Perhaps a scientist wants tons and tons of money so that he/she can, uh, keep researching????
It's not like the medical field that has come to a point where more and more doctors see a patient and think of a yacht (not all! I do have 5 doctors in my family and about half are still pretty humble people). Most scientists still see something strange and thing of a big lab and more strange things!
What this means is that the hardware has gotten to a point where it can do tons of new stuff. It's the software that's lacking behind. With this much processing power, human like voice and image recognition, and at least the thought process of an insect should be theoretically possible, if only we had the s/w to do it.
Er. wasn't the prize US$10 million? That's what their site says.
Besides, the whole point of the program is for private manned spaceflight to be feasible at US$10M. Sure, you can throw a gazillion dollars to a space program and make it SUPER safe, but that's not what this is about. This is about risk, exploration, daring. The same kinds of things that made Lindberg famous and motivated an entire industry to make trans-atlantic flights open to the public. Remember this competition is modeled after the one lindberg won.
Most likely someone will die trying to win the prize and they know it. So do the competing teams. I can't find a link, but the Xprize promoters themselves have said so.
I hope everyone realizes that they're doing this for PR purposes. Right now there are lots of government that are trying to get away from MS products so that they don't put all their information in the hands of an American Company. Also, this is one of the main selling points of OSS vs. MS. As soon as they feel people aren't paying that much attention to security, they'll back away from "cumbersome nuances" like security
I'll buy it that they really care about this stuff when they start building software over previous security-related experience, and I'm not talking patches here, I'm talking OS re-writes based on what works and doesn't security wise.
It's very inexpensive compared to the REALLY expensive, up to $2,500 options from Microsoft and the usual high profile H/W vendors.
Would I buy one if it has the right form factor and usability? hell yeah! I'm a consultant and go to meetings all day carrying a similar size and weight leather portfolio for note taking, PLUS a Sony Clie and stowaway keyboard (on a combined cleather case) for my electronic needs (more extensive note taking during longer meetings, PIM stuff). With one of these tablets I'd probably end up with one, more powerful item where I can take all kinds of notes and have all my apps instead of their lighter sucky versions found on PDA's. Besides, have you ever been able to organize legal pad notes? I haven't.
And this is just one applciation for a tablet PC. I'm sure there would be plenty in all kinds of jobs, like civil engineering, construction, etc.
Noy quite. When this happened, the Empire hadn't entirely collapsed yet, and the technology used by the Foundation was developed by them through renewed ingenuity (unlike the empire who ran machines but had no idea how to build new ones)
If I'm not mistaken, this happened when the foundation expansion first encountered the decaying empire.
China! you're forgetting about China. Sure, they're not as powerful as the US military-wise, but not that far behind either. Besides, their comunist regime with absolutely no concern for public opinion allows them to use some very radical war strategies.
Never underestimate the power of a good strategy, even (especially) when you don't have the upper hand
You seem to be ruling out the possibility of a US vs. North Korea or a US vs. China war. 10 years before Gulf War I noone was thinking about it, but the military was preparing for it nonetheless. When you have a huge war in your hands is NOT the time to star figuring out which weapons would be useful.
As a panamanian, I by no means agree with what these nutcases did. It's absurd and I'm hoping they'll realize this in time. On the other hand, there is a rationale behind all this that you are not aware of:
C&W, the local telco, was awarded a legal monopoly for several years that ends on 1/1/2003. This monopoly gives them control over all voice communications from/to panama that interconnect with the PSTN anywhere in the world. Since services like Net2Phone allow you to do just this using the Internet, they've been trying to find a way to control this for a while. True, when the law was written, VoIP wasn't on the map and using it DOES contradict the regulations, but this has to be the stupidest way of enforcing it.
I'm a Panamanian and also live here. While I agree with your post, there is one thing that needs to be corrected. It was BellSouth that sued the life out of Tricom (it's actually a cellphone replacement using cellphone-like radios. Pretty neat). C&W decided to step aside for PR's sake, but with this new move, they're way over their heads now.
Look, I live in Panama and I wish I had some insightful way to rationalize what these guys are doing, but unfortunately, it's as stupid as it sounds. Even those who marginally benefit from this are scratching their heads (Except for Cable & Wireless which holds the legal telecom monopoly until 1/1/2003)
For once I wish this article was confusing the country of Panama with Panama, FL., but it isn't...
I believe the actual concern everyone had about Cassini flying by earth is not that it woud slow the planet down, but that Cassini uses Nuclear Power and an accident would, uh, suck.
This post is the equivalent of moderating the story as "-1 Troll"
I mean, come on! you like linux and hate windows (or at least you want this crowd to think you do), the very worst way to make others see things your way is to simply slam the "other system" with absolutely ZERO arguments or logic. Yeah, windows sucks, because, well, it does! and nobody who does REAL work uses it!
What you think Alan Greenspan doesn't use Excel??????
If i'm to be modded down for offtopicness, well, I deserve it, but I need to get this off my chest:
I simply can't read new scientist anymore. When the site actually loads (regardless of slashdotting), every single article they publish seems to be the scientific equivalent of the paparazzi.
I mean, really, one thing is to have a non-peer-reviewed magazine, and an entirely different thing is to intentionally publish exagerated, ridiculous, absolutely un-proved (and almost always un-provable) "facts". Even the simplest of stories is spinned beyond recognition. If a story comes up of some scientists spotting a.00001% deviation from expected results researching *.*, right after they make clear that most likely it's due to faulty measurement equipment, New Scientist will publish that they found aliens, that they have a draft of the alien invasion plan, that Einstains's GToR is therefore void, and that in fact he himself WAS an alien trying to distract us from the truth. And then they _really_ start speculating and tell you that they infer from the inforamtion that Einstein was a shape shifter and that he was also the first husband of Melinda Gates.
Now, I haven't read this article (not that I could even if I wanted to, NS' site goes DoS when they're linked from my cousin's non-porn website), but I'm sure I'll get more substance out of/.er's comments than NS (if you can believe that!)
I wonder how hard it would be to pull that asteroid to earth orbit for mining or as an anchor to a space elevator, a la the [almost] original concept by Arthur C. Clarke (later designs use a man made anchor).
If we can mine useful materials, we could build some cool, big ass stuff probably cheaper than we would carry all that weight from the surface.
And THAT would be the ultimate test to see if the soul exists. Create a copy of yourself, sit back and watch if it behaves like a normal you.
Unless, of course, if it all works like it does in the Shadow saga after Ender's game, where the complexity of a system "pulls" the soul into it (this is, BTW a fun and elegant system, regardles of how far fetch it sounds)
Let me put it in very, very simple terms so that you and whoever moderated your post to interesting can understand it:
What if you don't like blender? what if you don't like how it's coded (and therefore won't contribute to it)? or how it looks? or even the community or people who created it?
Bottom line: the reason moonlight exists is the same reason kde or gnome exist, or freeBSD or Linux exist, or PostgreSQL or MySQL exist. And the same reason we exist: diversity, choice, darwinism, alternatives.
You know, I disagree. After thinking about it for a while, I must admit that what I like the most about Akira is NOT what can't be reproduced with current live action techniques. I don't care that much about the blood, the extreme violence or tetsuo's tentacly arms extending tens of meters.
I loved akira for its representation of a degenerated (realistic?) society, for the oppressed yet special lives that those kids lived, for tetsuo's insecurities and his relationship with kaneda, for the magnitude of devastation that one powerful deranged kid, that in all honesty could have been me or any of you, brought about tokyo. It's this apocaliptic view that made it a classic for me, and surely they can do that in a live action movie. It won't be easy, but nether was LOTR, and they pulled it off quite nicely in my opinion.
I know this is unforgivably offtopic, but when I read this I couldn't help but think of Ender Wiggins, exhausted, after coming from a few days of having colapsed, sitting hopelessly at his terminal and launching a suicide attack on a game simulation of the buggers planet, breaking through their lines of defense and launching the Dr. Device, destroying the planet and his fleet with it...Only to realize it wasn't really a game, but that he was actually controlling earth's armada through the clasified Ansible connection.
Ok, time for me to go to bed. And remember, their gate is DOWN...
The minute I saw it on slashdot, just like the last time, I knew people would go into the "this is just impossible" mode without at least giving it a shot.
Ok, I'll bite. READ THIS (warning, it's a pdf file), and once you do, say it again. I'm not saying this paper is wrong, but it's enough information to realize that there's no one thing preventing it form happening. Not even money, as it would all cost about the same as the International Space Station. The one thing that doesn't exist as of yet is the nanotube wire, which feasbility is clearly only a matter of time. So if the existance of the Space Elevator depends on the existance of a 90,000 Km long nanotube wire (the fabric industry is used to threads this long, again, read the paper), then there's no doubt that it will become a reality.
The space elevator is doing for me what the apollo program did for my parent's genration: It's giving me an overdose of inspiration.
After a cruise through tropical waters, you arrive at a large, anchored platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
The very first few lines of the article. The anchor would be a modified oiling platform, not a tower in ecuadro, Brasil or Peru (which, BTW, are NOT anti-american). This platforms are located outside any countries jurisdiction.
Ever since slashdot first posted news about highliftsystems (I'd provide a link to the news story, but I already have all the karma I need), I've devoured every bit of information I can regarding the space elevator. After reading about 1000 pages regarding the issue, I came to the conclusion that it IS possible. Go to the highliftsystems mentioned in the news post and read the PDFs that are there before you start screaming "cold fusion!". You'll probably reach the same conclusion.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps a scientist wants tons and tons of money so that he/she can, uh, keep researching????
It's not like the medical field that has come to a point where more and more doctors see a patient and think of a yacht (not all! I do have 5 doctors in my family and about half are still pretty humble people). Most scientists still see something strange and thing of a big lab and more strange things!
Actually, if you follow HIS rules, it's more like:
Boeing:1
Carmack:-1
What this means is that the hardware has gotten to a point where it can do tons of new stuff. It's the software that's lacking behind. With this much processing power, human like voice and image recognition, and at least the thought process of an insect should be theoretically possible, if only we had the s/w to do it.
The ball's on our court now.
Er. wasn't the prize US$10 million? That's what their site says.
Besides, the whole point of the program is for private manned spaceflight to be feasible at US$10M. Sure, you can throw a gazillion dollars to a space program and make it SUPER safe, but that's not what this is about. This is about risk, exploration, daring. The same kinds of things that made Lindberg famous and motivated an entire industry to make trans-atlantic flights open to the public. Remember this competition is modeled after the one lindberg won.
Most likely someone will die trying to win the prize and they know it. So do the competing teams. I can't find a link, but the Xprize promoters themselves have said so.
I hope everyone realizes that they're doing this for PR purposes. Right now there are lots of government that are trying to get away from MS products so that they don't put all their information in the hands of an American Company. Also, this is one of the main selling points of OSS vs. MS. As soon as they feel people aren't paying that much attention to security, they'll back away from "cumbersome nuances" like security
I'll buy it that they really care about this stuff when they start building software over previous security-related experience, and I'm not talking patches here, I'm talking OS re-writes based on what works and doesn't security wise.
It's very inexpensive compared to the REALLY expensive, up to $2,500 options from Microsoft and the usual high profile H/W vendors.
Would I buy one if it has the right form factor and usability? hell yeah! I'm a consultant and go to meetings all day carrying a similar size and weight leather portfolio for note taking, PLUS a Sony Clie and stowaway keyboard (on a combined cleather case) for my electronic needs (more extensive note taking during longer meetings, PIM stuff). With one of these tablets I'd probably end up with one, more powerful item where I can take all kinds of notes and have all my apps instead of their lighter sucky versions found on PDA's. Besides, have you ever been able to organize legal pad notes? I haven't.
And this is just one applciation for a tablet PC. I'm sure there would be plenty in all kinds of jobs, like civil engineering, construction, etc.
Noy quite. When this happened, the Empire hadn't entirely collapsed yet, and the technology used by the Foundation was developed by them through renewed ingenuity (unlike the empire who ran machines but had no idea how to build new ones)
If I'm not mistaken, this happened when the foundation expansion first encountered the decaying empire.
Now that you mention this, I wonder when people started calling The Great War, World War I, before or after WW2...
China! you're forgetting about China. Sure, they're not as powerful as the US military-wise, but not that far behind either. Besides, their comunist regime with absolutely no concern for public opinion allows them to use some very radical war strategies.
Never underestimate the power of a good strategy, even (especially) when you don't have the upper hand
You seem to be ruling out the possibility of a US vs. North Korea or a US vs. China war. 10 years before Gulf War I noone was thinking about it, but the military was preparing for it nonetheless. When you have a huge war in your hands is NOT the time to star figuring out which weapons would be useful.
As a panamanian, I by no means agree with what these nutcases did. It's absurd and I'm hoping they'll realize this in time. On the other hand, there is a rationale behind all this that you are not aware of:
C&W, the local telco, was awarded a legal monopoly for several years that ends on 1/1/2003. This monopoly gives them control over all voice communications from/to panama that interconnect with the PSTN anywhere in the world. Since services like Net2Phone allow you to do just this using the Internet, they've been trying to find a way to control this for a while. True, when the law was written, VoIP wasn't on the map and using it DOES contradict the regulations, but this has to be the stupidest way of enforcing it.
I'm a Panamanian and also live here. While I agree with your post, there is one thing that needs to be corrected. It was BellSouth that sued the life out of Tricom (it's actually a cellphone replacement using cellphone-like radios. Pretty neat). C&W decided to step aside for PR's sake, but with this new move, they're way over their heads now.
Look, I live in Panama and I wish I had some insightful way to rationalize what these guys are doing, but unfortunately, it's as stupid as it sounds. Even those who marginally benefit from this are scratching their heads (Except for Cable & Wireless which holds the legal telecom monopoly until 1/1/2003)
For once I wish this article was confusing the country of Panama with Panama, FL., but it isn't...
I believe the actual concern everyone had about Cassini flying by earth is not that it woud slow the planet down, but that Cassini uses Nuclear Power and an accident would, uh, suck.
This post is the equivalent of moderating the story as "-1 Troll"
I mean, come on! you like linux and hate windows (or at least you want this crowd to think you do), the very worst way to make others see things your way is to simply slam the "other system" with absolutely ZERO arguments or logic. Yeah, windows sucks, because, well, it does! and nobody who does REAL work uses it!
What you think Alan Greenspan doesn't use Excel??????
If i'm to be modded down for offtopicness, well, I deserve it, but I need to get this off my chest:
.00001% deviation from expected results researching *.*, right after they make clear that most likely it's due to faulty measurement equipment, New Scientist will publish that they found aliens, that they have a draft of the alien invasion plan, that Einstains's GToR is therefore void, and that in fact he himself WAS an alien trying to distract us from the truth. And then they _really_ start speculating and tell you that they infer from the inforamtion that Einstein was a shape shifter and that he was also the first husband of Melinda Gates.
/.er's comments than NS (if you can believe that!)
I simply can't read new scientist anymore. When the site actually loads (regardless of slashdotting), every single article they publish seems to be the scientific equivalent of the paparazzi.
I mean, really, one thing is to have a non-peer-reviewed magazine, and an entirely different thing is to intentionally publish exagerated, ridiculous, absolutely un-proved (and almost always un-provable) "facts". Even the simplest of stories is spinned beyond recognition. If a story comes up of some scientists spotting a
Now, I haven't read this article (not that I could even if I wanted to, NS' site goes DoS when they're linked from my cousin's non-porn website), but I'm sure I'll get more substance out of
I wonder how hard it would be to pull that asteroid to earth orbit for mining or as an anchor to a space elevator, a la the [almost] original concept by Arthur C. Clarke (later designs use a man made anchor).
If we can mine useful materials, we could build some cool, big ass stuff probably cheaper than we would carry all that weight from the surface.
And THAT would be the ultimate test to see if the soul exists. Create a copy of yourself, sit back and watch if it behaves like a normal you.
Unless, of course, if it all works like it does in the Shadow saga after Ender's game, where the complexity of a system "pulls" the soul into it (this is, BTW a fun and elegant system, regardles of how far fetch it sounds)
Well it has to! after all, if there's a balck hole in the center of the galaxy it means it already swallowed Trantor!
Let me put it in very, very simple terms so that you and whoever moderated your post to interesting can understand it:
What if you don't like blender? what if you don't like how it's coded (and therefore won't contribute to it)? or how it looks? or even the community or people who created it?
Bottom line: the reason moonlight exists is the same reason kde or gnome exist, or freeBSD or Linux exist, or PostgreSQL or MySQL exist. And the same reason we exist: diversity, choice, darwinism, alternatives.
You know, I disagree. After thinking about it for a while, I must admit that what I like the most about Akira is NOT what can't be reproduced with current live action techniques. I don't care that much about the blood, the extreme violence or tetsuo's tentacly arms extending tens of meters.
I loved akira for its representation of a degenerated (realistic?) society, for the oppressed yet special lives that those kids lived, for tetsuo's insecurities and his relationship with kaneda, for the magnitude of devastation that one powerful deranged kid, that in all honesty could have been me or any of you, brought about tokyo. It's this apocaliptic view that made it a classic for me, and surely they can do that in a live action movie. It won't be easy, but nether was LOTR, and they pulled it off quite nicely in my opinion.
I know this is unforgivably offtopic, but when I read this I couldn't help but think of Ender Wiggins, exhausted, after coming from a few days of having colapsed, sitting hopelessly at his terminal and launching a suicide attack on a game simulation of the buggers planet, breaking through their lines of defense and launching the Dr. Device, destroying the planet and his fleet with it...Only to realize it wasn't really a game, but that he was actually controlling earth's armada through the clasified Ansible connection.
Ok, time for me to go to bed. And remember, their gate is DOWN...
The minute I saw it on slashdot, just like the last time, I knew people would go into the "this is just impossible" mode without at least giving it a shot.
Ok, I'll bite. READ THIS (warning, it's a pdf file), and once you do, say it again. I'm not saying this paper is wrong, but it's enough information to realize that there's no one thing preventing it form happening. Not even money, as it would all cost about the same as the International Space Station. The one thing that doesn't exist as of yet is the nanotube wire, which feasbility is clearly only a matter of time. So if the existance of the Space Elevator depends on the existance of a 90,000 Km long nanotube wire (the fabric industry is used to threads this long, again, read the paper), then there's no doubt that it will become a reality.
The space elevator is doing for me what the apollo program did for my parent's genration: It's giving me an overdose of inspiration.
After a cruise through tropical waters, you arrive at a large, anchored platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
The very first few lines of the article. The anchor would be a modified oiling platform, not a tower in ecuadro, Brasil or Peru (which, BTW, are NOT anti-american). This platforms are located outside any countries jurisdiction.
Ever since slashdot first posted news about highliftsystems (I'd provide a link to the news story, but I already have all the karma I need), I've devoured every bit of information I can regarding the space elevator. After reading about 1000 pages regarding the issue, I came to the conclusion that it IS possible. Go to the highliftsystems mentioned in the news post and read the PDFs that are there before you start screaming "cold fusion!". You'll probably reach the same conclusion.