I'm a big fan of Isaac Asimovs sci/fi writings, and in one of his books (in the Foundation series I think, but I could be wrong - I'm at work now) they're searching for the Earth. According to that story, one of the very first systems colonized by man had the old poetic name of 'Epsilon Eridani'.
I really like Sol - maybe it's because we write it *exactly* like that in my native language:-)
Seriously, I'd go for the "Origin System". Partly because of the obvious implication that our origin is here, and partly because once we make interstellar travel we'll need some form of coordinate system to give our position in. It would very likely be relative to the Sun, making it the origin of that system.
Most people suggest doing games or improving existing ones. My suggestion is to take a relatively simple game and have them develop AI for computer players. The game can be really simple (simple cardgames for instance), but the challenge of having them compete against one another regularly (or constantly) would/could make it very popular. Or maybe AI for checkers? Very simple concept, easy to do basic AI for but really hard to make good AI for. Could teach them all sorts of good programming habits...
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Selfish Society
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I agree with most of what you say - I'd moderate you as Insightful if I hadn't been handed 0 modpoints to do it with:-(
Back to the topic of how computers improve our lives: You make many good points but unfortunately, all is not well. While most peoples' lives have been improved in many ways, some parts of our lives have been made worse. I'm thinking about government bureaucracy (sp?). Today it seems like too many systems have been replaced with nested if-statements, leaving little or no room for civil servants to make their own call about some situation. True, there have always been narrow-minded civil servants, but nowadays it seems like the norm. "Gee, your situation, as horrible as it may be, doesn't fit any of the 5 choices in my listbox - I can't help you!" is all too common. Naturally, it could be argued that the program is seriously flawed, which is probably true. That's not the point. The point is rather that to the non-geeks running the real world (they do, actually) the computer is/becomes
A menace, since they don't understand them
An authority that they're told is never wrong (sometimes by people like you and me)
An easy way to cover their asses - "the computer told me to do so, so I can't be blamed even though common sense tells me to do the opposite"
So from time to time, I silently wonder if not the world would be a better place if some people used their minds instead of their keyboards.
BTW, I'm not as old as it may sound - 31, in fact. And in case you're wondering, deduce which government I'm referring to from my email address:-)
I've heard of cyanobacteria, but cyborg bacteria? How long before Hollywood produce some lame movies about the subject, getting almost all aspects of science wrong (as they invariably do)?
IMHO, the internet and web being vulnerable is quite understandable when you look at WHY it is being operated. Why? For money of course. Sure, back in the good ol' days (were there any such?) most of the internet consisted of medium-sized links between universities and government installations, and these institutions could afford to have a few nerds employed in some out-of-the-way basement office running the net.
But nowadays, it's all about money. Don't get me wrong - it's not necessarily a bad situation. But all inventions that I know of start out being really solid, but as business moves in, cost-consciousness moves in with it. Now innovative engineers start figuring out where corners can be cut to lower cost.
In this particular case, it means that secondary links are either non-existent or very small. The reason? If you compete in the marketplace and have two of everything, you'll soon lose out to someone who has only one of everything. Chances are, he'll do just fine but with much lower cost.
There are - to my knowledge - no way of avoiding this. I'm not even sure it should be avoided at all. The same cost-consciousness that brought about the brittleness of lots of stuff (including the internet), also made it possible for me to buy my latest computer at what is actually a very low price. Sure it's just a PII-400, but it runs beautifully 99.9% of the time, and the last.1% doesn't justify me having an expensive fault tolerant system - I'll just have to live with that trade-off (and I do:-)
Interesting study - I would like them to try doing the exact same thing when the big links to the US fail. That would give us a good measure of how the net would work with limited US connectivity. And those links DO fail on occasion - a couple of years back my emails travelled from Northern Europe to the US via Japan because some dumbass had cut a couple of big links. Took forever to get through, but they did get there. While not exactly the same problem, it's a very related one.
It's been done to the good ol' Earth a number of times (including doing it from space). There are prospecting companies that use exactly this kind of detailed information in their search for natural resources (oil, minerals etc). Geologists use the same approach to search for ancient craters - even below water using sonar. Since it's just radar and sonar all over again, most of the underlying technology has been around since WWII - it's just been refined to a point few probably imagined possible or worthwhile.
I was reading through the NASA press release and read that they characterized their sail material as 'stiff'. Ignoring jokes about dead people, this sure makes it difficult to fold it together nicely in a spacecraft launched from Earth and then unfolding it in near space which, as I understand it, is the way this is perceived to work.
Also, I'd like to know what they mean to do at arrival? I mean, you've got to apply the brakes at some point in time - just turning off the beam will keep you floating indefinately. Aero-braking perhaps? Or maybe a retro-rocket? Maybe one of those brand new ion-drives? Let's just skip the sail and use the ion-drive to get there:-)
It's fascinating techology, but I'd REALLY like to know what practical purpose this could have, that wouldn't be easier to solve with other technologies.
You obviously know more about the workings of pie-menus than I do, and I'll readily accept that it is a very good way to organize ones menus. No disagreement here, 100% agreement. What little experience I have with pie-menus suggest that you're absolutely right about its advantages. However, I still see pie-menus as being embedded in the current WIMP (Windows, Icon, Menu, Pointer) paradigm - they're just really fancy variations on the 'M':-) I must admit, that the fact that you can select an action SOLELY by moving the mouse without seeing the actual menu ( I never tried that - sounds cool) would make it go beyond the WIMP simply because you can select something by "gesturing". So while you do have a point, and I've somewhat accepted it, I still find that pie-menus are more embedded in WIMP that going beyond it.
I don't mean to spoil things here, but are pie-menus not simply another kind of, well, menus? And as such, aren't they just really cool variations over the menu that's an integral part of practically all current GUI paradigms? From my point of view, that doesn't make pie-menus new and different, only smarter, easier and prettier (the really well-done round ones are SOOO cool:-)
I know that there's a fine line between just improving a known thing and improving it so much that it's a new thing altogether, but I personally don't see that pie-menus cross that line - feel free to disagree:-)
Some months ago, I saw a demonstration at my local university (University of Aarhus, Denmark - I don't have the direct link to the project) of a novel way of giving commands. It uses a "gesturing" system where waving the mouse "just so" selects the fill tool (it was a vector-drawing app), moving it "just so" selected the text tool and so on. It looked to actually work great - you could teach the system how to interpret your personal moves. It was combined with a two-miced (sp?) interface, to make a really cool GUI. With one mouse you'd move the fill tool over an area (it would have a kind of color palette) and the other mouse would select the color to apply to the area, by simply placing the color on top of the area and clicking on it. I thought that was an incredibly efficent and intuitive way to fill many small areas with different colors.
I, for one, am far more interested in lunar missions than Mars missions. Sure, Mars missions are more *sexy*, but what happened with regards to the Moon after Apollo? Nothing! It was all about getting there, not staying there. Establishing a base on the Moon is far more important than some one-shot effort to show the world that it's possible to go to Mars. Get the ISS working (if possible), then expand to the Moon and establish a PERMANENT base there. So I'm all for having more countries able to launch payload to the moon - the more ways to launch stuff the cheaper it is likely to be, which again means that it will sooner rather than later that we'll go back to the Moon - this time to stay...
Just a thought: Who in their right mind would collaborate with NASA about putting stuff on Mars? (hehe)
Just thought that you'd benefit from knowing that some of the most ruthless killing that took place in the world has generally been in the name of some religion - can you say 'Crusades'? 'Inquisition'? 'Conquistadores'? No big religion I know of is exempt from this particularly unpleasant behavior, but these examples seem to apply to your particular religion (seems to be very closely related to mine too:-) History extends futher back than the most recent century, my friend...
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I'm a big fan of Isaac Asimovs sci/fi writings, and in one of his books (in the Foundation series I think, but I could be wrong - I'm at work now) they're searching for the Earth. According to that story, one of the very first systems colonized by man had the old poetic name of 'Epsilon Eridani'.
I really like Sol - maybe it's because we write it *exactly* like that in my native language :-)
Seriously, I'd go for the "Origin System". Partly because of the obvious implication that our origin is here, and partly because once we make interstellar travel we'll need some form of coordinate system to give our position in. It would very likely be relative to the Sun, making it the origin of that system.
Most people suggest doing games or improving existing ones. My suggestion is to take a relatively simple game and have them develop AI for computer players. The game can be really simple (simple cardgames for instance), but the challenge of having them compete against one another regularly (or constantly) would/could make it very popular. Or maybe AI for checkers? Very simple concept, easy to do basic AI for but really hard to make good AI for. Could teach them all sorts of good programming habits...
I agree with most of what you say - I'd moderate you as Insightful if I hadn't been handed 0 modpoints to do it with :-(
Back to the topic of how computers improve our lives: You make many good points but unfortunately, all is not well. While most peoples' lives have been improved in many ways, some parts of our lives have been made worse. I'm thinking about government bureaucracy (sp?). Today it seems like too many systems have been replaced with nested if-statements, leaving little or no room for civil servants to make their own call about some situation. True, there have always been narrow-minded civil servants, but nowadays it seems like the norm. "Gee, your situation, as horrible as it may be, doesn't fit any of the 5 choices in my listbox - I can't help you!" is all too common. Naturally, it could be argued that the program is seriously flawed, which is probably true. That's not the point. The point is rather that to the non-geeks running the real world (they do, actually) the computer is/becomes
- A menace, since they don't understand them
- An authority that they're told is never wrong (sometimes by people like you and me)
- An easy way to cover their asses - "the computer told me to do so, so I can't be blamed even though common sense tells me to do the opposite"
So from time to time, I silently wonder if not the world would be a better place if some people used their minds instead of their keyboards.BTW, I'm not as old as it may sound - 31, in fact. And in case you're wondering, deduce which government I'm referring to from my email address :-)
But who knows, maybe soon we'll make little unsentient beings slaves to our technology! =P
You mean like Microsoft did with Win95?
I've heard of cyanobacteria, but cyborg bacteria? How long before Hollywood produce some lame movies about the subject, getting almost all aspects of science wrong (as they invariably do)?
IMHO, the internet and web being vulnerable is quite understandable when you look at WHY it is being operated. Why? For money of course. Sure, back in the good ol' days (were there any such?) most of the internet consisted of medium-sized links between universities and government installations, and these institutions could afford to have a few nerds employed in some out-of-the-way basement office running the net.
But nowadays, it's all about money. Don't get me wrong - it's not necessarily a bad situation. But all inventions that I know of start out being really solid, but as business moves in, cost-consciousness moves in with it. Now innovative engineers start figuring out where corners can be cut to lower cost.
In this particular case, it means that secondary links are either non-existent or very small. The reason? If you compete in the marketplace and have two of everything, you'll soon lose out to someone who has only one of everything. Chances are, he'll do just fine but with much lower cost.
There are - to my knowledge - no way of avoiding this. I'm not even sure it should be avoided at all. The same cost-consciousness that brought about the brittleness of lots of stuff (including the internet), also made it possible for me to buy my latest computer at what is actually a very low price. Sure it's just a PII-400, but it runs beautifully 99.9% of the time, and the last .1% doesn't justify me having an expensive fault tolerant system - I'll just have to live with that trade-off (and I do :-)
Interesting study - I would like them to try doing the exact same thing when the big links to the US fail. That would give us a good measure of how the net would work with limited US connectivity. And those links DO fail on occasion - a couple of years back my emails travelled from Northern Europe to the US via Japan because some dumbass had cut a couple of big links. Took forever to get through, but they did get there. While not exactly the same problem, it's a very related one.
It's been done to the good ol' Earth a number of times (including doing it from space). There are prospecting companies that use exactly this kind of detailed information in their search for natural resources (oil, minerals etc). Geologists use the same approach to search for ancient craters - even below water using sonar.
Since it's just radar and sonar all over again, most of the underlying technology has been around since WWII - it's just been refined to a point few probably imagined possible or worthwhile.
I was reading through the NASA press release and read that they characterized their sail material as 'stiff'. Ignoring jokes about dead people, this sure makes it difficult to fold it together nicely in a spacecraft launched from Earth and then unfolding it in near space which, as I understand it, is the way this is perceived to work.
Also, I'd like to know what they mean to do at arrival? I mean, you've got to apply the brakes at some point in time - just turning off the beam will keep you floating indefinately. Aero-braking perhaps? Or maybe a retro-rocket? Maybe one of those brand new ion-drives? Let's just skip the sail and use the ion-drive to get there :-)
It's fascinating techology, but I'd REALLY like to know what practical purpose this could have, that wouldn't be easier to solve with other technologies.
You obviously know more about the workings of pie-menus than I do, and I'll readily accept that it is a very good way to organize ones menus. No disagreement here, 100% agreement. What little experience I have with pie-menus suggest that you're absolutely right about its advantages. :-) I must admit, that the fact that you can select an action SOLELY by moving the mouse without seeing the actual menu ( I never tried that - sounds cool) would make it go beyond the WIMP simply because you can select something by "gesturing".
However, I still see pie-menus as being embedded in the current WIMP (Windows, Icon, Menu, Pointer) paradigm - they're just really fancy variations on the 'M'
So while you do have a point, and I've somewhat accepted it, I still find that pie-menus are more embedded in WIMP that going beyond it.
I don't mean to spoil things here, but are pie-menus not simply another kind of, well, menus? And as such, aren't they just really cool variations over the menu that's an integral part of practically all current GUI paradigms? From my point of view, that doesn't make pie-menus new and different, only smarter, easier and prettier (the really well-done round ones are SOOO cool :-)
:-)
I know that there's a fine line between just improving a known thing and improving it so much that it's a new thing altogether, but I personally don't see that pie-menus cross that line - feel free to disagree
Some months ago, I saw a demonstration at my local university (University of Aarhus, Denmark - I don't have the direct link to the project) of a novel way of giving commands. It uses a "gesturing" system where waving the mouse "just so" selects the fill tool (it was a vector-drawing app), moving it "just so" selected the text tool and so on. It looked to actually work great - you could teach the system how to interpret your personal moves.
It was combined with a two-miced (sp?) interface, to make a really cool GUI. With one mouse you'd move the fill tool over an area (it would have a kind of color palette) and the other mouse would select the color to apply to the area, by simply placing the color on top of the area and clicking on it. I thought that was an incredibly efficent and intuitive way to fill many small areas with different colors.
I, for one, am far more interested in lunar missions than Mars missions. Sure, Mars missions are more *sexy*, but what happened with regards to the Moon after Apollo? Nothing! It was all about getting there, not staying there.
Establishing a base on the Moon is far more important than some one-shot effort to show the world that it's possible to go to Mars. Get the ISS working (if possible), then expand to the Moon and establish a PERMANENT base there. So I'm all for having more countries able to launch payload to the moon - the more ways to launch stuff the cheaper it is likely to be, which again means that it will sooner rather than later that we'll go back to the Moon - this time to stay...
Just a thought: Who in their right mind would collaborate with NASA about putting stuff on Mars? (hehe)
Just thought that you'd benefit from knowing that some of the most ruthless killing that took place in the world has generally been in the name of some religion - can you say 'Crusades'? 'Inquisition'? 'Conquistadores'? No big religion I know of is exempt from this particularly unpleasant behavior, but these examples seem to apply to your particular religion (seems to be very closely related to mine too :-) History extends futher back than the most recent century, my friend...