newest Disney attraction called "Mission Space". This may be a return to classic futurism influenced by the Star Wars and Star Trek space operas and as NASA shuttles and probes.
I've lost track of the names and attempts, but this has been tried a large number of times of times of the past decades. Its a good idea to integrate a DB into the OS. However, computer users seem rather conservation and stick to the old tried-and-true ideas. Look at how attached we are to the 36 year old Engelbart windows GUI, when many alternatives have been tried.
Although it was in his teenage pulp scifi, I enjoyed when reading it in the 6th grade. I re-read it again when I was at M.I.T. and enjoyed the twist at the end- the hero wins admission to that college.
"Stranger in a Strange Land" has been optioned several times. In its day it was pretty riske- spoofing religion, free sex, and government. A first-year Star Trek episode "What about Charlie?" 'borrowed' part of the plot. I think the novel is soemwhat timeless and has merit as a movie.
Any more Heinlein novels to be movies?
Heinlein only has three posthumous novels- the original length "Stranger in a Strange Land", an autobiography, and this one. Ron Hubbard published at least 13- including the ten volume Mission Earth series. Toklein published at least 15, including the Allakabeth, Simarillian, a book of poetry, and the 12 volume History of Middle Earth series. Asimov had a have dozen in press that came out after his death. Gene Roddenberry had Final Conflict and Anromedea TV series, plus two more rumored in production. Frank Herbert partially completed 7th Dune volume, and an early edition of his origional Dune are supposed to be published in due course by his son.
The above list doesn't include continuations of earlier novels authorized by these authors estates. There have been a dozen of those. Herbert is the most prolific with the 5th New Dune novel due out next week and eight more planned.
The whole point of the orignal Star Trek was not to predict the details of future technology. They just presumed that human-machine interfaces would have become convenient. For example a talking computer is much more convenient than typing for the masses of humanity. Star Trek devices were named after the generic action they preformed, e.g. "transport", "communicate", "scan", etc. rather than some technology (3G) or commercial brand name (Xbox).
This was the epitome of the dot-com irrational exuburence in predicting the stock market would go 50% every year when the component companies were faking profits.
Its interesting to look back at futurist predictions of previous decades to see what they got right (little), over-predicted trends and complete misses. Some of this sillyness is captured at Disneyworld- Tommorrowland, Epcot Dome, Carasoul of Progress, etc. Amusing!
The lunar orbit averages 60 times the radius of the earth (a number calculated by Archimedes). So the earth's cross-section is (1/60)^2 or 1:3600. This ignores that gravity pulls an object closer toward earth.
NEOs (near earth objects) are computed in terms of LEDs (lunear earth distances). A LED=1 is started to get serious.
30 years ago these meant inferior products. This still applies to software. Who would pay money for this stuff?
The trend toward shorter work weeks ground to a halt in the latter part of the 20th century. it was common to work 60 hours a week on the farm or in manufactoring in the 19th century.
One cause is worker overhead costs for the employer. These arent much different whther the employee works 10 or 80 hours a week, so the incentive is more hours. This is a prevalent attitude in the software industry.
Another cause is the Calvinist work ethic in US society, every since the Puritans settled there. Many Europeans dont have this ethic, so they dot mind short 30-some hour weeks and 6-10 weeks of annual vacation.
Any ideas on how to move to a shorter work week?
Knowing MicroSoft's penchant to "borrow" technology, I wouldnt be surprised to find some SCO code deep in Windows. Even though on the surface Windows seems to be completely different OS; (1) MS "owned" PC-UNIX (Xenix) in the 1970s and 1980s until it sold it to SCO and (2) the MS-NT-OS "borrowed" heavily from VMS (formerly DEC-Compaq now HP).
You have to include a people time, building overhead etc. A reserach grant may be billing $500 - $1000 a day for this. If this takes 50 man days to set up, then the cost is is another $50,000.
At least there isnt all that water sloshing around reminding you of your bladder!
This has been a common claim in the literature. Some references and refutations here.