The Roman prisons were holes carved into caves & the prisoners were thrown inside. They had access to nothing.
The more I study history, the more I think the Romans displayed a heck of a lot more intelligence than modern politicians (in some respects, not all). If the prisoners have access to nothing, how are they going to charge their cellphone batteries? Eventually the problem solves itself (dead phones).
Precisely. A quick read through consumeraffairs.org shows that some companies trend "good" and some trend "bad". Like Honda is good, and Hyundai is bad. (I had to get that car analogy in there.);-)
That's a good tactic, but it only works if you have an ISP that is limiting access (like Comcast). My ISP is Verizon and they apparently don't care what I download, even though I'm maxing out my line at 100 KB/s.
But if Verizon started limiting my access based on content, then yes I think bit-torrenting millions of copies of Linus sounds like a good method of protest. I could then sue Verizon on the grounds that they are blocking my LEGAL access to public domain and free-to-download software.
It's possible to lay-down 15 exemptions, and thereby keep the paycheck garnishment to a minimum. On Apirl 15 you will then be handed a bill of ~$10,000 by the IRS which you can choose not to pay.
The IRS will come after you of course, but Henry David Thoreau argued in the early 1800s that refusal to pay tax is a form of civil disobedience to let the politicians know you are not happy. Mr. Thoreau spent much time in jail to protest an ongoing war for which he refused to pay taxes.
I remember. The limitation was self-imposed by the designers because they wanted home users to connect their computers to 1970s and 80s-era television screens, and those televisions had a very low resolution. Computers moved past that limitation by mandating the purchase of an RGB or VGA monitor, but home gaming consoles still limited themselves to 640x240 in order to avoid chroma blur and interlace flicker.
Trivia - The Commodore 64 can do 80 characters if you have a copy of GEOS and a good S-video monitor.;-)
I don't think a government can overtake another government's land simply by claiming an extension of water rights.
The government of New Jersey tried that tactic a few years ago in order to justify the building of an oil platform on the Delaware River. The NJ government claimed they own half the river and can do whatever they wish. The government of Delaware objected, and after digging through old documents dating to the 1600s, it was determined that Delaware controls the river adjacent to its capitol. The intervening birth of the United States had not changed or altered that prior claim. Therefore New Jersey's government was blocked by the Delaware government.*
If the territory of Sealand has prior claim to its land and local coastal waters, the UK cannot simply "take over" the place by whim, and I'm sure the EU version of the Supreme Court would hold this to be true. Sealand remains an independent government by previous land/water claims.
* * The heart of the argument is that NJ wants oil and Delaware wants to protect "their" river from environmental destruction. Two governments with two goals are moving in seemingly opposite directions. The irony is that both governments are run by the same party (Democrats), and yet they still can't get along with one another.
No really.... it was formatted as a 1 megabyte hard drive. I don't know why my dorm president used that method, and I tried reformatting it to a larger size after he gave it to me, but without any success. I also thought maybe he had partitioned the HDD as a 1 megabyte and 19 megabyte, but I couldn't find any other partitions except the main 1 megabyte one.
It was very weird. I finally reached the conclusion that after ~10 years of student abuse in the study lounge, something had probably damaged the hard drive, or the controller, such that it couldn't see anything higher than a megabyte. I eventually gave up and sold it on Ebay.
I still have my Commodore Amiga 500, without hard drive, which is fine because the entire OS fits on a single floppy. Works great.
Instead of begging for handouts, why don't you try a free market approach - CHARGE for it. If I were in this guy's shoes, I would set up displays in my basement and charge an entrance fee to tourists to "come see the history of computing".
Another possibility is to join forces with a local car museum, to see if you can borrow an empty room for your computer history display. Since people are already looking at the old cars, they're likely to have an interest in anything that's old, including computers. Don't display everything, but just pick out a few key computers that changed the course of history and charge $1 to enter the room. Perhaps have one of them (like the C=64) setup to play a game (say Arkanoid).
Most of us are engineers. We're used to solving problems. "Funding" is just another problem to be solved; be creative.
I remember back when I was a teen, we had arguments about whose computer was faster (Amiga versus Atari versus IBM) and compared CPU speeds or graphics' capabilities. It was a competitive viewpoint to demonstrate you had a bigger dick... er, machine than your peers. I imagine teens today still have the same arguments, and still try to use their computers to "one-up" the competition. When their professor discusses old technology they probably feel vastly superior to the old fossil.
You are correct. I can do more things with an Cellphone than I could do with my old full-sized Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 back when I was a student. In fact most cellphones are powerful enough to emulate those old machines and play the classic videogames.
The only flaw I can see with cellphones is their tiny keyboard. Perhaps Apple or some other maker should repackage their phones to include laptop-sized keyboards so users can run some limited software (like MS Word). They could call it the Iphone or Ipod lapbook.
Most channels are now using virtual numbers. So for example channels 2 and 3 are actually broadcasting at real channels 22 and 31, right where TV Band/whitespace Devices can overlap them.
Back in 1994 my academic advisor said computer programmers were like busdrivers - skilled people who knew how to operate a machine. At the time I thought he was nuts, but if software continues down this path of being "available for free" then programmers might find their salaries slowly declining until, circa 2050, their pay is equal to a busdriver (about $10 an hour; $15 if unionized).
That would be sad but that's the direction open-source software seems to be leading us. We used to have skilled operators connecting calls, but that job was gradually by citizens making their own connections. Soon programmers might find themselves replaced by citizens writing their own software.
When I arrived at Penn State my dorm president gave my an old Commodore Amiga 2000HD with a 1 megabyte hard drive. I tried a couple times to reformat it to a larger size, but it stubbornly refused. So there I was, stuck with a hard drive no bigger than a floppy. Not too useful.
If some freshmen laughed at me I'd remind them that just in the time since they were born (circa 1990) to their first year of college, we've moved from 10 megahertz to 3000 megahertz, and from 1 megabyte to 4000 megabytes. Someday their "uberpowerful PC" will look pretty primitive when Intel develops 300 gigahertz Hydra-Cores with 2 terabytes of RAM. Technology moves very rapidly. (I'd also remind them that they're going to look back at their photos in ten years and laugh at themselves.)
I disagree. For me pulling out my old Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 is as satisfying as firing-up the old Atari VCS, Nintendo ES, or Sega Genesis. I still enjoy playing those old 8/16 bit games, because even though they are 2-dimensional they are just as much fun as playing a Gameboy..... even the kids enjoy the old C=64 games when I hook them up.
As for productivity, well, I have experimented with GEOS 64 and text-based websurfing, and it works, the only flaw being the pace. GEOS works just great (like a black-n-white Macintosh) until you try to print something out and all you have is a dot-matrix printer. Or websurfing with a slow 2 kbit/s modem. Even so I still enjoy the nostalgia factor.
In which case, once I learned BT is blocking my revenue-source (ads), I'd no longer allow them to access google.com for free. I'd start charging BT to cover my expenses.
There are already lawyers and judges stripping the Patriot Act and disabling the law as unconstitutional. Whereas in the UK, no constitution means the Patriot Act would be held in force indefinitely.
And freedom of speech is as easy to overturn in the UK Parliament as a 50%+1 vote. To overturn the Constitution's guarantee is much tougher (50%+1 in Congress, the president's signature, AND 3/4 of the State Legislatures' agreeing to same... the last provision being very difficult to attain).
Ridiculous? Hardly. To quote James Madison: "If men were angels, we would not need government. If leaders were angels, we would not need a Constitution. But men being men, we need a Constitution to restrain the leaders from causing harm to the people." The British Parliament has nothing to limit the damage it can cause to its own citizens. All it takes is a simple 50%+1 vote to take away British citizens freedoms. Like speech.
I always prefer the "more power to the people" solution. Mandate that all boxes/televisions have an On/off switch. "On" allows Echostar, Dish, whoever to see what shows you watch and adjust the advertising accordingly. "Off" sends absolutely no information back to the companies. Let each person decided for him/herself how much they want to share.
In the 1980s, a popular TV program like The Cosby Show might have captured half the viewers in the entire United States; today's most popular shows, like American Idol, are lucky to capture a fourth of the whole audience.
Completely off. Even the Superbowl, the most-watched american program, only gets about 40% of the audience.
Popular shows like Cosby and Star Trek TNG were watched by about 15% of the 1980s U.S., and American Idol attracts about 9% of 2000-era U.S.
And I'll add a little quote from Albert Einstein: "Why bother to meoorize that which you can look up in a book?" The ability to DO the problem and solve the equations is more important than to remember how many megabits a PCI Express can carry.
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The Roman prisons were holes carved into caves & the prisoners were thrown inside. They had access to nothing.
The more I study history, the more I think the Romans displayed a heck of a lot more intelligence than modern politicians (in some respects, not all). If the prisoners have access to nothing, how are they going to charge their cellphone batteries? Eventually the problem solves itself (dead phones).
Nah... they'll just use the sneakernet to carry them across the border.
Precisely. A quick read through consumeraffairs.org shows that some companies trend "good" and some trend "bad". Like Honda is good, and Hyundai is bad. (I had to get that car analogy in there.) ;-)
Correction:
"But if Verizon started limiting my access based on [my usage of bittorrent]....."
That's a good tactic, but it only works if you have an ISP that is limiting access (like Comcast). My ISP is Verizon and they apparently don't care what I download, even though I'm maxing out my line at 100 KB/s.
But if Verizon started limiting my access based on content, then yes I think bit-torrenting millions of copies of Linus sounds like a good method of protest. I could then sue Verizon on the grounds that they are blocking my LEGAL access to public domain and free-to-download software.
It's possible to lay-down 15 exemptions, and thereby keep the paycheck garnishment to a minimum. On Apirl 15 you will then be handed a bill of ~$10,000 by the IRS which you can choose not to pay.
The IRS will come after you of course, but Henry David Thoreau argued in the early 1800s that refusal to pay tax is a form of civil disobedience to let the politicians know you are not happy. Mr. Thoreau spent much time in jail to protest an ongoing war for which he refused to pay taxes.
I remember. The limitation was self-imposed by the designers because they wanted home users to connect their computers to 1970s and 80s-era television screens, and those televisions had a very low resolution. Computers moved past that limitation by mandating the purchase of an RGB or VGA monitor, but home gaming consoles still limited themselves to 640x240 in order to avoid chroma blur and interlace flicker.
Trivia - The Commodore 64 can do 80 characters if you have a copy of GEOS and a good S-video monitor. ;-)
Fortunately child nudity is still legal. Parents won't get arrested for taking photos of their children skinny dipping.
At least in Amerika. I don't know about Deutschland, Australia, or other zones that seem to be cracking-down on freedom of photographic expression.
I don't think a government can overtake another government's land simply by claiming an extension of water rights.
The government of New Jersey tried that tactic a few years ago in order to justify the building of an oil platform on the Delaware River. The NJ government claimed they own half the river and can do whatever they wish. The government of Delaware objected, and after digging through old documents dating to the 1600s, it was determined that Delaware controls the river adjacent to its capitol. The intervening birth of the United States had not changed or altered that prior claim. Therefore New Jersey's government was blocked by the Delaware government.*
If the territory of Sealand has prior claim to its land and local coastal waters, the UK cannot simply "take over" the place by whim, and I'm sure the EU version of the Supreme Court would hold this to be true. Sealand remains an independent government by previous land/water claims.
*
* The heart of the argument is that NJ wants oil and Delaware wants to protect "their" river from environmental destruction. Two governments with two goals are moving in seemingly opposite directions. The irony is that both governments are run by the same party (Democrats), and yet they still can't get along with one another.
No really.... it was formatted as a 1 megabyte hard drive. I don't know why my dorm president used that method, and I tried reformatting it to a larger size after he gave it to me, but without any success. I also thought maybe he had partitioned the HDD as a 1 megabyte and 19 megabyte, but I couldn't find any other partitions except the main 1 megabyte one.
It was very weird. I finally reached the conclusion that after ~10 years of student abuse in the study lounge, something had probably damaged the hard drive, or the controller, such that it couldn't see anything higher than a megabyte. I eventually gave up and sold it on Ebay.
I still have my Commodore Amiga 500, without hard drive, which is fine because the entire OS fits on a single floppy. Works great.
Instead of begging for handouts, why don't you try a free market approach - CHARGE for it. If I were in this guy's shoes, I would set up displays in my basement and charge an entrance fee to tourists to "come see the history of computing".
Another possibility is to join forces with a local car museum, to see if you can borrow an empty room for your computer history display. Since people are already looking at the old cars, they're likely to have an interest in anything that's old, including computers. Don't display everything, but just pick out a few key computers that changed the course of history and charge $1 to enter the room. Perhaps have one of them (like the C=64) setup to play a game (say Arkanoid).
Most of us are engineers. We're used to solving problems. "Funding" is just another problem to be solved; be creative.
"Superiority" is the key.
I remember back when I was a teen, we had arguments about whose computer was faster (Amiga versus Atari versus IBM) and compared CPU speeds or graphics' capabilities. It was a competitive viewpoint to demonstrate you had a bigger dick... er, machine than your peers. I imagine teens today still have the same arguments, and still try to use their computers to "one-up" the competition. When their professor discusses old technology they probably feel vastly superior to the old fossil.
"20 megabytes??? Ha! How tiny he is."
You are correct. I can do more things with an Cellphone than I could do with my old full-sized Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 back when I was a student. In fact most cellphones are powerful enough to emulate those old machines and play the classic videogames.
The only flaw I can see with cellphones is their tiny keyboard. Perhaps Apple or some other maker should repackage their phones to include laptop-sized keyboards so users can run some limited software (like MS Word). They could call it the Iphone or Ipod lapbook.
Most channels are now using virtual numbers. So for example channels 2 and 3 are actually broadcasting at real channels 22 and 31, right where TV Band/whitespace Devices can overlap them.
Back in 1994 my academic advisor said computer programmers were like busdrivers - skilled people who knew how to operate a machine. At the time I thought he was nuts, but if software continues down this path of being "available for free" then programmers might find their salaries slowly declining until, circa 2050, their pay is equal to a busdriver (about $10 an hour; $15 if unionized).
That would be sad but that's the direction open-source software seems to be leading us. We used to have skilled operators connecting calls, but that job was gradually by citizens making their own connections. Soon programmers might find themselves replaced by citizens writing their own software.
When I arrived at Penn State my dorm president gave my an old Commodore Amiga 2000HD with a 1 megabyte hard drive. I tried a couple times to reformat it to a larger size, but it stubbornly refused. So there I was, stuck with a hard drive no bigger than a floppy. Not too useful.
If some freshmen laughed at me I'd remind them that just in the time since they were born (circa 1990) to their first year of college, we've moved from 10 megahertz to 3000 megahertz, and from 1 megabyte to 4000 megabytes. Someday their "uberpowerful PC" will look pretty primitive when Intel develops 300 gigahertz Hydra-Cores with 2 terabytes of RAM. Technology moves very rapidly. (I'd also remind them that they're going to look back at their photos in ten years and laugh at themselves.)
I disagree. For me pulling out my old Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 is as satisfying as firing-up the old Atari VCS, Nintendo ES, or Sega Genesis. I still enjoy playing those old 8/16 bit games, because even though they are 2-dimensional they are just as much fun as playing a Gameboy..... even the kids enjoy the old C=64 games when I hook them up.
As for productivity, well, I have experimented with GEOS 64 and text-based websurfing, and it works, the only flaw being the pace. GEOS works just great (like a black-n-white Macintosh) until you try to print something out and all you have is a dot-matrix printer. Or websurfing with a slow 2 kbit/s modem. Even so I still enjoy the nostalgia factor.
That doesn't sound so bad. Most advertisers already use cookies to track your web-browsing and thereby tailor the ads.
True.
In which case, once I learned BT is blocking my revenue-source (ads), I'd no longer allow them to access google.com for free. I'd start charging BT to cover my expenses.
It owns the forum. It can censor its privately-owned forum.
Which is what I said originally.
Learn to read.
There are already lawyers and judges stripping the Patriot Act and disabling the law as unconstitutional. Whereas in the UK, no constitution means the Patriot Act would be held in force indefinitely.
And freedom of speech is as easy to overturn in the UK Parliament as a 50%+1 vote. To overturn the Constitution's guarantee is much tougher (50%+1 in Congress, the president's signature, AND 3/4 of the State Legislatures' agreeing to same... the last provision being very difficult to attain).
Ridiculous? Hardly. To quote James Madison: "If men were angels, we would not need government. If leaders were angels, we would not need a Constitution. But men being men, we need a Constitution to restrain the leaders from causing harm to the people." The British Parliament has nothing to limit the damage it can cause to its own citizens. All it takes is a simple 50%+1 vote to take away British citizens freedoms. Like speech.
If you can't show images of sex, how are you supposed to teach them sex ed?
I always prefer the "more power to the people" solution. Mandate that all boxes/televisions have an On/off switch. "On" allows Echostar, Dish, whoever to see what shows you watch and adjust the advertising accordingly. "Off" sends absolutely no information back to the companies. Let each person decided for him/herself how much they want to share.
In the 1980s, a popular TV program like The Cosby Show might have captured half the viewers in the entire United States; today's most popular shows, like American Idol, are lucky to capture a fourth of the whole audience.
Completely off. Even the Superbowl, the most-watched american program, only gets about 40% of the audience.
Popular shows like Cosby and Star Trek TNG were watched by about 15% of the 1980s U.S., and American Idol attracts about 9% of 2000-era U.S.
+1
And I'll add a little quote from Albert Einstein: "Why bother to meoorize that which you can look up in a book?" The ability to DO the problem and solve the equations is more important than to remember how many megabits a PCI Express can carry.