Dip-shit Peckerweek mods! Let's hear it for the nerdly knee-jerk goddist who can't suffer a less than perfectly aesthetic view of their religion.
The parent-post is perfectly legitimate in that it describes just one of several methods employed by aspiring holy-men. Deprivation and seclution are still practiced, formally and informally even today by various flavors of every popular religion. Several of the gospels were the result of some really crazy bugger stumbling back into town/village/citystate and claiming they had a vision (or a revision). They'd be granted audidence and if they entertained the esoterics/priests/king their story would be written down. Stories which gained popularity would be adopted and other ascetics would pick up on what worked and embellish it and eventually one version or another of a story would be comitted to parchment and accepted as a sort of informal cannon for that particular locality. Humanity abhorrs new stories.
Just remember, that streetcorner preacher isn't just distasteful and embarrasing, he's a tradition.
As long as Microsoft stands to make huge profits driving industry by not actually making an operating system and instead creating the fascimile of one we should expect them to continue their campaign of brutally screwing the retarded.
Although this is often regarded as a terrible thing, apparently when you do it on the scale that Microsoft has established everyone who matters seems pretty happy about it, even the slightly higher functioning who in turn prepetuate the cycle of violence by taking money to temporarily assist their less capable brethern in using Windows despite its glaring shortcomings for sustained use.
Of course we could view the shortcomings of Microsoft through a filter based on their hiring practices and conclude that when you hire people uniquely suited to taking tests and deriving non-intuitive solutions to puzzles that maybe they're also unqiuely suited to delivering the best damn cruel fake OS the planet will ever see.
If someone wants to make serious money they'll develop these joystick games with things like "The Bards Tale", or "Alternate Reality: The City/Dungeon", or "Elite", or a good collection of 8-bit RPG's/flight sims. That would absolutely rock! It wouldn't be any challenge at all to give them a usb/ps2 keyboard port--or just make a keyboard/joystick combo, something small. Save your game info to a stick or run a hub and use the keyboard to control it and save things to a stick. Either way, it would beat the snot out playing something on a gameboy advance (mud, it's just hand-held mud).
Although these 8-bit games may seem a step backwards, every time I get into a modern 3D game of any kind it feels like we're doing everything the hard way and getting it wrong...collisions, splining...it's like "good enough" was let out of the lab and everyone just accepted it.
There's one thing to be said about the non-rendered 8-bit stuff:
nobody ever became sim-sick from 8-bit computer games.
Currently,here's what passes for Family Programming at my house: "The Venture Bros.", "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex", "Full Metal Alchemist", "Super Milk Chan", "Family Guy", "Simpsons", "Futrurama", "Malcom in the Middle", "That 70's show", "Samurai X", "Yu-Yu Hakusho" and when we can catch one, "Brothers In Arms" on the History Channel.
I have an 11 yr. old son, and a 8 yr. old daughter. We have some very interesting discussions. I don't bother lying to them about anything they ask.
Anyone have a copy of "Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space" for StarFrontiers for sale? I hate asking at slashdot, but I figure if this review doesn't garner the attention of some old-schoolers (like myself) nothing short of TSR PDF's will.
Kudos to the reviewer! Thorough job! People who write books for people who build worlds with them should know better than to half-ass the job. They should have Opensourced the text and used happy-faces for the rough images. After accepting scathing edits and corrections for a few months they would have had something worthy of the presses...in addition to people who would have gladly picked up a copy knowing they participated in its creation. Of course, that could just be idealism speaking.
The United States and tech companies allowed to play have always imposed artifical limits on consumer technology in order to maximize the market and limit product capability. The tech doesn't properly enable consumers under the law, and the media keeps changing to further disenfranchise the mundane consumer.
Cable providers leverage control and reporting through set-top boxen and when the cable bill is larger than any other three bills combined (just behind the mortgage and the car payment) something is very wrong.
The US is rapidly becoming an eye-cattle, button-clicker, compulsive spender culture where the happy medium will be those who don't ask--just buy.
As a heretic, I'll just keep my 3390 unadorned, keep my dialup account,employ a stringent hosts file and commute by bicycle. Dial up is pretty fast when you're not downloading banner/popup/flash ads.
If Mr. Rutan is motivated by pseudo-egyptian sci-fi and that gets our monkey-asses out of the gravity-well then please lets not forget that many things (the pyramids included) were built on the assumptions of people far-less educated than Mr. Rutan.
I find the line between church and state a much greater cause for concern. Why do politicians have to keep saying that they're right and then name-drop a popular fairy tale/mythos? Yet all over the planet people are happy to do it all the time. I think it's a monkey problem. It's the secret handshake to excusable indulgences, and the exclusion of others. Esoteric belief-sets are not quite as dangerous as formally recognized ones. If Mr. Rutan was a duly elected official, pushing for a 1.2bn package which would create a pyramid/plateau in order to draw aliens to the country then we would have cause for alarm.
One persons' devout beliefs are another's fairy tales. The problem with beliefs stems from the ability of people to stop thinking in order to kill the person who doesn't revere them also. Therin lies that danger of belief.
I was ok with "Higaro no Go" UNTIL I REALIZED SAI WAS A DUDE. After that, my interest in the manga plummeted. I think it would rock to have a female ghost "skinnin" along for the ride, but a dude?
It would actually be fun to hear her sighing in the brainspace and saying, "I hate it when you read porn--now you'll have to mastrubate again and again and...STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF!"
or
"You're wife is such a pig. Would you like me to talk dirty to you again?"
The possibilities are endless. Hey, someone's probably written up a whole series on that concept. Links anyone?
If our tech is constrained by orbital-plane changes, latitudinal inclination, and ascent safety then maybe the first thing that has to happen is the re-invention of earth-to-orbit propulsion systems.
I did some reading, based on your post, and agular momentum and conservation of forces above/below the equator still puts the southwest about on par with launches from Baikonur.
Right now our space program is working with rocketry and all its limitations. I'm pretty sure it's not the only option. There's always more than one way to do something and necessity is an incredible motivator. Until the military/Gov needs it done it's going to take some kind of happy-accident before someone figures out how to loft something like 14,000 tons with safety and efficiency with enough margin to make up for all the factors which would invalidate a launch using current technology.
I'm not rocket scientist, and have only a layman's understanding of the the shuttle program, so I can't comment on booster solutions.
However, even as a layman I can point to the weather as the single greatest reason the US Space Program needs to relocate. The deserts of Nevada, California, and New Mexico can readily support a space program. They could even plunk something down in Yuma, AZ and nobody would bat an eye. The government has been dabbling with the military in these areas for decades and the weather is just freakin' awesome.
What's keeping the fragile space progam in Florida anyway? Politics?
Like the factories of war-torn countries, our space program needs to be smashed and remade anew. And the government needs to be less "touchy-feely-k12 education" with the space program. We need to give the UN the finger, and start lofting modified-for-space "SeaWolf" submarine segments and reaction mass towards LeGrange points and start assembling our fleet and establish ourselves before we're marginalized. We need the military in space because without the military behind it, space programs will never succeed.
I'm sure General Dynamics would enjoy some more government money, and quickly create a "space boat" division to quickly adapt existing tech to the task.
The only reason I'm suggesting this path is because until the military is invovled, unless there is some "manifest destiny" theme, programs like NASA just stagnate.
No, you're spot-on. What we fail to understand in the "States" is that with movies like "Voices from a Distant Star", this kind of faux/distance relationship schtick is spawned by people who have grown up in Japanese/Asian cultures where the fake thing can be incredibly liberating physically, while romantically engaging the individual. There are people who make their livelihood from promoting virtual personalities in Japanese/Asian media.
It's not for us. But then we're not living with the kind of guilt-masters Japanese women are. Compared with the scathing no-win situations a guy can get into having a virtual girlfriend is a minor embarassment which would pay off by promoting the kinds of reward/punishment which would help the customer in the future.
"She had enough trouble learning XP - I wouldn't dare put Linux in front of her."
I would say don't underestimate women--especially Mom. If she's not being lazy she will ask you enough questions to get started and then learn on her own.
I put a Mandrake/KDE desktop in front of an older woman who was from rural Arkansas, and hadn't touched a computer in her life. The machine had an Epson Inkjet printer on it and she had a great time playing solitare/puzzle games, and ran through at least a ream of paper printing out stuff she was writing. She even changed the printer cartridges on her own. The machine never crashed and I never recieved a call to fix it.
That's something no first-time user can accomplish running any flavor of MS office on a Windows install. MS Office 0wns the MS OS--it is a disease without a cure. The Epson Drivers eat Windows' users for breakfast too. Cups drives an Epson printer like a dream.
The only down-side would be trying to run some crummy directx game.
Otherwise, I'm almost certain your Mom would understand how to use KDE in about five minutes. You should let her try (do the Knoppix!) sometime. Cheers.
Hang on. You're taking me out of time-scale. I didn't say "immediate". I clearly mentioned "rehabilitation". So after your lying around in a VA hospital a while you eventually stand a chance at a normal life. But since the late 1980's the VA medical system has become significantly worse than anyone could imagine except a soldier who looks to the VA years after service for an injury sustatined during duty.
Some of the other stuff; chipping soldiers, temporarily boosting the immune system, and dermal patches are very possible.
A soldier who goes into combat should be traceable. A biochip could easily be picked up, and so could a body. I like my anonymity so I won't bother going into the details of how we'd get a squirt of information out of an implant without tipping off the enemy--just know that it's complete possible.
Boosting the immune system could be a benefit from stem-cell tech. Boost the T-Cell count of soldiers during their hazard-duty rotation with cloned T-cells sampled from the soldier prior to deployment. They own your ass, no reason to not do something useful with it.
And if we can keep girls from getting pregnant while keeping them in nicotine with a patch why can't we fill them with a balancing cocktail or something useful instead? We could have a red patch (adrenaline), a pink patch (opiates), and a green (endorphin analog), a yellow patch (antibiotic), black (knockout), or a blue which would be balancer cocktail--something which would permit a soldier to remain focused despite injury or lack of sleep (I'm not a pharma-geek). I don't see these as being difficult (they would be politically tough). Big pharma spends hundreds of millions on addicting housewives to be depressed/bi-polar/compulsive-shoppers and we can't have a few lousy patches to get through [a firefight/being wounded/needing to push the levels of human endurance/staying calm while the medic sets your leg]?! I would rather see sweeping advances in denistry, genetics and life-science which would make the world a truly better place--imagine what a NASA budget for medical science would accomplish in forty years?
I'm griping because people are afraid of "meat", we don't want to make people more capable of surviving war--or surviving anything. I didn't even get into "Sci-fi", everything I mentioned is very real or possible, just ignored or unpurposed while DARPA entertains the soldier who gets to dance into battle with only 50lbs. of gear (ahahahah), when that happens we will be playing football.
I read the article. Battleready means you're weighted. In this case, it's an idealized "50lbs" but that's a marketing number. This stuff gets to the field, and it turns out people start "strokin'", it's going to be left in boxes. This wouldn't be the first time the solution outweighs the benefits. I've known many people who have had heat-stroke from training exercises in "MOPP4". You either learn to love sweat and the taste of rubber, or you fall down...it was like federal bondage without the "sweet sweet release".
You can't cover up a person's body while they're amped up...they tend to fall down from exhaustion. However, if they were going to say something like,
"Armor crewman will be protected from spauldings and secondary debris when attacked by RPG/HEAT rounds" then I'd be cheering. But this stuff is firmly aimed at the grunt. Saying a soldier would be like an "F-16" is very misleading. People are easy to frag. Hitting an Aircraft with small arms is tough.
Politicians, bullshit artists, college kids, and people who don't have to wear/live with the bullshit can't possibly appreciate just how stupid the "future warrior" plan is.
This whole "future" warrior schtick will complicate soldier's life (hauling 150lbs of crap everywhere you go, being accountable for it and its condition, and having to haul your wounded buddies ass out of 'the shit'), which is hard enough as it is. The Pentagon needs to leave the toys in the locker and make better decisions. The things I always thought about when I was 'humpin' around with my lpc's and m16 with alice on my back were something like this...
Light, effective weapons (caseless ammo, call-home capability, lightweight/composite tech, and imprinting to the soldier are do-able)
Miniturized/ruggedized commo which works with implanted chips (if you're a soldier, your ass is 0wn3d anyway) which give biotelemetry without bullshit readouts. Only the medic/commanders need to see what condition a soldier is in. They could even aggregate the data.
Limb-replacement tech...yes, regrow your amputated bits. Rehabilitiation tech needs to pull its sorry butt into the new century.
Immune system amping (be able to eat/drink just about anything), better treatments for bacterial infections and 'derm' tech which would give the soldier a patch that would help sustain their opitate/endorphin/adrenaline balances...combat the stress of combat. When people aren't going apeshit in-ranks casualties are significantly reduced (yes, a chemical-control cocktail). Got a buddy who has crapped himself after that last RPG took out the track behind yours? Just step on his neck and slap one of these patches on his ass and don't worry about him hosing everyone in a panic.
Good food.
The ability to eat anything would be helpful too.
Oh, and having the soldiers adapt to and understand the culture they're going to be fighting with/in. There's more than one way to win a war.
Yeah, as usual, compared to what would really make a difference (don't even go towards the "not fight in the first place" argument--humanity sucks) a bunch of neato armor bits and some computer stuff is really a very easy way out.
My cthonic wifette is nothing short of a "Harvest Moon: It's a Wonderful Life" farming scientist. She has tracked everything in the game. The only people with better notes on the lifecycles, productivity cycles, and farming mechanics are the development guys from Natsume's Japan offices...I think even they would be surprised at the "otaku" level to which my wife has plumbed the highs and lows of the game. Her biggest complaint is that you can't hug/kiss/anything with your wife, while you can talk to and and nuzzle your cows/horse/sheep/goat/chickens. That's kinda messed up. The only thing guys can hope for is that there's a "Sex-rated" version of the game somewhere where you can bed any of your three potential wives (Nami would probably shag the farmboy rotten and leave before he wakes up, Muffy would look like death warmed over and sneak away, and Celia would would be so cute you'd automatically push the A button labeled "Sex" again and again--forget the crops we're working on "sister"!). If the game featured even some highly edited sex, or the ability to hug your wife, it might be less of a downer. You get more love from your livestock.
Expect to shell out another $40+ when they come out with a "female protagonist" series of Harvest Moon games.
I find the damn thing to be the digital equivalent of ether...puts me right out. Even two litres of Diet Coke are worthless against a farming sim for me. I'm an adrenaline junky (RTS/FPS/SSXn/Combat Flightsim) gamer, so anything that doesn't have me shaking the windows with subwoofer amplified battlecries and storm-god channeling which has the neighbors peering into the windows to see if I'm killing everyone or breaking stuff has a sedative-effect.
And now for a few hundred words to soak the brains of those who like to read.
There are ways things are done in order to make people in power look good no matter what the outcome is. Politics is a team sport in a government controlled by a majority party. In an election year, this more than most, we sometimes don't just see the puppets, but the hairy-wrists and the odd hand controlling some sticks. Sometimes we as an audience are less tolerant of the hijinks. In this instance, checks and balances make for the perfect way to duck and run, a necessary part of talking up something for the kids, while still keeping the peace.
A "War" president isn't necessarily a "space" president. It's nice to evoke two cars in every garage, cheap clean power, a trip to mars, and dead terrorists in every evil country around the world. It makes the press happy to posit more WhiteHouse newscrack, and for the President to record a prepared statement. It's all just part of being in office. I heard the "Mars Initiative" statement and watched the nifty presentation NASA made to go along with it (chicken/egg/whatever). This is something a U.S. President is supposed to do. And for those who must ask why, it's simply a bone to throw the education system, something gradeschool teachers can have kids write about, something science teachers can form a lesson plan on, and something NASA can do to justify their role/budget as a vector for science and engineering in education.
The reality of what our government does is veiled behind bought-and-sold opinion, consented to by businesses that control just about every high-visibility "free" vector short of the local "free as in beer" paper that's printed every week and dropped wholesale in convienience stores and on street-corners. Citizen-criminals in this land of the free-to-shop are encouraged to simply pay attention to the news that's been made for them and to play with their toys, watch their tv-shows, and don't talk back to authority. In our government, the gloves are always on, unless a certain acerbic Vice President gets snippy.
Apparently a moderator was offended that someone would drop so blatant a comment which succinctly approximated the situation.
"Getting those who tell it like it is won't make the problem go away." -Jello Biafra
What makes the idea that the President (regardless of political affiliation) would do this seem so repellent? This is business-as-usual. It's very insightful for someone to see through the "BS" and say something all the adults in the room know to be true. The parent of this thread isn't a troll or flamebait. It's a pithy statement that is self-evident truth.
Re:Citizen 156675 report themselves for spellcrime
on
1984 Comes To Boston
·
· Score: 1
Citizen genixia, spellcrime is noncrime. Semantically it's been proven that I could have done all manner of reprehensible things to the word "committing" and the kind reader would "get it". Don't play prole, MiniTruth is unconcerned with Slashdot except as a tool for identifying crimethinkers and as a vector for crimespeak.
Below you will find that regardless of spelling you will recognize the following word:
coimitting comimtting comiting commiiting co mitig comimiting comitng
This is very blackwhite, and maybe after the morning jerks you'll feel better.
I haven't seen such great "duckspeak" since I gm'd "Paranoia" for a group of suitable victims. I had a couple pages of the stuff for some NPC's to yell at the players whenever they did something stupid. Took me a long time to get it right.
Just sharing here, apparently my attempt at "productivity" today outside of blogspace is a wash (same as it ever was--same as it ever was....)
Thank you for the links. That brought back some memories.
When it comes to "Buck Rogers", my favorite episode of the whole series was episode 14 when Erin Gray as Wilma Derring was all Space-Vampire possessed and hungry for some "Buck"--talking all husky and modulated to Buck Rogers, "Ohhh Buck...", apparently space vampires have an incredible libido and rather obvious body-language too. She was trying to convince him that it wouldn't hurt being space-vampire dooky or morsel, or whatever through an intercom or something. My entire family was laughing so hard we scared the dogs in the neighbors yard.
If it hadn't been so freakin' weird it might have been sexy...Erin Gray was a staple of my teen fantasies (right up there with Linda Carter and the Divine Trinity of vaccuous TV: Charlies Angels -- I always preferred Kate Jackson because she had that whole sexy librarian thing going for her and in some ways still does. Compare her to what Farah Fawcett looks like these days, an exercise best left to the reader).
As for the "Twiki" thing, whomever came up with the "head" design made it quite embarrasing to talk about the show in school. It was always, "Hey, isn't that the show with that dickhead wannabe robot on it?" whenever someone nearby was listening in while the geekpool I was with was comparing Erin Gray/Linda Carter/Kate Jackson fantasies.
Citizen d474 is so rightwise you can bellyfeel it.
Citizen 242493 should report themselves for such crimethink and malquote at the thought of facing B.B. and possibly comitting facecrime. When the Boston Hate Week commences, all crimethinkers will be shown to B.B. and know the joycamps.
Because such crimespeak is fullwise here it will indulge crimethinkers in their fantasies against the Inner Party, what is being shown here is an act of love, blackwhite love shown to the citizens facing possible action from thoughtcrime,sexcrime crimethinkers from the Disupted territories. Our dayorder is love of B.B., the Inner Party, and crimestop.
Slashdot is so fullwise duckspeak and oldthought. This space is doubleplusungood even for the Pornosec, it's such prolefeed. This article isn't even goodsource for two-minute-hate, but should be enough for the ThinkPol to identify crimethinkers.
Why don't they just use a retro-fitted nuclear submarine?
Oh yes, I went there.(stewie-ism)
Remove the electric motors, repurpose the ballast as sheilding or water/env resources. and start training some divers to do EVA in NASA "stay-puff" suits.
Put a sturdy self-contained, time-tested vehicle for transporting humans in an imicial environment into orbit. Compared to 3900 atmospheres, space is a cakewalk (with a cute caller who doesn't mind tounge-kissing you and cupping your ass too when she hands you the prize).
Railgun that bastard into orbit without any squishy humans in it, or ask/pay Burt Rutan to make a really-fricken huge composite slingshot--just get it up there.
Then send the crew up later.
Retrofit the damn thing with some easily replaced external chemical/ion thrusters and fuel it up and go. Shouldn't take much reprogramming to interface to the thrusters with the existing computer control systems.
Once it's powered up, everything is there. What the hell is so hard about that? Someone should make a damn movie about it. Knowing the guys that work on Anime, they already have and I'm just too poor to bother looking.
There NASA. Simple enough? And free. Hell, let's GPL that puppy someone.
In the best of all possible worlds, the right information will solve things.
In this world, it just makes for good reading and the occasional TV show, and maybe a movie (or a Bollywood classic complete with handfuls of dye-powder cast into the air as Tom Ridge dances across a table laden with fruit and the skulls of terrorists while an out-of-tune guitar twangs to the syncopated beat of whips across the backs of the new jobless underclass, soon to wear TSA togs--let the vetting begin!).
Alpha-rats are never caught as long as they're loved by someone. There are plenty of examples of this. The soldier rats lovingly sacrifice themselves and no database in the world is going to even slow it down. This is something that the world has known since before cuniform tablets and clay pellets, but armed with cameras, computers, x-ray machines and databases the government is willing to spend billions in order to create the facade of safety that the writers of bad tv-shows can use in order to feel timely.
It's crepe paper milled from taxpayer dollars, destined to be pissed on by anyone willing to sacrifice themselves. Crepe paper looks pretty until it's treated to a hot wet dose of reality.
Government should have the power to control who comes and goes on international flights. Within the boundaries of the CONUS, they shouldn't have a damn thing to do with people travelling between cities and states. No more than they bother with someone getting on a train, or someone taking the bus.
For the ambulatory meat packed into a plane, the traditional methods of screening for weapons done by most security staff that aren't sleeping or busy socializing should do.
The security solution they need for aircraft should be flight-systems/avionics which lock-out the pilot and force the plane into a neutral/low-risk cooridor. We've had the ability to do this since the 1970's. There's a buttload of other things we could do, but the airline industry will alternately suck their thumbs and pick their collective noses until they can wrangle attractive contracts to retrofit or replace the existing fleets. Like most industries, aviation would prefer a people-based solution rather than innovate or take a risk. The aviation industry could also take many other steps to eliminate or reduce the number of casualties in a crash but they've successfully done what Microsoft does today; simply tell the customer that there's always bugs and that crashes are just a part of using a computer(airplane).
Keep in mind that a solution based on good security and aircraft wouldn't require a growth in government, so there's little or no incentive to do it. In this age of terror-alerts, the old-guard are all too happy to make a grab on freedom, turn the ratchet, and enjoy their firehoses of data, funding and playpen-omniscience.
Slashdot Mirror
Dip-shit Peckerweek mods! Let's hear it for the nerdly knee-jerk goddist who can't suffer a less than perfectly aesthetic view of their religion.
The parent-post is perfectly legitimate in that it describes just one of several methods employed by aspiring holy-men. Deprivation and seclution are still practiced, formally and informally even today by various flavors of every popular religion. Several of the gospels were the result of some really crazy bugger stumbling back into town/village/citystate and claiming they had a vision (or a revision). They'd be granted audidence and if they entertained the esoterics/priests/king their story would be written down. Stories which gained popularity would be adopted and other ascetics would pick up on what worked and embellish it and eventually one version or another of a story would be comitted to parchment and accepted as a sort of informal cannon for that particular locality. Humanity abhorrs new stories.
Just remember, that streetcorner preacher isn't just distasteful and embarrasing, he's a tradition.
As long as Microsoft stands to make huge profits driving industry by not actually making an operating system and instead creating the fascimile of one we should expect them to continue their campaign of brutally screwing the retarded.
Although this is often regarded as a terrible thing, apparently when you do it on the scale that Microsoft has established everyone who matters seems pretty happy about it, even the slightly higher functioning who in turn prepetuate the cycle of violence by taking money to temporarily assist their less capable brethern in using Windows despite its glaring shortcomings for sustained use.
Of course we could view the shortcomings of Microsoft through a filter based on their hiring practices and conclude that when you hire people uniquely suited to taking tests and deriving non-intuitive solutions to puzzles that maybe they're also unqiuely suited to delivering the best damn cruel fake OS the planet will ever see.
If someone wants to make serious money they'll develop these joystick games with things like "The Bards Tale", or "Alternate Reality: The City/Dungeon", or "Elite", or a good collection of 8-bit RPG's/flight sims. That would absolutely rock! It wouldn't be any challenge at all to give them a usb/ps2 keyboard port--or just make a keyboard/joystick combo, something small. Save your game info to a stick or run a hub and use the keyboard to control it and save things to a stick. Either way, it would beat the snot out playing something on a gameboy advance (mud, it's just hand-held mud). Although these 8-bit games may seem a step backwards, every time I get into a modern 3D game of any kind it feels like we're doing everything the hard way and getting it wrong...collisions, splining...it's like "good enough" was let out of the lab and everyone just accepted it. There's one thing to be said about the non-rendered 8-bit stuff: nobody ever became sim-sick from 8-bit computer games.
I've been practicing this for a while.
Currently,here's what passes for Family Programming at my house:
"The Venture Bros.",
"Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex",
"Full Metal Alchemist",
"Super Milk Chan",
"Family Guy",
"Simpsons",
"Futrurama",
"Malcom in the Middle",
"That 70's show",
"Samurai X",
"Yu-Yu Hakusho"
and when we can catch one, "Brothers In Arms" on the History Channel.
I have an 11 yr. old son, and a 8 yr. old daughter.
We have some very interesting discussions. I don't bother lying to them about anything they ask.
Anyone have a copy of "Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space" for StarFrontiers for sale? I hate asking at slashdot, but I figure if this review doesn't garner the attention of some old-schoolers (like myself) nothing short of TSR PDF's will.
Kudos to the reviewer! Thorough job!
People who write books for people who build worlds with them should know better than to half-ass the job. They should have Opensourced the text and used happy-faces for the rough images. After accepting scathing edits and corrections for a few months they would have had something worthy of the presses...in addition to people who would have gladly picked up a copy knowing they participated in its creation. Of course, that could just be idealism speaking.
The United States and tech companies allowed to play have always imposed artifical limits on consumer technology in order to maximize the market and limit product capability. The tech doesn't properly enable consumers under the law, and the media keeps changing to further disenfranchise the mundane consumer.
Cable providers leverage control and reporting through set-top boxen and when the cable bill is larger than any other three bills combined (just behind the mortgage and the car payment) something is very wrong.
The US is rapidly becoming an eye-cattle, button-clicker, compulsive spender culture where the happy medium will be those who don't ask--just buy.
As a heretic, I'll just keep my 3390 unadorned, keep my dialup account,employ a stringent hosts file and commute by bicycle. Dial up is pretty fast when you're not downloading banner/popup/flash ads.
If Mr. Rutan is motivated by pseudo-egyptian sci-fi and that gets our monkey-asses out of the gravity-well then please lets not forget that many things (the pyramids included) were built on the assumptions of people far-less educated than Mr. Rutan.
I find the line between church and state a much greater cause for concern. Why do politicians have to keep saying that they're right and then name-drop a popular fairy tale/mythos? Yet all over the planet people are happy to do it all the time. I think it's a monkey problem. It's the secret handshake to excusable indulgences, and the exclusion of others. Esoteric belief-sets are not quite as dangerous as formally recognized ones. If Mr. Rutan was a duly elected official, pushing for a 1.2bn package which would create a pyramid/plateau in order to draw aliens to the country then we would have cause for alarm.
One persons' devout beliefs are another's fairy tales. The problem with beliefs stems from the ability of people to stop thinking in order to kill the person who doesn't revere them also. Therin lies that danger of belief.
I was ok with "Higaro no Go" UNTIL I REALIZED SAI WAS A DUDE.
After that, my interest in the manga plummeted.
I think it would rock to have a female ghost "skinnin" along for the ride,
but a dude?
It would actually be fun to hear her sighing in the brainspace and saying,
"I hate it when you read porn--now you'll have to mastrubate again and again and...STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF!"
or
"You're wife is such a pig. Would you like me to talk dirty to you again?"
The possibilities are endless.
Hey, someone's probably written up a whole series on that concept.
Links anyone?
Here's one which will be here in about a decade,
"Please submit to genetic testing or you will pay higher premiums for health and life insurance. Have a nice day."
When (auto) insurance is mandated by the state, the insurance companies can't help but make shareholders happier. It's the law.
If our tech is constrained by orbital-plane changes, latitudinal inclination, and ascent safety then maybe the first thing that has to happen is the re-invention of earth-to-orbit propulsion systems.
I did some reading, based on your post, and agular momentum and conservation of forces above/below the equator still puts the southwest about on par with launches from Baikonur.
Right now our space program is working with rocketry and all its limitations. I'm pretty sure it's not the only option. There's always more than one way to do something and necessity is an incredible motivator. Until the military/Gov needs it done it's going to take some kind of happy-accident before someone figures out how to loft something like 14,000 tons with safety and efficiency with enough margin to make up for all the factors which would invalidate a launch using current technology.
I'm not rocket scientist, and have only a layman's understanding of the the shuttle program, so I can't comment on booster solutions.
However, even as a layman I can point to the weather as the single greatest reason the US Space Program needs to relocate. The deserts of Nevada, California, and New Mexico can readily support a space program. They could even plunk something down in Yuma, AZ and nobody would bat an eye. The government has been dabbling with the military in these areas for decades and the weather is just freakin' awesome.
What's keeping the fragile space progam in Florida anyway? Politics?
Like the factories of war-torn countries, our space program needs to be smashed and remade anew. And the government needs to be less "touchy-feely-k12 education" with the space program. We need to give the UN the finger, and start lofting modified-for-space "SeaWolf" submarine segments and reaction mass towards LeGrange points and start assembling our fleet and establish ourselves before we're marginalized. We need the military in space because without the military behind it, space programs will never succeed.
I'm sure General Dynamics would enjoy some more government money, and quickly create a "space boat" division to quickly adapt existing tech to the task.
The only reason I'm suggesting this path is because until the military is invovled, unless there is some "manifest destiny" theme, programs like NASA just stagnate.
Progress follows the point of a lance.
No, you're spot-on.
What we fail to understand in the "States" is that with movies like "Voices from a Distant Star", this kind of faux/distance relationship schtick is spawned by people who have grown up in Japanese/Asian cultures where the fake thing can be incredibly liberating physically, while romantically engaging the individual. There are people who make their livelihood from promoting virtual personalities in Japanese/Asian media.
It's not for us. But then we're not living with the kind of guilt-masters Japanese women are. Compared with the scathing no-win situations a guy can get into having a virtual girlfriend is a minor embarassment which would pay off by promoting the kinds of reward/punishment which would help the customer in the future.
"She had enough trouble learning XP - I wouldn't dare put Linux in front of her."
I would say don't underestimate women--especially Mom. If she's not being lazy she will ask you enough questions to get started and then learn on her own.
I put a Mandrake/KDE desktop in front of an older woman who was from rural Arkansas, and hadn't touched a computer in her life. The machine had an Epson Inkjet printer on it and she had a great time playing solitare/puzzle games, and ran through at least a ream of paper printing out stuff she was writing. She even changed the printer cartridges on her own. The machine never crashed and I never recieved a call to fix it.
That's something no first-time user can accomplish running any flavor of MS office on a Windows install. MS Office 0wns the MS OS--it is a disease without a cure. The Epson Drivers eat Windows' users for breakfast too. Cups drives an Epson printer like a dream.
The only down-side would be trying to run some crummy directx game.
Otherwise, I'm almost certain your Mom would understand how to use KDE in about five minutes. You should let her try (do the Knoppix!) sometime.
Cheers.
Hang on. You're taking me out of time-scale. I didn't say "immediate". I clearly mentioned "rehabilitation". So after your lying around in a VA hospital a while you eventually stand a chance at a normal life. But since the late 1980's the VA medical system has become significantly worse than anyone could imagine except a soldier who looks to the VA years after service for an injury sustatined during duty.
Some of the other stuff; chipping soldiers, temporarily boosting the immune system, and dermal patches are very possible.
A soldier who goes into combat should be traceable. A biochip could easily be picked up, and so could a body. I like my anonymity so I won't bother going into the details of how we'd get a squirt of information out of an implant without tipping off the enemy--just know that it's complete possible.
Boosting the immune system could be a benefit from stem-cell tech. Boost the T-Cell count of soldiers during their hazard-duty rotation with cloned T-cells sampled from the soldier prior to deployment. They own your ass, no reason to not do something useful with it.
And if we can keep girls from getting pregnant while keeping them in nicotine with a patch why can't we fill them with a balancing cocktail or something useful instead? We could have a red patch (adrenaline), a pink patch (opiates), and a green (endorphin analog), a yellow patch (antibiotic), black (knockout), or a blue which would be balancer cocktail--something which would permit a soldier to remain focused despite injury or lack of sleep (I'm not a pharma-geek). I don't see these as being difficult (they would be politically tough). Big pharma spends hundreds of millions on addicting housewives to be depressed/bi-polar/compulsive-shoppers and we can't have a few lousy patches to get through [a firefight/being wounded/needing to push the levels of human endurance/staying calm while the medic sets your leg]?! I would rather see sweeping advances in denistry, genetics and life-science which would make the world a truly better place--imagine what a NASA budget for medical science would accomplish in forty years?
I'm griping because people are afraid of "meat", we don't want to make people more capable of surviving war--or surviving anything. I didn't even get into "Sci-fi", everything I mentioned is very real or possible, just ignored or unpurposed while DARPA entertains the soldier who gets to dance into battle with only 50lbs. of gear (ahahahah), when that happens we will be playing football.
I read the article. Battleready means you're weighted. In this case, it's an idealized "50lbs" but that's a marketing number. This stuff gets to the field, and it turns out people start "strokin'", it's going to be left in boxes. This wouldn't be the first time the solution outweighs the benefits. I've known many people who have had heat-stroke from training exercises in "MOPP4". You either learn to love sweat and the taste of rubber, or you fall down...it was like federal bondage without the "sweet sweet release". You can't cover up a person's body while they're amped up...they tend to fall down from exhaustion. However, if they were going to say something like, "Armor crewman will be protected from spauldings and secondary debris when attacked by RPG/HEAT rounds" then I'd be cheering. But this stuff is firmly aimed at the grunt. Saying a soldier would be like an "F-16" is very misleading. People are easy to frag. Hitting an Aircraft with small arms is tough.
Politicians, bullshit artists, college kids, and people who don't have to wear/live with the bullshit can't possibly appreciate just how stupid the "future warrior" plan is.
This whole "future" warrior schtick will complicate soldier's life (hauling 150lbs of crap everywhere you go, being accountable for it and its condition, and having to haul your wounded buddies ass out of 'the shit'), which is hard enough as it is. The Pentagon needs to leave the toys in the locker and make better decisions. The things I always thought about when I was 'humpin' around with my lpc's and m16 with alice on my back were something like this...
Light, effective weapons (caseless ammo, call-home capability, lightweight/composite tech, and imprinting to the soldier are do-able)
Miniturized/ruggedized commo which works with implanted chips (if you're a soldier, your ass is 0wn3d anyway) which give biotelemetry without bullshit readouts. Only the medic/commanders need to see what condition a soldier is in. They could even aggregate the data.
Limb-replacement tech...yes, regrow your amputated bits. Rehabilitiation tech needs to pull its sorry butt into the new century.
Immune system amping (be able to eat/drink just about anything), better treatments for bacterial infections and 'derm' tech which would give the soldier a patch that would help sustain their opitate/endorphin/adrenaline balances...combat the stress of combat. When people aren't going apeshit in-ranks casualties are significantly reduced (yes, a chemical-control cocktail). Got a buddy who has crapped himself after that last RPG took out the track behind yours? Just step on his neck and slap one of these patches on his ass and don't worry about him hosing everyone in a panic.
Good food.
The ability to eat anything would be helpful too.
Oh, and having the soldiers adapt to and understand the culture they're going to be fighting with/in. There's more than one way to win a war.
Yeah, as usual, compared to what would really make a difference (don't even go towards the "not fight in the first place" argument--humanity sucks) a bunch of neato armor bits and some computer stuff is really a very easy way out.
Cheers.
I feel your pain brother.
My cthonic wifette is nothing short of a "Harvest Moon: It's a Wonderful Life" farming scientist. She has tracked everything in the game. The only people with better notes on the lifecycles, productivity cycles, and farming mechanics are the development guys from Natsume's Japan offices...I think even they would be surprised at the "otaku" level to which my wife has plumbed the highs and lows of the game. Her biggest complaint is that you can't hug/kiss/anything with your wife, while you can talk to and and nuzzle your cows/horse/sheep/goat/chickens. That's kinda messed up. The only thing guys can hope for is that there's a "Sex-rated" version of the game somewhere where you can bed any of your three potential wives (Nami would probably shag the farmboy rotten and leave before he wakes up, Muffy would look like death warmed over and sneak away, and Celia would would be so cute you'd automatically push the A button labeled "Sex" again and again--forget the crops we're working on "sister"!). If the game featured even some highly edited sex, or the ability to hug your wife, it might be less of a downer. You get more love from your livestock.
Expect to shell out another $40+ when they come out with a "female protagonist" series of Harvest Moon games.
I find the damn thing to be the digital equivalent of ether...puts me right out. Even two litres of Diet Coke are worthless against a farming sim for me. I'm an adrenaline junky (RTS/FPS/SSXn/Combat Flightsim) gamer, so anything that doesn't have me shaking the windows with subwoofer amplified battlecries and storm-god channeling which has the neighbors peering into the windows to see if I'm killing everyone or breaking stuff has a sedative-effect.
Hear hear! Drinkypoo's comment has merit.
And now for a few hundred words to soak the brains of those who like to read.
There are ways things are done in order to make people in power look good no matter what the outcome is. Politics is a team sport in a government controlled by a majority party. In an election year, this more than most, we sometimes don't just see the puppets, but the hairy-wrists and the odd hand controlling some sticks. Sometimes we as an audience are less tolerant of the hijinks. In this instance, checks and balances make for the perfect way to duck and run, a necessary part of talking up something for the kids, while still keeping the peace.
A "War" president isn't necessarily a "space" president. It's nice to evoke two cars in every garage, cheap clean power, a trip to mars, and dead terrorists in every evil country around the world. It makes the press happy to posit more WhiteHouse newscrack, and for the President to record a prepared statement. It's all just part of being in office. I heard the "Mars Initiative" statement and watched the nifty presentation NASA made to go along with it (chicken/egg/whatever). This is something a U.S. President is supposed to do. And for those who must ask why, it's simply a bone to throw the education system, something gradeschool teachers can have kids write about, something science teachers can form a lesson plan on, and something NASA can do to justify their role/budget as a vector for science and engineering in education.
The reality of what our government does is veiled behind bought-and-sold opinion, consented to by businesses that control just about every high-visibility "free" vector short of the local "free as in beer" paper that's printed every week and dropped wholesale in convienience stores and on street-corners. Citizen-criminals in this land of the free-to-shop are encouraged to simply pay attention to the news that's been made for them and to play with their toys, watch their tv-shows, and don't talk back to authority. In our government, the gloves are always on, unless a certain acerbic Vice President gets snippy.
Apparently a moderator was offended that someone would drop so blatant a comment which succinctly approximated the situation.
"Getting those who tell it like it is won't make the problem go away."
-Jello Biafra
What makes the idea that the President (regardless of political affiliation) would do this seem so repellent? This is business-as-usual. It's very insightful for someone to see through the "BS" and say something all the adults in the room know to be true. The parent of this thread isn't a troll or flamebait. It's a pithy statement that is self-evident truth.
Citizen genixia, spellcrime is noncrime. Semantically it's been proven that I could have done all manner of reprehensible things to the word "committing" and the kind reader would "get it". Don't play prole, MiniTruth is unconcerned with Slashdot except as a tool for identifying crimethinkers and as a vector for crimespeak.
o mitig
Below you will find that regardless of spelling you will recognize the following word:
coimitting
comimtting
comiting
commiiting
c
comimiting
comitng
This is very blackwhite, and maybe after the morning jerks you'll feel better.
I haven't seen such great "duckspeak" since I gm'd "Paranoia" for a group of suitable victims. I had a couple pages of the stuff for some NPC's to yell at the players whenever they did something stupid. Took me a long time to get it right.
Cheers.
Just sharing here, apparently my attempt at "productivity" today outside of blogspace is a wash (same as it ever was--same as it ever was....)
Thank you for the links. That brought back some memories.
When it comes to "Buck Rogers", my favorite episode of the whole series was episode 14 when Erin Gray as Wilma Derring was all Space-Vampire possessed and hungry for some "Buck"--talking all husky and modulated to Buck Rogers,
"Ohhh Buck...", apparently space vampires have an incredible libido and rather obvious body-language too.
She was trying to convince him that it wouldn't hurt being space-vampire dooky or morsel, or whatever through an intercom or something. My entire family was laughing so hard we scared the dogs in the neighbors yard.
If it hadn't been so freakin' weird it might have been sexy...Erin Gray was a staple of my teen fantasies (right up there with Linda Carter and the Divine Trinity of vaccuous TV: Charlies Angels -- I always preferred Kate Jackson because she had that whole sexy librarian thing going for her and in some ways still does. Compare her to what Farah Fawcett looks like these days, an exercise best left to the reader).
As for the "Twiki" thing, whomever came up with the "head" design made it quite embarrasing to talk about the show in school. It was always,
"Hey, isn't that the show with that dickhead wannabe robot on it?" whenever someone nearby was listening in while the geekpool I was with was comparing Erin Gray/Linda Carter/Kate Jackson fantasies.
Citizen d474 is so rightwise you can bellyfeel it.
Citizen 242493 should report themselves for such crimethink and malquote at the thought of facing B.B. and possibly comitting facecrime. When the Boston Hate Week commences, all crimethinkers will be shown to B.B. and know the joycamps.
Because such crimespeak is fullwise here it will indulge crimethinkers in their fantasies against the Inner Party, what is being shown here is an act of love, blackwhite love shown to the citizens facing possible action from thoughtcrime,sexcrime crimethinkers from the Disupted territories. Our dayorder is love of B.B., the Inner Party, and crimestop.
Slashdot is so fullwise duckspeak and oldthought. This space is doubleplusungood even for the Pornosec, it's such prolefeed. This article isn't even goodsource for two-minute-hate, but should be enough for the ThinkPol to identify crimethinkers.
Looks like I've got a new place to lurk. Thank you.
NASA loves wheels.
They love to re-invent them.
Why don't they just use a retro-fitted nuclear submarine?
Oh yes, I went there.(stewie-ism)
Remove the electric motors, repurpose the ballast as sheilding or water/env resources. and start training some divers to do EVA in NASA "stay-puff" suits.
Put a sturdy self-contained, time-tested vehicle for transporting humans in an imicial environment into orbit. Compared to 3900 atmospheres, space is a cakewalk (with a cute caller who doesn't mind tounge-kissing you and cupping your ass too when she hands you the prize).
Railgun that bastard into orbit without any squishy humans in it, or ask/pay Burt Rutan to make a really-fricken huge composite slingshot--just get it up there.
Then send the crew up later.
Retrofit the damn thing with some easily replaced external chemical/ion thrusters and fuel it up and go. Shouldn't take much reprogramming to interface to the thrusters with the existing computer control systems.
Once it's powered up, everything is there. What the hell is so hard about that?
Someone should make a damn movie about it. Knowing the guys that work on Anime, they already have and I'm just too poor to bother looking.
There NASA. Simple enough? And free. Hell, let's GPL that puppy someone.
In the best of all possible worlds, the right information will solve things.
In this world, it just makes for good reading and the occasional TV show, and maybe a movie (or a Bollywood classic complete with handfuls of dye-powder cast into the air as Tom Ridge dances across a table laden with fruit and the skulls of terrorists while an out-of-tune guitar twangs to the syncopated beat of whips across the backs of the new jobless underclass, soon to wear TSA togs--let the vetting begin!).
Alpha-rats are never caught as long as they're loved by someone. There are plenty of examples of this. The soldier rats lovingly sacrifice themselves and no database in the world is going to even slow it down. This is something that the world has known since before cuniform tablets and clay pellets, but armed with cameras, computers, x-ray machines and databases the government is willing to spend billions in order to create the facade of safety that the writers of bad tv-shows can use in order to feel timely.
It's crepe paper milled from taxpayer dollars, destined to be pissed on by anyone willing to sacrifice themselves. Crepe paper looks pretty until it's treated to a hot wet dose of reality.
Government should have the power to control who comes and goes on international flights. Within the boundaries of the CONUS, they shouldn't have a damn thing to do with people travelling between cities and states. No more than they bother with someone getting on a train, or someone taking the bus.
For the ambulatory meat packed into a plane, the traditional methods of screening for weapons done by most security staff that aren't sleeping or busy socializing should do.
The security solution they need for aircraft should be flight-systems/avionics which lock-out the pilot and force the plane into a neutral/low-risk cooridor. We've had the ability to do this since the 1970's. There's a buttload of other things we could do, but the airline industry will alternately suck their thumbs and pick their collective noses until they can wrangle attractive contracts to retrofit or replace the existing fleets. Like most industries, aviation would prefer a people-based solution rather than innovate or take a risk. The aviation industry could also take many other steps to eliminate or reduce the number of casualties in a crash but they've successfully done what Microsoft does today; simply tell the customer that there's always bugs and that crashes are just a part of using a computer(airplane).
Keep in mind that a solution based on good security and aircraft wouldn't require a growth in government, so there's little or no incentive to do it. In this age of terror-alerts, the old-guard are all too happy to make a grab on freedom, turn the ratchet, and enjoy their firehoses of data, funding and playpen-omniscience.