I hate to sound like an advertisement, but as a rule I'm probably 2-300% more likely to donate money if people use the uber-easy Amazon Honor system. I don't have to give anyone new my personal information, it all happens in a few quick clicks, and it doesn't have fits with my debit card like PayPal does (they require a 1 time refunded charge to verify the card since it isn't linked to a billing address like a credit card is - I know it's for my own good, but knowing that it would take a month to process always saps my will.)
In this case I might go against my set ways, but if they'd set up an Honor System account I wouldn't be writing this note right now, I'd be donating!
If they don't bite, lower the price...
on
Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The solar power plant on the moon idea has been around for quite a while, but the last time I heard of it, the estimated cost was more than a trillion dollars (I seem to recall it being closer to 2 trillion dollars). Even though it cost so much, the scientist (I can't remember who it was, so it might be the same guy) said it could make back all its costs in under a year by selling power to everyone on Earth at a rate that was lower than what we would pay otherwise.
What I'm curious to know is has the cost of space missions gone down so much since then that it can now be done for the $59 billion listed in the article, rather than the >$1 trillion number cited a number of years ago, or is there some new trick (sure sounds the same), or is this guy just making up a lower number so that people will actually listen to him? Anyone out there heard of this Prof. Criswell before? I'd really like to believe that this is a viable option.
Ummm... I really wish I could say this in a way that didn't sound like a flame, but if no one including yourself can read your handwriting, isn't it possible that you don't know how to write? Oh sure, in one sense you know how, you know what shape all the letters are supposed to have, but you don't know how to form those shapes with your own hand. That's not the fault of the people writing the software, that's the fault of your elementary school teachers.
Apple's educational market-share is rigid, teachers don't want to learn new systems. We're always having to make sure everything works on Windows and Macs because we know that the majority of school computers are made by Apple. That's why Macromedia's authoring products (Flash/Director/Authorware) are so popular for games aimed at the younger audience - they allow easy cross-platform development.
The only problem with the early comics is that they would take for freaking ever to come out, it seems like there was a time they were trickling out at a pace of one comic per year. (Either that, or my local comic shop had a tar-slow distributor.)
The problem with the Tick today, is that they've stopped taking all that time, and instead of a new villain each issue that makes you fall out of your chair laughing by mere concept alone, they've turned it into a formula where they just reuse the same characters over and over. It used to be that every story (or story arc as it were) was a new joke on some comic cliche. The first issue was a Superman joke, the next few were about ninjas, Chairface was a from Dick Tracy, that samurai guy was a great take on the Lone Wolf-type samurai character, etc. Take the Red Scare, for example, he was really funny because of his complete irrelevance - in the early 1990 the Soviet Union had recently become an also-ran in the super power race, and so a Soviet Union styled enemy attacking a memorial to the creator of the Dewy Decimal system was a great joke. (The irrelevant attack the irrelevant.)
That wasn't not the only problem, though. In my mind, the Tick doesn't translate directly to television. The funny part of the Tick was that it was a comic book making fun of comic books. When you make the thing a cartoon, if it was going to remain funny, it needed to become a parody of cartoons. When you just move the stories over from the comics you get a parody of comics in cartoon form... which isn't that great. So, if they miss their mark again, my guess is that it will be because they continue to parody comics but now in Live Action form. In fact, live action is probably the worst medium for the character... how many live action superhero TV shows have their been? Batman, Spiderman, Flash, Hulk... most of them either had an extremely short run or were *cough, Batman* self-parodying.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong, and the show turns out to be the best thing since the original run.
Of course the military uses external software. It's my understanding that the Navy has even standardized on NT. I really haven't heard of any branch custom creating OSes that they then widely depoly, though I could be wrong.
If I recall correctly, there was even a notable Navy incident a few years back due to buggy Microsoft software... ah here it is: Navy Smartship "crashes" while running NT.
They're saying that because buckets of cash are spent on digital video projects, and some of those projects may fail, they're worried that the GPL won't protect them from being sued by people who claim their product is responsible for that failure. If a video project comes in late/and or over budget that uses Broadcast 2000, they're worried that they'll get sued for the damages.
It's similar to someone refusing to post any more legal opinions on Slashdot because they don't think IANAL will protect them if someone actually takes their legal advice, and loses money/realizes damages because of it.
This is bad news, if it's an accurate assesment because one of the key benefits of the GPL is a release from liability. If you just put something in the public domain then someone can still sue you if using it damages them, but if they use it under the terms of the GPL there's no explicit or implied warranty. So, let's just hope these guys are wrong!
I've recently been consumed by the non-violent fun found in Bridge Builder (fulfill all your secret engineering fantasies), as well as the cartoon physics motorcycle puzzle game. Bridge Builder is Free (as in Beer), and the motorcycle game has an 18 level shareware version.
Hemos knows Jesus? Maybe he can let us know which distribution The Lord uses, and if he prefers vi or emacs - then we can decide for ourselves if he's smart or not.
Because MS Bugs == Planned Obsolescence
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 2
Well, I'm not saying it's really planned, but it seems they never really stop finding bugs in Microsoft's software. At the same time, they do stop issuing patches for software that is no longer officially supported. If Code Red had emerged 5 years from now, and Microsoft simply said the fix was to upgrade to Windows XXL (or whatever it'll be in 2006) then you'd have to choose having your HD repeatedly formatted by script kiddies, or upgrading to the latest version of Windows (or switching to Linux, but I'm betting that if you're still holding onto Windows 2000 six years after it came out, you're not the type to take change lightly.)
Right... society will accept that right after they accept that one identical twin has no rights and the other does. After all, one is just the clone of the other. I would hope they'd have the decency to at least let twin #1 be the master of slave twin #2. You'd hate to sepatate siblings.:)
We aren't going to have a war over clone rights, because people will reguard clones as human. The trend has been to assign more rights to things we would have thought of as having no rights previously, pets, fetuses, the mentally handicapped, etc., not the other way around.
People who assume clones will be considered less than human are assuming turn of the (20th)century attitudes are more prevailant than they currently are. They're predicting our past, not our future. (Don't tell me that those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it, that cliche doesn't mean that everything that happened once will happen again.) With possible Trilateral Commision maneuverings aside, the historical trend has always been that generally people don't lose rights, they gain them. (The exceptions are when the rights of one group [and I do mean rights, not privilages] conflict with the rights of another group. You could say that Roe v. Wade made fetuses lose rights, but you could also argue that it allowed women to gain them.)
So if clones are already starting off being considered humans at this early stage of things, they probably won't ever fall into the inhuman category. That short circuits most clone wars scenarios right there. I would guess that most of those stories were written as a response to fears of racial wars (which were not so long ago considered a real threat)and not intended to be true predictions of the future.
If all goes well, when the PBS Kids: Reading Rainbow site goes live in a month or so, the theme song will be there in Ogg Vorbis. (There's a preview site up there currently.)
But, it'll also be there as MP3, RealAudio, and *gasp* Windows Media. As a practical matter, I don't really expect many people to download the Ogg file (I'm not really sure I expect many people to download any of the files, really.) We're putting it up there as Ogg Vorbis for 2 reasons. First of all, it's a matter of choice. Looking at the end user, we want people to be able to get the data they want, in the format they want it, with a minimum of fuss and muss. Secondly, and unofficially, it's a small show of support for free and open standards; a very minor political statement, if you will.
Which, to be quite honest, doesn't really bode well for the format. I'm not sure I can think of many technologies that overtook marketplace momentum because they were ideologically appealing.
What so far, most of what I've seen people post are Microsoft apologists, and predictions that it's all overblown, and confused people who think Cringly's confused because they can't follow all his threads.
No he's not saying viruses spread over raw sockets. He's saying that many viruses/worms like Code Red have the end effect of creating a denial of service attack; denial of service attacks are very difficult to block when the addresses of the packets are spoofed. He's saying that in the future, when 90%+ of the world is running Windows XP (and Windows 95/98/ME/2000 has been discontinued by Microsoft- ever try to get Windows 3.1 anymore?), and 90% of those people haven't used third party tools to secure their computers, there will be a continuous series of distributed denial of service attacks, and viruses like Code Red which will effectivly bring the Internet to a halt. (Most servers aren't running Microsoft OSes, but most of the clients are- the fact that Apache is the most used server is completly unimportant in this matter. Code Red isn't as bad as predicted because most people don't run Windows 2000, but XP unifies the server and consumer OSes so it'll be running on a very large number of computers, making these future problems several orders of magnitute worse.) The end result (as predicted by Cringly) is that Microsoft will extend and embrace TCP to get the Internet (which will be rendered useless by script kiddies and/or attacking foreign governments) working again.
Once implemented, if your web server doesn't speak MS/TCP then no one with Windows will be able to see your site. (And the only servers that will have bug free implementations of MS/TCP will be running a Microsoft OS.) Think that little ploy is hardly enough to overturn the Internet? Then why am I using IE right now? Their ploys have undone greater marketshares.
Someone said that Cisco is working on a way to prevent spoofed IPs at the router, if this is true, then this speculation is for naught. However, the fact that this is plausible should be a wake up call. Microsoft owns all of us. This is the straw that broke the camel's back, I'll resign before I install Windows XP. Microsoft's abuse of their monopoly is an affront to freedom. Live free, or die.
I saw this at the Game Developer's Conference, and I'm not sure if it would be worth the cost, time, and trouble to set this up in the home. Even stranger, they had a little hood to display the lights on if you were using a laptop.
Though I'm not sure if it's worth it as a user, as a developer it's probably not a bad idea to include support, they assured me that there was just a small (10 lines or so?) chunk of code you'd have to include so that systems with this installed could use it with your game. If that's true, why not? I can't remember for certain, but I don't think support was tied to DirectX. (I know I asked, but I can't remember the answer.)
As an aside, this might actually be an example where patents indirectly spurred innovation. I talked with someone who knew the behind the scenes story of this company, and apparently they made so much money from products based on one of their patents that they decided they could throw some of that at a wacky idea based on their technology that they weren't sure would work. Even if Surround Light crashes and burns as an idea, their other products are going to keep them in the black.
The only reason to keep the collider on line at all right now is to try and be first, so as to win the Nobel Prize. They're replacing the collider with a better one, but they're afraid that while they're under construction Fermi will beat them to the punch. I thought this was supposed to be Science for Science's sake, not Nobel's sake.
First of all, this isn't just typical EMF radiation like you'd get from an electric razor. That's why it's currently under study. Science says beware, consequences are unknown. It's simple technophilia that would say without pause "don't worry- those scientists don't know what they're talking about, and even if they do, technology will save us!" Secondly, driving a car has known associated risks. The risks associated with using a wireless phone are currently unknown. Personally, I'm no expert on the effects of radiation on living cells, and even if I was, this seems to warrent further study. I'm going to wait and see what the experiments have to say.
About a year ago, when a wireless phone industry funded study said "we're kinda not sure... there's an outside chance that cell phones might cause cancer" I stopped using mine cold. Personally, I thought the study would show they were harmless. Even more, jaded by years of tobacco industry hoo-haw, I had expected a complete whitewash if things were bad. When the industry-funded study was ambivilant, I decided not to take chances.
When people ask you if there's a cell phone number you can be reached at, you just say "nope" and they'll give you a quizzical look- like you just fell off the turnip truck- but nothing really bad has ever happened to be because I didn't have one.
There's a chance that I'm hamstrining my career by not making myself availible like that, but I bet that career advancement looks pretty short-sighted when you're sitting on the terminal end of a brain tumor.
I hope that didn't sound like a flame. Those are just the honest reasons why I stopped. And no, I'm not saying that I think these phones necessarily cause cancer, I'm just saying that in my opinion, some things just aren't worth risking.
Basically, this sound like she wants to make music something that you license like software. You can have a copy of the Music CD for your car (you can often have a copy of a program for your laptop or home computer), but you have to make sure that only one copy is in use at a time. Woo hoo.
Maybe I'll just whistle a tune next time I want some music... oh wait, would I have to pay a performance fee?
I agree with you, as far as the current state of affairs goes; computers make a very poor replacement for basic teaching. I would just say that the problem isn't with the fact that we're using computers, but with the current popular implementations of computer teaching.
Let me make an analogy to see if I can be clear, let's take the television as a teaching device. Now, I think most people would say that television in general is detremental to learning, but think about good programs that you've seen, like Cosmos, or the PBS series The Civil War- in those instances the television has proven a very effective teaching tool, imparting not only knowledge, but understanding quite effectively, and efficiently.
I know that when I say whiz-bang, you probably think all fluff and no substance, but what I mean is using technology to add excitement and interest to an otherwise unintersting subject. We want kids to have a well rounded education, but not all kids like all topics, and I think that perhaps technology can be of help.
So, in summary I would agree with your basic premise that technology is often incorrecly being used as a panacea in education, but I would say that the problem is most likely not in the hardware, but in the particluar educational programs. I don't really have enough knowledge of educational software to speak about their current state.
I'm not sure, but I don't think that the reason for putting computers into schools is supposed to be to teach kids how to use computers. I think a lot of people learned to program mostly because there wasn't much else to do with computers back in the day.
Ostensibly, computers are in the classroom to help teach traditional school subjects. When teaching traditional subjects, the whiz-bang factor actually counts (as far as keeping the kid's attention), and the extra processor power of modern computers can pay off.
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In this case I might go against my set ways, but if they'd set up an Honor System account I wouldn't be writing this note right now, I'd be donating!
What I'm curious to know is has the cost of space missions gone down so much since then that it can now be done for the $59 billion listed in the article, rather than the >$1 trillion number cited a number of years ago, or is there some new trick (sure sounds the same), or is this guy just making up a lower number so that people will actually listen to him? Anyone out there heard of this Prof. Criswell before? I'd really like to believe that this is a viable option.
Ummm... I really wish I could say this in a way that didn't sound like a flame, but if no one including yourself can read your handwriting, isn't it possible that you don't know how to write? Oh sure, in one sense you know how, you know what shape all the letters are supposed to have, but you don't know how to form those shapes with your own hand. That's not the fault of the people writing the software, that's the fault of your elementary school teachers.
Apple's educational market-share is rigid, teachers don't want to learn new systems. We're always having to make sure everything works on Windows and Macs because we know that the majority of school computers are made by Apple. That's why Macromedia's authoring products (Flash/Director/Authorware) are so popular for games aimed at the younger audience - they allow easy cross-platform development.
The only problem with the early comics is that they would take for freaking ever to come out, it seems like there was a time they were trickling out at a pace of one comic per year. (Either that, or my local comic shop had a tar-slow distributor.)
The problem with the Tick today, is that they've stopped taking all that time, and instead of a new villain each issue that makes you fall out of your chair laughing by mere concept alone, they've turned it into a formula where they just reuse the same characters over and over. It used to be that every story (or story arc as it were) was a new joke on some comic cliche. The first issue was a Superman joke, the next few were about ninjas, Chairface was a from Dick Tracy, that samurai guy was a great take on the Lone Wolf-type samurai character, etc. Take the Red Scare, for example, he was really funny because of his complete irrelevance - in the early 1990 the Soviet Union had recently become an also-ran in the super power race, and so a Soviet Union styled enemy attacking a memorial to the creator of the Dewy Decimal system was a great joke. (The irrelevant attack the irrelevant.)
That wasn't not the only problem, though. In my mind, the Tick doesn't translate directly to television. The funny part of the Tick was that it was a comic book making fun of comic books. When you make the thing a cartoon, if it was going to remain funny, it needed to become a parody of cartoons. When you just move the stories over from the comics you get a parody of comics in cartoon form... which isn't that great. So, if they miss their mark again, my guess is that it will be because they continue to parody comics but now in Live Action form. In fact, live action is probably the worst medium for the character... how many live action superhero TV shows have their been? Batman, Spiderman, Flash, Hulk... most of them either had an extremely short run or were *cough, Batman* self-parodying.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong, and the show turns out to be the best thing since the original run.
Of course the military uses external software. It's my understanding that the Navy has even standardized on NT. I really haven't heard of any branch custom creating OSes that they then widely depoly, though I could be wrong.
If I recall correctly, there was even a notable Navy incident a few years back due to buggy Microsoft software... ah here it is: Navy Smartship "crashes" while running NT.
It's similar to someone refusing to post any more legal opinions on Slashdot because they don't think IANAL will protect them if someone actually takes their legal advice, and loses money/realizes damages because of it.
This is bad news, if it's an accurate assesment because one of the key benefits of the GPL is a release from liability. If you just put something in the public domain then someone can still sue you if using it damages them, but if they use it under the terms of the GPL there's no explicit or implied warranty. So, let's just hope these guys are wrong!
I've recently been consumed by the non-violent fun found in Bridge Builder (fulfill all your secret engineering fantasies), as well as the cartoon physics motorcycle puzzle game. Bridge Builder is Free (as in Beer), and the motorcycle game has an 18 level shareware version.
Hemos knows Jesus? Maybe he can let us know which distribution The Lord uses, and if he prefers vi or emacs - then we can decide for ourselves if he's smart or not.
Well, I'm not saying it's really planned, but it seems they never really stop finding bugs in Microsoft's software. At the same time, they do stop issuing patches for software that is no longer officially supported. If Code Red had emerged 5 years from now, and Microsoft simply said the fix was to upgrade to Windows XXL (or whatever it'll be in 2006) then you'd have to choose having your HD repeatedly formatted by script kiddies, or upgrading to the latest version of Windows (or switching to Linux, but I'm betting that if you're still holding onto Windows 2000 six years after it came out, you're not the type to take change lightly.)
Right... society will accept that right after they accept that one identical twin has no rights and the other does. After all, one is just the clone of the other. I would hope they'd have the decency to at least let twin #1 be the master of slave twin #2. You'd hate to sepatate siblings. :)
People who assume clones will be considered less than human are assuming turn of the (20th)century attitudes are more prevailant than they currently are. They're predicting our past, not our future. (Don't tell me that those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it, that cliche doesn't mean that everything that happened once will happen again.) With possible Trilateral Commision maneuverings aside, the historical trend has always been that generally people don't lose rights, they gain them. (The exceptions are when the rights of one group [and I do mean rights, not privilages] conflict with the rights of another group. You could say that Roe v. Wade made fetuses lose rights, but you could also argue that it allowed women to gain them.)
So if clones are already starting off being considered humans at this early stage of things, they probably won't ever fall into the inhuman category. That short circuits most clone wars scenarios right there. I would guess that most of those stories were written as a response to fears of racial wars (which were not so long ago considered a real threat)and not intended to be true predictions of the future.
But, it'll also be there as MP3, RealAudio, and *gasp* Windows Media. As a practical matter, I don't really expect many people to download the Ogg file (I'm not really sure I expect many people to download any of the files, really.) We're putting it up there as Ogg Vorbis for 2 reasons. First of all, it's a matter of choice. Looking at the end user, we want people to be able to get the data they want, in the format they want it, with a minimum of fuss and muss. Secondly, and unofficially, it's a small show of support for free and open standards; a very minor political statement, if you will.
Which, to be quite honest, doesn't really bode well for the format. I'm not sure I can think of many technologies that overtook marketplace momentum because they were ideologically appealing.
No he's not saying viruses spread over raw sockets. He's saying that many viruses/worms like Code Red have the end effect of creating a denial of service attack; denial of service attacks are very difficult to block when the addresses of the packets are spoofed. He's saying that in the future, when 90%+ of the world is running Windows XP (and Windows 95/98/ME/2000 has been discontinued by Microsoft- ever try to get Windows 3.1 anymore?), and 90% of those people haven't used third party tools to secure their computers, there will be a continuous series of distributed denial of service attacks, and viruses like Code Red which will effectivly bring the Internet to a halt. (Most servers aren't running Microsoft OSes, but most of the clients are- the fact that Apache is the most used server is completly unimportant in this matter. Code Red isn't as bad as predicted because most people don't run Windows 2000, but XP unifies the server and consumer OSes so it'll be running on a very large number of computers, making these future problems several orders of magnitute worse.) The end result (as predicted by Cringly) is that Microsoft will extend and embrace TCP to get the Internet (which will be rendered useless by script kiddies and/or attacking foreign governments) working again.
Once implemented, if your web server doesn't speak MS/TCP then no one with Windows will be able to see your site. (And the only servers that will have bug free implementations of MS/TCP will be running a Microsoft OS.) Think that little ploy is hardly enough to overturn the Internet? Then why am I using IE right now? Their ploys have undone greater marketshares.
Someone said that Cisco is working on a way to prevent spoofed IPs at the router, if this is true, then this speculation is for naught. However, the fact that this is plausible should be a wake up call. Microsoft owns all of us. This is the straw that broke the camel's back, I'll resign before I install Windows XP. Microsoft's abuse of their monopoly is an affront to freedom. Live free, or die.
Though I'm not sure if it's worth it as a user, as a developer it's probably not a bad idea to include support, they assured me that there was just a small (10 lines or so?) chunk of code you'd have to include so that systems with this installed could use it with your game. If that's true, why not? I can't remember for certain, but I don't think support was tied to DirectX. (I know I asked, but I can't remember the answer.)
As an aside, this might actually be an example where patents indirectly spurred innovation. I talked with someone who knew the behind the scenes story of this company, and apparently they made so much money from products based on one of their patents that they decided they could throw some of that at a wacky idea based on their technology that they weren't sure would work. Even if Surround Light crashes and burns as an idea, their other products are going to keep them in the black.
The only reason to keep the collider on line at all right now is to try and be first, so as to win the Nobel Prize. They're replacing the collider with a better one, but they're afraid that while they're under construction Fermi will beat them to the punch. I thought this was supposed to be Science for Science's sake, not Nobel's sake.
For Katz to review Tunnels and Trolls- he's been sitting on his review copy for about 25 years.
First of all, this isn't just typical EMF radiation like you'd get from an electric razor. That's why it's currently under study. Science says beware, consequences are unknown. It's simple technophilia that would say without pause "don't worry- those scientists don't know what they're talking about, and even if they do, technology will save us!" Secondly, driving a car has known associated risks. The risks associated with using a wireless phone are currently unknown. Personally, I'm no expert on the effects of radiation on living cells, and even if I was, this seems to warrent further study. I'm going to wait and see what the experiments have to say.
When people ask you if there's a cell phone number you can be reached at, you just say "nope" and they'll give you a quizzical look- like you just fell off the turnip truck- but nothing really bad has ever happened to be because I didn't have one.
There's a chance that I'm hamstrining my career by not making myself availible like that, but I bet that career advancement looks pretty short-sighted when you're sitting on the terminal end of a brain tumor.
I hope that didn't sound like a flame. Those are just the honest reasons why I stopped. And no, I'm not saying that I think these phones necessarily cause cancer, I'm just saying that in my opinion, some things just aren't worth risking.
Maybe I'll just whistle a tune next time I want some music... oh wait, would I have to pay a performance fee?
Let me make an analogy to see if I can be clear, let's take the television as a teaching device. Now, I think most people would say that television in general is detremental to learning, but think about good programs that you've seen, like Cosmos, or the PBS series The Civil War- in those instances the television has proven a very effective teaching tool, imparting not only knowledge, but understanding quite effectively, and efficiently.
I know that when I say whiz-bang, you probably think all fluff and no substance, but what I mean is using technology to add excitement and interest to an otherwise unintersting subject. We want kids to have a well rounded education, but not all kids like all topics, and I think that perhaps technology can be of help.
So, in summary I would agree with your basic premise that technology is often incorrecly being used as a panacea in education, but I would say that the problem is most likely not in the hardware, but in the particluar educational programs. I don't really have enough knowledge of educational software to speak about their current state.
Ostensibly, computers are in the classroom to help teach traditional school subjects. When teaching traditional subjects, the whiz-bang factor actually counts (as far as keeping the kid's attention), and the extra processor power of modern computers can pay off.
Things keep looking better and better. The BBC just posted an article saying that scientists have found evidence of surface water on Mars.
The internal links don't work anymore. Here's all the pages:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Follow this link.