Of note, though, is that "creation science" is a pseudoscience. An infallible or religious source is indisputable by the definitions in the scientific demense, and therefore inadmissible.
Yes, the gentlemen you mention were creationists; the reasonbeing, of course, that evolution theory hadn't been devised yet. The origins of classification of species, in a crude form, can traced back to Aristotle, who can also be blamed for the flat earth theory as well.
As far as heliocentrism, I was referring to the solar system. Before the viral spread of Christianity, it was an at least known belief that the sun was in the middle and the earth was a sphere which rotated around it. Afterwards, even the wisest men had to profess to a flat earth because that knowledge was lost in the Dark Ages.
A good scientist will put aside their personal views and look at the available evidence before coming to a conclusion. The problem is that there is a stereotype of creationists as bible-beating hicks from the South unwilling to look at the factual evidence or viewing analytical proof as fabrication, effective fact as conspiracy.
It's obvious that most ancient civs weren't nearly as archaic as is perceived by the masses. Look at the the artifacts which survive: the Acropolis, the Puramids, the great temples, all the megaliths and sculptures and artifices which are unimaginable today. I mean, it took until last year to decipher the secret of Damscus steel. There are secrets lost to time which will remain mysteries until we can travel there (and screw everything up for shits and giggles).
The Catholics only recently admitted that they got it wrong about the earth, though. Galileo was de-excommunicated (the actual term escapes me) in '92. That's ten years ago.
There are myriad examples of 'lost science' and lost innovations from the past. A chemical battery has been discovered c. 100 AD which was used as a theraputic. There were plans drawn up for a temple which would have its doors open automagically when the cauldrons were lit, as the heat from the flames would boil water and cause the doors to open. The reason it wasn't implemented? "We have slaves to do that." Atomic theory can be traced to the ancient Greeks, as is the heliocentric view and the KNOWLEDGE (not theory) that the world was a sphere.
There were two main reasons that these advances in science in technology were stunted. The first was the cheap availability of manpower. Why use a steam engine when twenty slaves work as well? And remember, slavery in ancient times wasn't too bad a state to be in, relatively speaking. So long as you did your job, you were expected to be fed, sheltered, treated decently. Even the Torah has guidelines for indentured servitude and the care and feeding of slaves.
The other reason (flames coming) is christianity. Christianty's worldview is one of a flat earth, where Man was created separate from all other creatures. Evolution, heliocentrism, science in general is eschewed by the Western Church with such a passion it's amazing. If it didn't have such a historically strong, pervasive influence, it would be funny.
Sure, it's functionally useless. Like the top of a car, a GUI, or the handle of a knife.
Making it pretty isn't about utility. It's about ergonomics and aesthetics. I mean, there's a cell tower I drive by and it has a horrific sign by the mayor bitching and moaning about it. Hiding the cell tower makes it easier to palette and helps prevent this form of complaint.
Reception problems, thought, are entirely another matter.
I'm getting ready for a deluge to my new address on a DSL line.
Of course, my advantage is location: my state has a valid anti-spam law and I'm going to take full advantage of it.. of anyplace that I can trace. (Everywhere else, I'll just block.)
It's a little movie.. in the sense that the Titanic was a little boat. Working on that tangent.. this movie outgrossed "Titanic" in Japan and is the only movie thusfar to have grossed over $200 million.. without setting foot in North American theaters. And it was done entirely by hand (save for cg backgrounds).
It's also the film that won the Berlin film festival and praise from almost every critic I can think of. TOo bad it'll be relegated as arthouse fare.
In synopsis, it's an Alice in Wonderland type story inspired by a friend's daughter. A ten year old girl and her family go on a trip together, through a tunnel to what looks like an amusement park, when the girl gets lost and the fantasy begins. Every kind of fantasmagoric creature from anyone's dreams apears...
I'm not going to argue with you. However, formally filing with the CO is overkill for certain works: very small publication runs, or a play which will be for a small audience in an NFP theatre, for example.
I'm talking about the postmodern, Aqua-rigged OS X Macintosh. You're talking about the equivalent of a broken leg in the midst of the game. Of course there have been some bad interfaces, but, honestly.. Mac's design values are extremely high, and it is the first Unixish OS that can be classified as a cradle-to-grave OS (e.g. anyone, no matter their skill level or age, can comprende how to use their apps and do useful things with it.)
And so you know my bias: I am a full-time Linux user with occasional forced forays into the WIndows world (because: a) my school has MAC-level lockouts and my NIC can't spoof its address, so I must use its crippled NT boxen until I get root (later today [jk]) b) I can't watch DVD's well under Linux yet with software libre... )
As I mentioned in the post,I was working off an assumption. This is good news to me, since my sis is a fledgling filmmaker and plans to burn DVD copies of movies on commodity hardware.
Still, RPC 2 drives suck.. In order to play EU DVD's on mu laptop, for example, I have to get a second DVD drive. (Granted, I got it off eBay for less than fifteen bucks, but it's still a pain because the firmware's a bitch to crack.)
Under current US law, copyright exists as of creation of the item. Registration of the copyright is not required, but is a good idea if you can handle the paperwork and the money.
The registered envelope dealie works because it proves you created it and, thus HAVE the copyright on it.
And, seven dollars with a one-day turnaround is pretty good protection.
I don't know if you've seen the H2G2 dvd yet, but it's interesting to see what they did, on a shoestring budget, for Zaphod's second head (relatively simple robotics via radio control) and his third arm (second actor when needed for action, prosthetic when not).
Imagine what a few million would do, besides keep the Teamsters happy;)
Again, this is why IT MUST BE SENT REGISTERED MAIL IN AN ENVELOPE SEALED ONLY BE THE FLAP.
If you have enver mailed or received such an item, you would know that the flap of the envelope is stamped with a postmark as well to prevent this sort of claim. Is it undefeatable? No.. but it's damn close, since you'd need a microscope to re-align the flapside postmark and the adhesive would have to be the same as the one used in the envelope's manufacture.
I agree. A postmark alone doesn't cut it for copyright.
It must be sent registered mail in an envelope which has been sealed by the envelope only, not by tape.
This technique works and has been tested in court successfully. I personally know people who have written plays, protected their works thusly, had characters which were pretty similar to ones they've written created by others, the original playwrights sued in federal court and won based off the evidence of the sealed script.
This works because it provides a legally acceptable date which can be verified with the USPS (registered mail IS recorded by the post, of course). After all, tax returns are considered by the day of the postmark..
If I recall correctly, there's a website that offered a public 'announcement board' for concepts and ideas which were heading for the USPTO. Idea being that the poster would be authenticated somehow and the idea would be posted as a form of prior art.
I agree with the ethical attourney line. Also of note is that patent and trademark attourneys tend to be specialists. (Don't go to the local ambulance chaser or real estate closer to detail IP law for you.)
It should be possible to do your homework on attourneys before you leave home with the thingamabob online or over the telephone.
With copyright, if you mail yourself, via Registered Mail, an envelope-sealed (can't use tape - what if it's an old envelope and a new text?) master copy, you can establish a date of existance and then be able to sue those that violate your copyright without having to do anything else.
With patents, prior art requires much more than that. An envelope sealed away doesn't count because to count as prior art, typically the application or product must be public in the sense that it is available to some group capable of acquiring the product.
Example. I make Guilty Widgets, and make them for the purpose of fulfilling some government contract, and my GW's are new products with potential uses that I can't see but could revolutionize Cog manipulation. I don't patent it, but it is mentioned in a maintenance manual for the Armed Forces Joint Strike Attack Bomber's Anti-Pixelization and Pizza Delivery System. (Don't ask. It works. Instead of making a lot of dust when things go boom.. you get the picture.)
Now, 2Lt. Charles "Hind-Leg" Williams, an expert pilot but disqualified from military aviation due to an odd congenital birth defect, is reading through these manuals and, lo and behold, comes across my GW and sees the potential for cog manipulation. If he steals my idea nearly verbatim and patents it, I can claim prior art on it because I have the profound mountain of evidence that shown I made the GW's before he did.
Example 2. I make The Burger Flipper. It's two pans stacked on top of each other so I don't have to use a spatula because I'm a lazy bastard. While I've got the envelope with the idea in my basement collecting dust alongside my Pet Thong and the Lava Hoop, I watch a Sci-Fi marathon of The Thing and see soemthing oddly like my burger flipper advertized for the low low price of three easy payments of $19.99. But wait, they include a batter pourer and a book of recipes that was won off eBay for no extra charge.. and if I call in the next ten minutes they'll cut off one inch from my waist with DextDiet ZQ. If I try to claim prior art, the judge will laugh in my face because there was no way that the other guys could have seen my idea.
However, don't expect it (or the available software) to be either as simple or as nice as the iDVD interface and layout.
(One thing the Macintosh people have down pat is interface. My GOD! it's easy!)
Linux comaptibility is most likely trivial, though, on the upside. Just treat it as a CDRW that has a 4.7 GiB capacity and write to it in UDF packets instead of a Rock Ridge or Joliet stream, it should work.
Don't expect any firmware cracks for this beast either. Sony hardware is pretty hard to crack (Techtronics, probably the best site for getting modded DVD players, has to go and do chip replacement and other nasty-level cracks on standalones.) Besides that, I would presume (since Sony is one of the core members of DVD Forum) that this will automagically region code any video-format DVDs' you create, unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.
It sucks that for DVD's there won't be a company that can readily capitalize on the market and the product like MP3.com did with music.. then again, music is easier to forge than movies are...
The most annoying detail about H2G2, from a screenwriting point of view, is that it was originally a radio series.
Radio writing is dramatically different than writing for the boob tube or the silver screen. You have to make allowances for the fact that the audience imagines the action, the characters, everything.. that you only have one sence to play with. With television, you have sight to worry about, but you are also limited in time.
Movies are complex beasts... they can be elegant and simple a la 'Signs' (which I recommend seeing without popcorn because of the low tone of the film) or bloody and violent like.. do I really need a list of names?
Only gaming I can really see going on is something turn-based, because everything else is going to involve getting killed by people with infinitely smaller ping times.
However, I don't know about the claim about telling your kids about taking a piss in orbit. How do you know that:
A: By the time you have kids old enough to appreciate the story, there won't be occasional suborbital service? B: You'll survive long enough to have kids? C: You'll have the ability (e.g. a partner of the opposite sex or a lot of insanely expensive and currently (afaak) nonexistant cloning gear) to procreate?
Besides, you can send your urine to the moon, if you are so inclined with that company going to Luna... it was in a prior slashdot post.. it only costs $2.5k per gram....
Farscape is one of the greatest sci-fi series ever, in the same tier as The Outer Limits, Star Wars (Eps 4-6), B5, Star Trek (original series and Next Gen), Hitchhiker's Guide, and Doctor Who.
Each has a somewhat unique point, but Farscape's was most off-kilter: the characters live in a realm defined more by the fantastic than the scientific. The characters are of strange colors and shapes, there are robots and sentient bacteria and living ships, and an almost magical feel permeates the screen.
Farscape is a sci-fi show that should be destined to be a classic, and the reason why is because it focused much much more on the fiction than the science.
Tangential to this.. is there any talk amongst the GNU Radio folks on building a piece of hardware that complements this software project, or is supposed to work with whatever devices the user has on hand/will build?
This isn't some sci-fi, pseudo-science. This is quantum physics we're talking about here. Unless you are one of the theorists, chances are you're a parrot. I'll readily admit I don't grasp most of it, since I'm not doing it full-time and most of the QP stuff gives me migraines on a bad day.
However, what I mentioned casually in the article (with the thirty-second explantation) is Bell's Theorem. Link provided here, here, here.
Punch up Google, type in "Bell's Theorem", and enjoy stuff that makes your tiny little mind explode.
One of the main problems with interplanetary internetworking is the speed of light, since we would be using some form of RF for the actual transmissions. (Blinking lights works disturbingly well, as long as a line of sight is maintained, since at the frequencies of visible light, you can transmit data at more than a terabit per second.)
Don't expect to be able to play Quake across the galactic sea, as you have mulit-minute ping times.
In addition, Telnet seems right out.
The most probable form of interplanetary networking, barring successful use of Bell's Theorem (it has to do with quantum physics, and it is an observed behavior that (A) two particles in contact have spins which eventually synchronize and (B) once split apart, no matter how far apart the particles are, the spins are still in perfect sync), is going to be a store-and-forward systm, like email.
You make requests for pages, a smart terrestrial gateway will spider the links appropiately, hopefully remove the bloody ads and spyware (since one must make the probabilisticly correct assumption we're going to have windows-dependants on the receiving end)... and in about 1.1-1.5t (where t is the period of time it takes for light to get between where you are Earth and back) you get your content.
This system makes bookmarking pages more important, since it could gather pages based on a pre-defined list (like checking out what's on CNN, BBC, Slashdot, etc. etc..)
It may seem somewhat comical, but this is a serious hinderance.
Consider the following: If you were on the first trip to Mars, barring some radical breakthrough in propulsion technology that violates Newtonian physics (the only way we'll see decent high speeds on such long trips), you would spend:
-18 months going out in a tin can the size of a two bedroom apartment with four or five other people in microgravity -after you lose some bone and muscle mass, several months on a planet which you can only experience in a fully-encloesd suit -another 18 months to three years coming home in the same tin can with the same people
...and that's assuming things go smoothly! What happens if someone has appendicitis or develops some other codition? Operating in zero-g is at the least damned hard, and at most impossible!
The people also have to be of a certain sort. Unlike the original moonshot pilots, who were psychologically stable hotshot pilots with an excess of personality, the Mars crew would have to be able to tolerate each other for up to FIVE YEARS. And these five would be the only real human contact that they'd have.. considering that, at furthest, there's something like a twenty to thirty light-minute gap between Earth and Mars. You could play chess, do the occasional interview, but you couldn't surf the Web (real well).
So, the people involved on the craft have to be extremely intelligent, genial, and self-deprecating. Not too likely to find a couple of hackers that have those characteristics. (Of course, they'd not discuss it too much if they did. Part and parcel, you know.)
Wireless cable uses the 2.7 GHz frequency. It was supposed to compete with regular cable until the satellite providers came in and provided superior programming at a much lower per-subscriber cost of transmission. (It's like the Iridium story backwards; their downfall was the proliferation of cell networks globally that deprecated their sats.)
Here in Chicago, we have those frequencies for use as "Wireless DSL" by Sprint. Maybe you remember that article?
Slashdot Mirror
Of note, though, is that "creation science" is a pseudoscience. An infallible or religious source is indisputable by the definitions in the scientific demense, and therefore inadmissible.
Yes, the gentlemen you mention were creationists; the reasonbeing, of course, that evolution theory hadn't been devised yet. The origins of classification of species, in a crude form, can traced back to Aristotle, who can also be blamed for the flat earth theory as well.
As far as heliocentrism, I was referring to the solar system. Before the viral spread of Christianity, it was an at least known belief that the sun was in the middle and the earth was a sphere which rotated around it. Afterwards, even the wisest men had to profess to a flat earth because that knowledge was lost in the Dark Ages.
A good scientist will put aside their personal views and look at the available evidence before coming to a conclusion. The problem is that there is a stereotype of creationists as bible-beating hicks from the South unwilling to look at the factual evidence or viewing analytical proof as fabrication, effective fact as conspiracy.
It's obvious that most ancient civs weren't nearly as archaic as is perceived by the masses. Look at the the artifacts which survive: the Acropolis, the Puramids, the great temples, all the megaliths and sculptures and artifices which are unimaginable today. I mean, it took until last year to decipher the secret of Damscus steel. There are secrets lost to time which will remain mysteries until we can travel there (and screw everything up for shits and giggles).
The Catholics only recently admitted that they got it wrong about the earth, though. Galileo was de-excommunicated (the actual term escapes me) in '92. That's ten years ago.
There are myriad examples of 'lost science' and lost innovations from the past. A chemical battery has been discovered c. 100 AD which was used as a theraputic. There were plans drawn up for a temple which would have its doors open automagically when the cauldrons were lit, as the heat from the flames would boil water and cause the doors to open. The reason it wasn't implemented? "We have slaves to do that." Atomic theory can be traced to the ancient Greeks, as is the heliocentric view and the KNOWLEDGE (not theory) that the world was a sphere.
There were two main reasons that these advances in science in technology were stunted. The first was the cheap availability of manpower. Why use a steam engine when twenty slaves work as well? And remember, slavery in ancient times wasn't too bad a state to be in, relatively speaking. So long as you did your job, you were expected to be fed, sheltered, treated decently. Even the Torah has guidelines for indentured servitude and the care and feeding of slaves.
The other reason (flames coming) is christianity. Christianty's worldview is one of a flat earth, where Man was created separate from all other creatures. Evolution, heliocentrism, science in general is eschewed by the Western Church with such a passion it's amazing. If it didn't have such a historically strong, pervasive influence, it would be funny.
Personally, I'd like to see the _mayor_ done up as a giant palm tree... ;)
I think the sign is just an excuse for additional name exposure for the guy, since he's essentially a cipher even in his own town.
(Nice to meet a local slashdotter.)
Sure, it's functionally useless. Like the top of a car, a GUI, or the handle of a knife.
Making it pretty isn't about utility. It's about ergonomics and aesthetics. I mean, there's a cell tower I drive by and it has a horrific sign by the mayor bitching and moaning about it. Hiding the cell tower makes it easier to palette and helps prevent this form of complaint.
Reception problems, thought, are entirely another matter.
I'm getting ready for a deluge to my new address on a DSL line.
Of course, my advantage is location: my state has a valid anti-spam law and I'm going to take full advantage of it.. of anyplace that I can trace. (Everywhere else, I'll just block.)
It's a little movie.. in the sense that the Titanic was a little boat. Working on that tangent.. this movie outgrossed "Titanic" in Japan and is the only movie thusfar to have grossed over $200 million.. without setting foot in North American theaters. And it was done entirely by hand (save for cg backgrounds).
It's also the film that won the Berlin film festival and praise from almost every critic I can think of. TOo bad it'll be relegated as arthouse fare.
In synopsis, it's an Alice in Wonderland type story inspired by a friend's daughter. A ten year old girl and her family go on a trip together, through a tunnel to what looks like an amusement park, when the girl gets lost and the fantasy begins. Every kind of fantasmagoric creature from anyone's dreams apears...
Can't wait for it.
I'm not going to argue with you. However, formally filing with the CO is overkill for certain works: very small publication runs, or a play which will be for a small audience in an NFP theatre, for example.
Unfair comparison.
I'm talking about the postmodern, Aqua-rigged OS X Macintosh. You're talking about the equivalent of a broken leg in the midst of the game. Of course there have been some bad interfaces, but, honestly.. Mac's design values are extremely high, and it is the first Unixish OS that can be classified as a cradle-to-grave OS (e.g. anyone, no matter their skill level or age, can comprende how to use their apps and do useful things with it.)
And so you know my bias: I am a full-time Linux user with occasional forced forays into the WIndows world (because: a) my school has MAC-level lockouts and my NIC can't spoof its address, so I must use its crippled NT boxen until I get root (later today [jk]) b) I can't watch DVD's well under Linux yet with software libre... )
As I mentioned in the post,I was working off an assumption. This is good news to me, since my sis is a fledgling filmmaker and plans to burn DVD copies of movies on commodity hardware.
Still, RPC 2 drives suck.. In order to play EU DVD's on mu laptop, for example, I have to get a second DVD drive. (Granted, I got it off eBay for less than fifteen bucks, but it's still a pain because the firmware's a bitch to crack.)
Under current US law, copyright exists as of creation of the item. Registration of the copyright is not required, but is a good idea if you can handle the paperwork and the money.
The registered envelope dealie works because it proves you created it and, thus HAVE the copyright on it.
And, seven dollars with a one-day turnaround is pretty good protection.
I don't know if you've seen the H2G2 dvd yet, but it's interesting to see what they did, on a shoestring budget, for Zaphod's second head (relatively simple robotics via radio control) and his third arm (second actor when needed for action, prosthetic when not).
;)
Imagine what a few million would do, besides keep the Teamsters happy
Again, this is why IT MUST BE SENT REGISTERED MAIL IN AN ENVELOPE SEALED ONLY BE THE FLAP.
If you have enver mailed or received such an item, you would know that the flap of the envelope is stamped with a postmark as well to prevent this sort of claim. Is it undefeatable? No.. but it's damn close, since you'd need a microscope to re-align the flapside postmark and the adhesive would have to be the same as the one used in the envelope's manufacture.
If in brackets, it's a choice between equivalent forms.
..But I Play One On TV.
..But I Play One Online.
..But I Would Like To Play One On TV. ..And Don't Care.
..And Want To Kill Them All.
IANAL: I Am Not A Lawyer.
IANALBIP[O1]O[T|TV]:
IANALBIP[O1]O:
IANALBIWL[2T]P[O1]OTV:
IANALADC:
IANALAWTKTA:
--
I*A*ALSLU: I *AM* A Lawyer, So Listen Up!
I agree. A postmark alone doesn't cut it for copyright.
It must be sent registered mail in an envelope which has been sealed by the envelope only, not by tape.
This technique works and has been tested in court successfully. I personally know people who have written plays, protected their works thusly, had characters which were pretty similar to ones they've written created by others, the original playwrights sued in federal court and won based off the evidence of the sealed script.
This works because it provides a legally acceptable date which can be verified with the USPS (registered mail IS recorded by the post, of course). After all, tax returns are considered by the day of the postmark..
If I recall correctly, there's a website that offered a public 'announcement board' for concepts and ideas which were heading for the USPTO. Idea being that the poster would be authenticated somehow and the idea would be posted as a form of prior art.
I agree with the ethical attourney line. Also of note is that patent and trademark attourneys tend to be specialists. (Don't go to the local ambulance chaser or real estate closer to detail IP law for you.)
It should be possible to do your homework on attourneys before you leave home with the thingamabob online or over the telephone.
Umm.. That only works for COPYRIGHT.
With copyright, if you mail yourself, via Registered Mail, an envelope-sealed (can't use tape - what if it's an old envelope and a new text?) master copy, you can establish a date of existance and then be able to sue those that violate your copyright without having to do anything else.
With patents, prior art requires much more than that. An envelope sealed away doesn't count because to count as prior art, typically the application or product must be public in the sense that it is available to some group capable of acquiring the product.
Example. I make Guilty Widgets, and make them for the purpose of fulfilling some government contract, and my GW's are new products with potential uses that I can't see but could revolutionize Cog manipulation. I don't patent it, but it is mentioned in a maintenance manual for the Armed Forces Joint Strike Attack Bomber's Anti-Pixelization and Pizza Delivery System. (Don't ask. It works. Instead of making a lot of dust when things go boom.. you get the picture.)
Now, 2Lt. Charles "Hind-Leg" Williams, an expert pilot but disqualified from military aviation due to an odd congenital birth defect, is reading through these manuals and, lo and behold, comes across my GW and sees the potential for cog manipulation. If he steals my idea nearly verbatim and patents it, I can claim prior art on it because I have the profound mountain of evidence that shown I made the GW's before he did.
Example 2. I make The Burger Flipper. It's two pans stacked on top of each other so I don't have to use a spatula because I'm a lazy bastard. While I've got the envelope with the idea in my basement collecting dust alongside my Pet Thong and the Lava Hoop, I watch a Sci-Fi marathon of The Thing and see soemthing oddly like my burger flipper advertized for the low low price of three easy payments of $19.99. But wait, they include a batter pourer and a book of recipes that was won off eBay for no extra charge.. and if I call in the next ten minutes they'll cut off one inch from my waist with DextDiet ZQ. If I try to claim prior art, the judge will laugh in my face because there was no way that the other guys could have seen my idea.
btw: IANALBIWL2P1OTV.
However, don't expect it (or the available software) to be either as simple or as nice as the iDVD interface and layout.
(One thing the Macintosh people have down pat is interface. My GOD! it's easy!)
Linux comaptibility is most likely trivial, though, on the upside. Just treat it as a CDRW that has a 4.7 GiB capacity and write to it in UDF packets instead of a Rock Ridge or Joliet stream, it should work.
Don't expect any firmware cracks for this beast either. Sony hardware is pretty hard to crack (Techtronics, probably the best site for getting modded DVD players, has to go and do chip replacement and other nasty-level cracks on standalones.) Besides that, I would presume (since Sony is one of the core members of DVD Forum) that this will automagically region code any video-format DVDs' you create, unless such coding is already required in the writable DVD specifications.
It sucks that for DVD's there won't be a company that can readily capitalize on the market and the product like MP3.com did with music.. then again, music is easier to forge than movies are...
The most annoying detail about H2G2, from a screenwriting point of view, is that it was originally a radio series.
Radio writing is dramatically different than writing for the boob tube or the silver screen. You have to make allowances for the fact that the audience imagines the action, the characters, everything.. that you only have one sence to play with. With television, you have sight to worry about, but you are also limited in time.
Movies are complex beasts... they can be elegant and simple a la 'Signs' (which I recommend seeing without popcorn because of the low tone of the film) or bloody and violent like.. do I really need a list of names?
Only gaming I can really see going on is something turn-based, because everything else is going to involve getting killed by people with infinitely smaller ping times.
However, I don't know about the claim about telling your kids about taking a piss in orbit. How do you know that:
A: By the time you have kids old enough to appreciate the story, there won't be occasional suborbital service?
B: You'll survive long enough to have kids?
C: You'll have the ability (e.g. a partner of the opposite sex or a lot of insanely expensive and currently (afaak) nonexistant cloning gear) to procreate?
Besides, you can send your urine to the moon, if you are so inclined with that company going to Luna... it was in a prior slashdot post.. it only costs $2.5k per gram....
Farscape is one of the greatest sci-fi series ever, in the same tier as The Outer Limits, Star Wars (Eps 4-6), B5, Star Trek (original series and Next Gen), Hitchhiker's Guide, and Doctor Who.
Each has a somewhat unique point, but Farscape's was most off-kilter: the characters live in a realm defined more by the fantastic than the scientific. The characters are of strange colors and shapes, there are robots and sentient bacteria and living ships, and an almost magical feel permeates the screen.
Farscape is a sci-fi show that should be destined to be a classic, and the reason why is because it focused much much more on the fiction than the science.
Tangential to this.. is there any talk amongst the GNU Radio folks on building a piece of hardware that complements this software project, or is supposed to work with whatever devices the user has on hand/will build?
Let's get past Ender's Game for a minute.
This isn't some sci-fi, pseudo-science. This is quantum physics we're talking about here. Unless you are one of the theorists, chances are you're a parrot. I'll readily admit I don't grasp most of it, since I'm not doing it full-time and most of the QP stuff gives me migraines on a bad day.
However, what I mentioned casually in the article (with the thirty-second explantation) is Bell's Theorem. Link provided here, here, here.
Punch up Google, type in "Bell's Theorem", and enjoy stuff that makes your tiny little mind explode.
One of the main problems with interplanetary internetworking is the speed of light, since we would be using some form of RF for the actual transmissions. (Blinking lights works disturbingly well, as long as a line of sight is maintained, since at the frequencies of visible light, you can transmit data at more than a terabit per second.)
Don't expect to be able to play Quake across the galactic sea, as you have mulit-minute ping times.
In addition, Telnet seems right out.
The most probable form of interplanetary networking, barring successful use of Bell's Theorem (it has to do with quantum physics, and it is an observed behavior that (A) two particles in contact have spins which eventually synchronize and (B) once split apart, no matter how far apart the particles are, the spins are still in perfect sync), is going to be a store-and-forward systm, like email.
You make requests for pages, a smart terrestrial gateway will spider the links appropiately, hopefully remove the bloody ads and spyware (since one must make the probabilisticly correct assumption we're going to have windows-dependants on the receiving end)... and in about 1.1-1.5t (where t is the period of time it takes for light to get between where you are Earth and back) you get your content.
This system makes bookmarking pages more important, since it could gather pages based on a pre-defined list (like checking out what's on CNN, BBC, Slashdot, etc. etc..)
It may seem somewhat comical, but this is a serious hinderance.
Consider the following: If you were on the first trip to Mars, barring some radical breakthrough in propulsion technology that violates Newtonian physics (the only way we'll see decent high speeds on such long trips), you would spend:
-18 months going out in a tin can the size of a two bedroom apartment with four or five other people in microgravity
-after you lose some bone and muscle mass, several months on a planet which you can only experience in a fully-encloesd suit
-another 18 months to three years coming home in the same tin can with the same people
...and that's assuming things go smoothly! What happens if someone has appendicitis or develops some other codition? Operating in zero-g is at the least damned hard, and at most impossible!
The people also have to be of a certain sort. Unlike the original moonshot pilots, who were psychologically stable hotshot pilots with an excess of personality, the Mars crew would have to be able to tolerate each other for up to FIVE YEARS. And these five would be the only real human contact that they'd have.. considering that, at furthest, there's something like a twenty to thirty light-minute gap between Earth and Mars. You could play chess, do the occasional interview, but you couldn't surf the Web (real well).
So, the people involved on the craft have to be extremely intelligent, genial, and self-deprecating. Not too likely to find a couple of hackers that have those characteristics. (Of course, they'd not discuss it too much if they did. Part and parcel, you know.)
Wireless cable uses the 2.7 GHz frequency. It was supposed to compete with regular cable until the satellite providers came in and provided superior programming at a much lower per-subscriber cost of transmission. (It's like the Iridium story backwards; their downfall was the proliferation of cell networks globally that deprecated their sats.)
Here in Chicago, we have those frequencies for use as "Wireless DSL" by Sprint. Maybe you remember that article?