Um, the transistor didn't wipe out the vacuum tube. Trust me, tube-based guitar amplifiers sound a million times better than anything base on transistors. And they're still being made.
There's no such thing as an obsolete technology, merely one that's got a smaller application base than it used to have.
Furthermore, with this billion-fold speed increase, what kind of peripherals are you going to have?
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
For god knows how long, Sega has been the Apple of the video game console market. Always "on the verge of bankruptcy" or "going to be bought by company X"...
Funny how they always whip out a new product -- the Genesis and the Dreamcast, for example -- to keep them afloat awhile longer. Kind of like Macs.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
Why not write a browser plugin that can understand and translate LaTeX? That would be the most simple solution.
HTML/XHTML is pretty much a given -- it's going to be around until the End of Time, just like Cobol. You'll never outright replace it, but you can certainly enhance it or supplement it.
Well, genius, if this is what telemeters do, why don't you explain telomeres to us?
(Hint, hint.)
As for your demigods statement, bear in mind that that isn't entirely true. 1. Injuries and accidents will still take lives. 2. If your cells don't divide anymore, or do so under controlled conditions, how will you heal properly?
Funny how PhDs feel like they're qualified to make "expert opinions" on areas outside their specialty. It is clearly obvious that this schmoe is out of his league, because:
He has a PhD in Englishnot Sociology. (No flames against English degrees... I have one, fer Chrissakes.)
He obviously never tried to become part of a 'virtual community'
Personally, I've been on the Net since my days in the Army, back in 91-93, but didn't start really delving into it until 94. I railed against IRC, chat rooms, virtual communities, etc., until I tried it. I've spent the last six years as a regular on one IRC channel, and have developed lasting friendships, even though I've never met most of these people face-to-face.
Dr. Lockard, please go back to English and leave social commentary to the sociologists, and the Internet to people who actually have experience with it.
This is, unfortunately, neutron-rich fusion -- ie.: a free neutron is produced as part of the end result -- and will, unfortunately, result in the need for a "radiation blanket" around the core of the reactor, and this core will ultimately, thought the absorption of those free neutrons, become radioactive over time.
Disposable muon-presuaded fusion reactors? Great. More nuclear waste.
I can see this as being beneficial, and certainly the radioactive material won't be nearly as nasty as the shit coming out of "modern" fission piles. (Remember, the first working fission reactor was built back in the 1920's a the University of Chicago...under the bleachers at the football stadium.) My concern, however, is that this is going to be seen as long-term solution, when we should be looking for a solution for hydrogen-hydrogen fusion which will not have the problem of those pesky free neutrons.
Statements such as those made by Mr. Heckler smack of modern-day corporate imperialism. It is apparent that Sony feels that an illegal acts they commit -- and believe me, firewalling someone's Net service without permission is illegal -- is justified as it protects their holy revenue streams. Firebrand statements such as these are merely stirring up a hornet's nest. Do you really think that the millions of crackers out there are going to let Sony go unpunished? Furthermore, is it really effective to spend the time and money to block Napster when people will find ways to bypass it within 24 hours of the wall coming up?
Sony needs to realize that it relies on one thing: consumers. If you piss us off, you lose us and the revenue we generate for you. Your colors are showing through, Mr. Heckler, and on the Internet, no one likes a big-money control-freak corporate imperialist.
Personally, I had plans in the next few months for a Playstation 2 and a new Sony DVD player. Those plans have changed. I am now calling for an open boycott of Sony until they retract Mr. Heckler's statement and confirm that they have no plans to engage in what amounts to "net-based warfare".
The legal systems in the United States and the rest of the world exist so that you may seek to resolve your issues peacefully without causing overt inconvenience or harm to others, and Sony's blatant determination to do "whatever it takes" shows complete and utter disrespect for the legal system.
Obviously, this guy subscribes to the "big dumb" mission plan. A gravity slingshot around Venus is *not* needed for a manned Mars mission. Read Zubrin's book about the Mars Direct plan. Get a clue. This plan is the only way a manned Mars mission will ever happen.
Okay, here's the breakdown of the last 24 hours and the historical numbers as well. This board doesn't make it worth the money -- it's a little faster than the historical average, and a little slower than the last-24 hour average.
On a 604e processor @300MHz, I'm averaging a block every 22 hr 58 min 22.2 sec. Can't wait to upgrade to dual G4's and OS X.
Re:Hey! *I* just read this book
on
Calculating God
·
· Score: 1
I would have to say that Robert Sawyer's work is some of the best sci-fi I've come across recently. I've read everything up to this point, with the exception of Calculating God, which is on my short list at the moment.
This is probably the best book currently in print for the intelligent layman. I consider myself to understand more than the average schmoe about QM & relativity, and even those portions of the book were good enough to hold my interest.
If, for whatever reason, you want to understand more of relativity, QM, and string theory, pick this book up. I read the book about two months ago, and literally, could not put it down. I still find myself thinking about it, even two months later.
That, of course, is the same thinking that led to the Y2K debacle. "Oh, it won't be around for *that* long."
The way it's looking now, new TLD's are the only solution for this. The whole setup is too damn entrenched in people's minds. At this point, it would be like trying to get every human being to forget that GUIs exist and use straight command-line only UNIX.
Robert Zubrin already built a prototype that does this, and it uses Gaslight Era technology. It's mentioned in his book The Case for Mars, which should be standard reading for anyone involved in or interested in plans to put people on the Red Planet.
This isn't something you could terraform Mars with -- that takes engineering on much, much larger scales. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy -- Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars -- for lots of good ideas on how to do that.
Great NASA, how much did you spend on building a prototype of something we could have built anytime in the last hundred years?
Are you kidding? Doing things like this is in the company's own best interest.
You see, last year, Northwest Airlines employees staged a sick-out. They used the computers they had at home, which were supplied to them by Northwest Airlines. Through the lovely, corporate-owned legal system we have in this country, NWA got the computers seized from the homes, went through the email logs, and moved ahead with disciplinary action against the employees that had organized the sick-out.
Quite frankly, I'd be damned wary of any employer offering me a free computer and Net access. My life is so integrated with the Net right now, that it ain't funny. I pay my bills, manage my schedule, shop, and find entertainment online. The last thing my employer should have the ability to do is root around in my life -- so long as I show up on time, get the job done, and help the business move forward, there shouldn't be a problem.
What kills this for me is the inherent lack of morals in modern business. I can already see the legal proceedings looming just over the horizon. Wait a year or two, then I'll come back and say, "I told you so."
What this boils down to is this: the Progressive Policy Institute, is a lobby group, and gets its money from big business. The amendment to the DMCA is nothing more than the RIAA pumping funds at a bunch of lobbyists to protect itself from what it missed the first time through the legislative process.
Law is being written more and more by the corporate entities that are more worried about the bottom line than anything else. In the long run, this will lead to stagnation as change costs money, and that decreases the bottom line.
Let's face it. There's nothing we can do to slow down these lobbyists. These are the same people who lobby against alternative fuel sources in automobiles -- they don't give two shits about the long-term. As long as their profits continue to grow they have nothing to worry about. They just keep buying votes in Congress to ensure that their desires are enacted.
When did shit like this become acceptable? Sixty or seventy years ago, a Congressman that let his vote be swayed by money would have served his last term in Congress. Now, it's pretty much a given that anyone on the Hill is in the pocket of special interest groups.
So what will it take to end this? Ideally, it would be easy -- just put a legal end to campaign contributions (in ANY form), crush the bejesus out of lobbying groups, and slap term limits on Congressmen and Senators.
Will that ever happen? Not likely. What it will take is an all-out rebellion by the people. I'm not talking guns and bombs or violent uprisings.
What I propose is this: VoteGeek! We organize a grassroots level campaign to put people in the government at EVERY level that have NO previous experience in government, and no connection to big money. Generations X and Y have a lot more voting leverage than any other group, when you look at the numbers.
This is our future that the Baby Boomers and Big Money are fucking with. What are we waiting for?
What I find amusing is that the power source that runs Cassini is the same thing that powered the Apollo LEMs. The LEM for Apollo 13 has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean since 1970 without incident or leakage. As usual, the word nuclear spawns fear and stupidity in the ecologically-minded populace.
Don't get me wrong, I think that the environment is worth protecting, but we need to seriously think about knee-jerk reactions to things we're afraid of or don't understand. Cassini presented risk, but it was a risk small enough to warrant moving ahead with the mission.
A magsail using the same power source would embody less risk, as the magsail craft would not employ an Earth flyby to gain momentum.
It's nice to see NASA taking the long view of things, but when you consider the alternatives, it seems a little nuts to be considering building a solar sail now or in the next 10 years.
The better alternative would be a magsail, which should be more feasible in 10 years and will weigh less than a ligthsail.
A magsail would consist of a loop of high-temperature superconducting wire. When a charge is run through it, the magnetic field created deflects the solar wind and imparts velocity to the spacecraft.
Downside is, you have to carry a power source. Upside is, with the weight saved in changing from a lightsail to a magsail, this should be negligible. Use a nuclear-thermal battery like in Cassini (about 72 pounds), fire that probe on a close gravity slingshot around the sun, and as it comes around the direction you're aiming for, unfurl the magsail, power that puppy up, and you're *gone*
(Incidentally, these are used in the book "Encounter with Tiber" by John Barnes and Buzz Aldrin. Don't get scared away by the famous name on the cover...it's a great book, and I've been praying that they make a sequel.
In the case of a Mac server, you have two rather esoteric options:
1. Applescript CGI. There's a good tutorial on this here. And I recommend Applescript for Dummies, which, despite its title, is a pretty good foundation in the language. (And about the only thing still in print on the subject, which is odd.)
2. RealBasic CGI. RealBasic is a version of VB for the Mac, produced by a company in Texas (IIRC). It's a solid little package, and someone out there has written module for RB to allow CGI functions...
It would appear that communications has developed to the point where it is coming full-circle. We have developed from the verbal tradition at the tribal level to a hierarchical mass-media situation in which the individual has little voice and even less decision in the content of the information flow to a modern hybrid -- anyone can have a voice, anyone can choose what they want to know more about, and anyone anywhere in the world can access that information.
Why, you may ask, is this important?
The methodology of communications directly affects the socio-political structures of its culture. Back in the pre-writing days, verbal tradition tied tribes together. Interactivity (the ability of people to question the material and get direct responses) existed, but the ability to reliably exchange that information with people outside the tribe was inhibited for obvious reasons. This basically creates a socio-political structure that is inherently small (no more than a few hundred people per group), and a structure that is more or less equal.
Mass media (printing press era up to the dawn of the Internet) was basically the opposite. You lacked interactivity, but your message could reach large numbers of people with ease. This system allows for a more authoritarian setup/more rigid power structure, as communications become more one-way, people become more and more used to being told what to think and are more likely to follow along.
What the Internet has done is to combine these two forms -- and as a result, the socio-political structure of the world is beginning to change. The lashing-out of religions, governments, and the Average Joe is due to a realization, at least on a subconscious level, that the old ways of doing things are going to go away.
What's happening is that the new methodology of communication is creating more of a global tribe than a culture.
Culture is something that is forced upon us by mass media, where tribal associations are something we create ourselves in response to our basic human needs.
Everyone has certain material and spiritual needs, and the Internet allows us to fulfill those needs in a new method that has nothing to do with the current socio-political structure.
Will the outcome be bloody? Maybe. Maybe not. But whatever the case, change is afoot.
I'm going to open that pipe and sneak some organics in there. That way, those lovely GHz+ processors can pump their life-evolving microwaves into the water and build myself some new life forms.:-)
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Um, the transistor didn't wipe out the vacuum tube. Trust me, tube-based guitar amplifiers sound a million times better than anything base on transistors. And they're still being made.
There's no such thing as an obsolete technology, merely one that's got a smaller application base than it used to have.
Furthermore, with this billion-fold speed increase, what kind of peripherals are you going to have?
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
Are you daft? I kinda pictured her as a working-class Angelina Jolie. Yum!
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
For god knows how long, Sega has been the Apple of the video game console market. Always "on the verge of bankruptcy" or "going to be bought by company X"...
Funny how they always whip out a new product -- the Genesis and the Dreamcast, for example -- to keep them afloat awhile longer. Kind of like Macs.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
Why not write a browser plugin that can understand and translate LaTeX? That would be the most simple solution.
HTML/XHTML is pretty much a given -- it's going to be around until the End of Time, just like Cobol. You'll never outright replace it, but you can certainly enhance it or supplement it.
Well, it's only a matter of time before Plutino:
Well, genius, if this is what telemeters do, why don't you explain telomeres to us?
(Hint, hint.)
As for your demigods statement, bear in mind that that isn't entirely true. 1. Injuries and accidents will still take lives. 2. If your cells don't divide anymore, or do so under controlled conditions, how will you heal properly?
Food for thought, buddy.
Funny how PhDs feel like they're qualified to make "expert opinions" on areas outside their specialty. It is clearly obvious that this schmoe is out of his league, because:
Personally, I've been on the Net since my days in the Army, back in 91-93, but didn't start really delving into it until 94. I railed against IRC, chat rooms, virtual communities, etc., until I tried it. I've spent the last six years as a regular on one IRC channel, and have developed lasting friendships, even though I've never met most of these people face-to-face.
Dr. Lockard, please go back to English and leave social commentary to the sociologists, and the Internet to people who actually have experience with it.
This is, unfortunately, neutron-rich fusion -- ie.: a free neutron is produced as part of the end result -- and will, unfortunately, result in the need for a "radiation blanket" around the core of the reactor, and this core will ultimately, thought the absorption of those free neutrons, become radioactive over time.
Disposable muon-presuaded fusion reactors? Great. More nuclear waste.
I can see this as being beneficial, and certainly the radioactive material won't be nearly as nasty as the shit coming out of "modern" fission piles. (Remember, the first working fission reactor was built back in the 1920's a the University of Chicago...under the bleachers at the football stadium.) My concern, however, is that this is going to be seen as long-term solution, when we should be looking for a solution for hydrogen-hydrogen fusion which will not have the problem of those pesky free neutrons.
Statements such as those made by Mr. Heckler smack of modern-day corporate imperialism. It is apparent that Sony feels that an illegal acts they commit -- and believe me, firewalling someone's Net service without permission is illegal -- is justified as it protects their holy revenue streams. Firebrand statements such as these are merely stirring up a hornet's nest. Do you really think that the millions of crackers out there are going to let Sony go unpunished? Furthermore, is it really effective to spend the time and money to block Napster when people will find ways to bypass it within 24 hours of the wall coming up?
Sony needs to realize that it relies on one thing: consumers. If you piss us off, you lose us and the revenue we generate for you. Your colors are showing through, Mr. Heckler, and on the Internet, no one likes a big-money control-freak corporate imperialist.
Personally, I had plans in the next few months for a Playstation 2 and a new Sony DVD player. Those plans have changed. I am now calling for an open boycott of Sony until they retract Mr. Heckler's statement and confirm that they have no plans to engage in what amounts to "net-based warfare".
The legal systems in the United States and the rest of the world exist so that you may seek to resolve your issues peacefully without causing overt inconvenience or harm to others, and Sony's blatant determination to do "whatever it takes" shows complete and utter disrespect for the legal system.
Boycott Sony.
Obviously, this guy subscribes to the "big dumb" mission plan. A gravity slingshot around Venus is *not* needed for a manned Mars mission. Read Zubrin's book about the Mars Direct plan. Get a clue. This plan is the only way a manned Mars mission will ever happen.
Okay, here's the breakdown of the last 24 hours and the historical numbers as well. This board doesn't make it worth the money -- it's a little faster than the historical average, and a little slower than the last-24 hour average.
On a 604e processor @300MHz, I'm averaging a block every 22 hr 58 min 22.2 sec. Can't wait to upgrade to dual G4's and OS X.
I would have to say that Robert Sawyer's work is some of the best sci-fi I've come across recently. I've read everything up to this point, with the exception of Calculating God, which is on my short list at the moment.
I would also recommend:
Incidentally, his website is here.
This is probably the best book currently in print for the intelligent layman. I consider myself to understand more than the average schmoe about QM & relativity, and even those portions of the book were good enough to hold my interest.
If, for whatever reason, you want to understand more of relativity, QM, and string theory, pick this book up. I read the book about two months ago, and literally, could not put it down. I still find myself thinking about it, even two months later.
That, of course, is the same thinking that led to the Y2K debacle. "Oh, it won't be around for *that* long."
The way it's looking now, new TLD's are the only solution for this. The whole setup is too damn entrenched in people's minds. At this point, it would be like trying to get every human being to forget that GUIs exist and use straight command-line only UNIX.
Wow, NASA's done it again. Reinvented the wheel.
Robert Zubrin already built a prototype that does this, and it uses Gaslight Era technology. It's mentioned in his book The Case for Mars, which should be standard reading for anyone involved in or interested in plans to put people on the Red Planet.
This isn't something you could terraform Mars with -- that takes engineering on much, much larger scales. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy -- Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars -- for lots of good ideas on how to do that.
Great NASA, how much did you spend on building a prototype of something we could have built anytime in the last hundred years?
"Imagine a boot stamping on a human face. Forever."
George Orwell. Smart guy.
At the office, we've been building a map of the building, and we've been building skins of particular people to slap atop bots.
Sense any dissatisfaction? You should.
Are you kidding? Doing things like this is in the company's own best interest.
You see, last year, Northwest Airlines employees staged a sick-out. They used the computers they had at home, which were supplied to them by Northwest Airlines. Through the lovely, corporate-owned legal system we have in this country, NWA got the computers seized from the homes, went through the email logs, and moved ahead with disciplinary action against the employees that had organized the sick-out.
Quite frankly, I'd be damned wary of any employer offering me a free computer and Net access. My life is so integrated with the Net right now, that it ain't funny. I pay my bills, manage my schedule, shop, and find entertainment online. The last thing my employer should have the ability to do is root around in my life -- so long as I show up on time, get the job done, and help the business move forward, there shouldn't be a problem.
What kills this for me is the inherent lack of morals in modern business. I can already see the legal proceedings looming just over the horizon. Wait a year or two, then I'll come back and say, "I told you so."
What this boils down to is this: the Progressive Policy Institute, is a lobby group, and gets its money from big business. The amendment to the DMCA is nothing more than the RIAA pumping funds at a bunch of lobbyists to protect itself from what it missed the first time through the legislative process.
Law is being written more and more by the corporate entities that are more worried about the bottom line than anything else. In the long run, this will lead to stagnation as change costs money, and that decreases the bottom line.
Let's face it. There's nothing we can do to slow down these lobbyists. These are the same people who lobby against alternative fuel sources in automobiles -- they don't give two shits about the long-term. As long as their profits continue to grow they have nothing to worry about. They just keep buying votes in Congress to ensure that their desires are enacted.
When did shit like this become acceptable? Sixty or seventy years ago, a Congressman that let his vote be swayed by money would have served his last term in Congress. Now, it's pretty much a given that anyone on the Hill is in the pocket of special interest groups.
So what will it take to end this? Ideally, it would be easy -- just put a legal end to campaign contributions (in ANY form), crush the bejesus out of lobbying groups, and slap term limits on Congressmen and Senators.
Will that ever happen? Not likely. What it will take is an all-out rebellion by the people. I'm not talking guns and bombs or violent uprisings.
What I propose is this: VoteGeek! We organize a grassroots level campaign to put people in the government at EVERY level that have NO previous experience in government, and no connection to big money. Generations X and Y have a lot more voting leverage than any other group, when you look at the numbers.
This is our future that the Baby Boomers and Big Money are fucking with. What are we waiting for?
Ah, yes. You speak of Apple's little project codenamed "Star Trek" -- it was a port of MacOS 7 that ran on Intel boxes.
From what I've been told, it really *did* happen. I'd love to "come across" a copy to experiment with sometime...
What I find amusing is that the power source that runs Cassini is the same thing that powered the Apollo LEMs. The LEM for Apollo 13 has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean since 1970 without incident or leakage. As usual, the word nuclear spawns fear and stupidity in the ecologically-minded populace.
Don't get me wrong, I think that the environment is worth protecting, but we need to seriously think about knee-jerk reactions to things we're afraid of or don't understand. Cassini presented risk, but it was a risk small enough to warrant moving ahead with the mission.
A magsail using the same power source would embody less risk, as the magsail craft would not employ an Earth flyby to gain momentum.
It's nice to see NASA taking the long view of things, but when you consider the alternatives, it seems a little nuts to be considering building a solar sail now or in the next 10 years.
The better alternative would be a magsail, which should be more feasible in 10 years and will weigh less than a ligthsail.
A magsail would consist of a loop of high-temperature superconducting wire. When a charge is run through it, the magnetic field created deflects the solar wind and imparts velocity to the spacecraft.
Downside is, you have to carry a power source. Upside is, with the weight saved in changing from a lightsail to a magsail, this should be negligible. Use a nuclear-thermal battery like in Cassini (about 72 pounds), fire that probe on a close gravity slingshot around the sun, and as it comes around the direction you're aiming for, unfurl the magsail, power that puppy up, and you're *gone*
(Incidentally, these are used in the book "Encounter with Tiber" by John Barnes and Buzz Aldrin. Don't get scared away by the famous name on the cover...it's a great book, and I've been praying that they make a sequel.
In the case of a Mac server, you have two rather esoteric options:
1. Applescript CGI. There's a good tutorial on this here. And I recommend Applescript for Dummies, which, despite its title, is a pretty good foundation in the language. (And about the only thing still in print on the subject, which is odd.)
2. RealBasic CGI. RealBasic is a version of VB for the Mac, produced by a company in Texas (IIRC). It's a solid little package, and someone out there has written module for RB to allow CGI functions...
It would appear that communications has developed to the point where it is coming full-circle. We have developed from the verbal tradition at the tribal level to a hierarchical mass-media situation in which the individual has little voice and even less decision in the content of the information flow to a modern hybrid -- anyone can have a voice, anyone can choose what they want to know more about, and anyone anywhere in the world can access that information.
Why, you may ask, is this important?
The methodology of communications directly affects the socio-political structures of its culture. Back in the pre-writing days, verbal tradition tied tribes together. Interactivity (the ability of people to question the material and get direct responses) existed, but the ability to reliably exchange that information with people outside the tribe was inhibited for obvious reasons. This basically creates a socio-political structure that is inherently small (no more than a few hundred people per group), and a structure that is more or less equal.
Mass media (printing press era up to the dawn of the Internet) was basically the opposite. You lacked interactivity, but your message could reach large numbers of people with ease. This system allows for a more authoritarian setup/more rigid power structure, as communications become more one-way, people become more and more used to being told what to think and are more likely to follow along.
What the Internet has done is to combine these two forms -- and as a result, the socio-political structure of the world is beginning to change. The lashing-out of religions, governments, and the Average Joe is due to a realization, at least on a subconscious level, that the old ways of doing things are going to go away.
What's happening is that the new methodology of communication is creating more of a global tribe than a culture.
Culture is something that is forced upon us by mass media, where tribal associations are something we create ourselves in response to our basic human needs.
Everyone has certain material and spiritual needs, and the Internet allows us to fulfill those needs in a new method that has nothing to do with the current socio-political structure.
Will the outcome be bloody? Maybe. Maybe not. But whatever the case, change is afoot.
I'm going to open that pipe and sneak some organics in there. That way, those lovely GHz+ processors can pump their life-evolving microwaves into the water and build myself some new life forms. :-)