Actually, this isn't too great of an idea. A long time ago I heard of a study that showed how people that were exposed to white noise regularly had a higher pre-disposition towards violence and got angry easier. Supposedly because white noise starts a type of primative survival mechanism in our brains, but i just think it's because its annoying as hell...
A good point. I have a relatively similar reaction to the Christmas muzak they play in departments stores around that time of year, too...
A new sound that could revolutionise mobile telephones and safety alarms...
This thing uses loud white noise. White noise isn't new, by any stretch of the imagination. It's really a new application of something old. I do find myself wondering if we'll start becoming desensitised to white noise after a while if this becomes commonplace, though - even if it's a harsh noise.
Will we need to start migrating towards pink noise and brown noise in future to get the same effect?:-)
The potential speed reaches 45 nodes today. The mean velocity will be about 30-35 stabilized nodes. On new the foils, the appearance of the phenomena of distribution and cavitation was pushed back beyond 50 nodes.
Well, either Google's translation leaves something to be desired, or... heck, I can get better ping times than that on my 14k4:-)
I believe in the near future rich parents will genetically modify their babies. They will be made smarter and they in return will take away all the college scholarships and perhaps take all the admissions to universities as well.
If you think that, perhaps they will. Genetics is, and will only ever be, part of the story when it comes to childhood development. Kids from well-off familes do, and will continue to get into universities more often that kids from poor families, for pretty much the same reasons they always have. When you're well-off, higher education is an affordable priority. You don't need to worry that you're spending three or four (or more) of your possibly most productive years not earning anything.
How would you like your non engineered children when they grow up to be working in a McDonalds because litterally everyone will have 140-170 IQ's!
There are already kids working in McDonalds that have 140-170 IQs. Anyway, engineering for "intelligence" I expect to be easy. Sickle-cell anaemia's easy. What comprises intelligence?
Ladies, how would you like every women to look like Cindy Crawford while your current average looking body now seems repulsive in society?
When Cindy Crawford becomes "average", average becomes special and exotic.
He could also monitor for non orthodix thoughs and recommend a physcologist to your boss if you are doubting the greatness of Microsoft.
Thought isn't that easy a process to track. Although he might be able to track distress as you dealt with MS products, something as ephemeral as a doubt is hard, if not totally infeasible.
There are also many cruel and authoritive governments out there like Congo, China, and Iraq whom would love nano-bots to track down its citizens.
Authoritarian. Any why just them?
Even with nanotech and GE, people don't know enough about cognition to do half the things you suggest.
And I say
Bounce a graviton particle beam
Off the main deflector dish
That's the way we do things, lad,
We're making s**t up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans
Pose no threat to us
Cos if we find we're in a bind
We just make some s**t up...
A bipod on a water gun has to be one of the most useless things I can think of... You get it set up and you're guaranteed to be standing still. Need I remind anyone how poor a tactic that is in a watergun fight? I think not...
Did I say I wanted it for usefulness? I've got one at home with a barrel that spins around like a gatling gun when you turn the crank, too...
I used to play with these things a lot back at university - a local club used to stalk around playing silly-buggers with them to relieve some of the monotony and stress of student life.
The main problem I had with most waterpistols I could find was leakage - almost any pistol with any significant capacity had severe leaking problems. Then again, that could just be the quality of the stuff available locally, I suppose. Still, good to see some of the theory behind them, and why the bits that kept breaking did so (or at least how their breaking made stuff not work).
Now, after looking at that article, I really want the one with the bipod:-)
Actually NASA had nothing to do with popularizing the use of teflon (PTFE). Dupont had discovered it in the late 1930s but the US Government classified it...
Here, not there. US != World. Please make an attempt to read what I write.
No, no no NO NO NO! Teflon (PTFE) was not invented by NASA. Teflon was not even invented by someone else for the space program. Teflon was "invented" by accident at DuPont in 1938
I didn't say they invented it, of had it invented for them. However they brought it to us, no matter where it came from originally. It was NASA's use of it that popularised PTFE and its related fluoropolymers, at least in this part of the world. You couldn't get Teflon anything here until the late '80s or so, at least that I'm aware of.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Given that it had been around for about forty years (as a trademarked product) before then, it's quite likely that American markets would have got such consumer products considerably earlier.
The odds of landing on Boardwalk are of course much greater...
Hmm. I've traversed the entire Monopoly board from Old Kent Road to Mayfair many a time, and I've never once landed on Boardwalk. Or Park Place, for that matter. Then again, I'm playing this edition.
Given the target demographic here, you're mostl likely to find people who agree with you. There's a lot of people here who live and breathe computers. They're tools we use every day, for all sorts of tasks, and so the chance that we'd see them as a legitimate tool for expression is much higher.
That said, I still do think that it's possible to create "fine art" using a computer. It's a different medium, certainly. That doesn't make it (in my eyes) any less legitimate. I've seen both purely computer generated art, and art which started as paper sketches only to be scanned and refined, that is of very high quality indeed - stuff which made me think "You did all that in Photoshop?" or something similar.
The art world - especially the world of "fine arts" tends to be a different story. Many probably see the use of computers as "cheating" - that somehow if computers make artistic effect easier to create, then it's just not the same as doing it all by hand. In photography, producing an effect by digital manipulation wouldn't received as well as the same effect produced by techniques such as double exposure.
For all that the art world seems to like to promote avante garde, new expressions, it can also be quite a paradoxically traditional and hidebound institution at times. I get the feeling that it's going to be quite a while yet before computer-created graphic art is considered a legitimate medium by the mainstream of "fine arts".
Then again, I consider quite a number of works of SF to be "literature", too...
It would be one thing if you called it "GIM", because "Instant Messenger" could at least be argued to be a generic term. But to call it anything with "AIM" was just begging for AOL to come knocking...
AOL's probably going to have to talk to the Frobozz Magic Spell Company about this. There's a scroll called AIMFIZ which teleports the caster to someone else's location. Not only does it have "AIM" in it, but it's a prior technology to allow easier communication over distance, too! Something tells me it doesn't stand for AOL Instant Messenger Found In Zork...
I don't know about anyone else out here, but I've seen almost everything mentioned in the Chronicle article before. Be it in one of the CP Chrome Books, Shadowrun's "Shadowtech" or "Man and Machine", or various other supplements or websites relating to near-future role-playing games. Still, nice of the military to summarise it all for us;-)
On a slightly more serious note, it's not really any surprise that a large number of things being considered have already been seen in speculative fiction of one sort or another. Consider Arthur C. Clarke's (et al.) visionary contribution to the space program. Other fields certainly aren't immune.
Sure, we need to be careful, but we shouldn't lose out on an opportunity because there's a one in a million chance something will go wrong. After all, what are the odds of that happening?
Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten.:-)
Imagine what would happen if WalMart suddenly attacked and lobbied against thrift stores or charitable institutions. They could quite easily argue that the very exitance of low-cost/zero-cost goods destroys the industy. They would, however, endure a backlash they likely could not comprehend.
I think the main difference there is that the everyday person-on-the-street knows thrift stores and charitable institutions. They understand them, and recognise what they do. To most people, open source is something they don't know or understand, and their main source of information about it has been FUD marketed to them by people who don't like it.
Debunking that FUD is all well and good, but if people aren't also educated about what open source is and how it works, then they're never going to be able to make an informed decision, one way or the other.
If you can keep the appropriate people focussing their attention on trying to justify themselves, even against rather pointless and ineffectual attacks, they don't get quite as many people thinking "what are they up to?" as they would if they were just getting on with quietly rolling out their.NET plans - they're quite obviously whinging lamely about open source, right?
By giving the more zealous and vocal open source advocates a giant red "Kick Me!" sign to fire at (and fire they will; the target's too good to pass up), then commentary on the other things they're doing might just get lost in the noise.
Welcome to the Machiavellian world of PR. It's a lot more difficult to meta-moderate out there, and Microsoft is trolling.
Only if Ur-Grues wear a lot of black and glower at their computers while running troubleshooting ActiveDirectory, muttering about the cosmic futility life at 100baseT ethernet. =)
Well, now that you mention it...
Woohoo! Good advice. =) It certainly beats getting hit on by a Dellboxen server... over the head, that is, when it falls out of the rack.... =)
The Dellboxen hits! You feel weak... -more-
(Yeah, I know that's a roguelike thing)
I'm not a kernel hacker, but hasn't this already been done with the Adventure shell, and a few others which are based off of MUDs?
This is a configuration tool, not a command shell.
Then again, I guess that it's based off the the Infocom games, so that makes it slightly different. After all, it'll bring back memories to 'get babelfish' and 'put towel over head.'
I just hope it isn't more like 'computer, range is 360, theta is 150, phi is 30.'
But, darn, you gotta watch for them Grues....
Count yourself lucky you're not likely to come across any kobolds or paskalds. They're Red Purple Black Purple Red, through and through.
Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World "I am an IT-Goth and an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Hmm... is an IT-Goth like an Ur-Grue?:-)
> WEAR BOOTS
They are nice. You are likely to be hit on by a Goth...
You spend the next several hours debugging the code.
The Lantern grows dim.
The Lantern goes out.
The code is debugged.
It is dark.
What are you doing, debugging with the lights on?:-) Also, from a walkthrough for Infocom's "The Lurking Horror":
"Some notes about the game before we start, TURN OFF the FLASHLIGHT when you are in lighted areas to conserve the batteries, I won't mention this is the solution. When and where you start getting tired will vary depending upon the number of moves you've made. So when you are told that you are getting tired go back to the kitchen in the computer block and drink from the bottle of Coke which you will find in the refrigerator."
Later on, it gives instructions on how to get the hacker to repair your filesystem, and borrow his valuable master key for some Chinese food.
Kia ora Taniwha,
Where I grew up (which shall rename nameless) the local utility used tones sent thru the power mains to turn on/off things like street lights and electric hot water heaters/storage heaters during peak times (this was really low tech using reed-relays)
Not sure where you grew up, but I seem to remember New Zealand using ripple-relays like the ones you mentioned in a lot of centres. Odd that;-) They've since gone a bit higher tech, at least in the larger cities.
On an unrelated note, is there any chance of someone sending malformed data through these lights in order to, say, trigger an epileptic seizure? I mean, fluroescent lights aren't necessarily the best on that score to start with. (Granted, IANANeurophysiologist)
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the engineers I knew at university seemed to be more interested in picking up the nurses, rather than vice-versa...
A good point. I have a relatively similar reaction to the Christmas muzak they play in departments stores around that time of year, too...
This thing uses loud white noise. White noise isn't new, by any stretch of the imagination. It's really a new application of something old. I do find myself wondering if we'll start becoming desensitised to white noise after a while if this becomes commonplace, though - even if it's a harsh noise.
Will we need to start migrating towards pink noise and brown noise in future to get the same effect? :-)
That's all well and good, but I have cookies disabled... how about some of this stuff?
Well, either Google's translation leaves something to be desired, or... heck, I can get better ping times than that on my 14k4 :-)
I believe in the near future rich parents will genetically modify their babies. They will be made smarter and they in return will take away all the college scholarships and perhaps take all the admissions to universities as well.
If you think that, perhaps they will. Genetics is, and will only ever be, part of the story when it comes to childhood development. Kids from well-off familes do, and will continue to get into universities more often that kids from poor families, for pretty much the same reasons they always have. When you're well-off, higher education is an affordable priority. You don't need to worry that you're spending three or four (or more) of your possibly most productive years not earning anything.
How would you like your non engineered children when they grow up to be working in a McDonalds because litterally everyone will have 140-170 IQ's!
There are already kids working in McDonalds that have 140-170 IQs. Anyway, engineering for "intelligence" I expect to be easy. Sickle-cell anaemia's easy. What comprises intelligence?
Ladies, how would you like every women to look like Cindy Crawford while your current average looking body now seems repulsive in society?
When Cindy Crawford becomes "average", average becomes special and exotic.
He could also monitor for non orthodix thoughs and recommend a physcologist to your boss if you are doubting the greatness of Microsoft.
Thought isn't that easy a process to track. Although he might be able to track distress as you dealt with MS products, something as ephemeral as a doubt is hard, if not totally infeasible.
There are also many cruel and authoritive governments out there like Congo, China, and Iraq whom would love nano-bots to track down its citizens.
Authoritarian. Any why just them?
Even with nanotech and GE, people don't know enough about cognition to do half the things you suggest.
And I say
Bounce a graviton particle beam
Off the main deflector dish
That's the way we do things, lad,
We're making s**t up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans
Pose no threat to us
Cos if we find we're in a bind
We just make some s**t up...
I hope that person wasn't selling AMway... :-)
Did I say I wanted it for usefulness? I've got one at home with a barrel that spins around like a gatling gun when you turn the crank, too...
I used to play with these things a lot back at university - a local club used to stalk around playing silly-buggers with them to relieve some of the monotony and stress of student life.
The main problem I had with most waterpistols I could find was leakage - almost any pistol with any significant capacity had severe leaking problems. Then again, that could just be the quality of the stuff available locally, I suppose. Still, good to see some of the theory behind them, and why the bits that kept breaking did so (or at least how their breaking made stuff not work).
Now, after looking at that article, I really want the one with the bipod :-)
Here, not there. US != World. Please make an attempt to read what I write.
No, no no NO NO NO! Teflon (PTFE) was not invented by NASA. Teflon was not even invented by someone else for the space program. Teflon was "invented" by accident at DuPont in 1938
I didn't say they invented it, of had it invented for them. However they brought it to us, no matter where it came from originally. It was NASA's use of it that popularised PTFE and its related fluoropolymers, at least in this part of the world. You couldn't get Teflon anything here until the late '80s or so, at least that I'm aware of.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Given that it had been around for about forty years (as a trademarked product) before then, it's quite likely that American markets would have got such consumer products considerably earlier.
Hmm. And to think, it was NASA that brought us such useful substances as teflon, which makes for easy-clean, non-stick surfaces...
Then again, if a RealDoll's too heavy, I'm sure they could get by with a RealHamster instead.
The odds of landing on Boardwalk are of course much greater...
Hmm. I've traversed the entire Monopoly board from Old Kent Road to Mayfair many a time, and I've never once landed on Boardwalk. Or Park Place, for that matter. Then again, I'm playing this edition.
Given the target demographic here, you're mostl likely to find people who agree with you. There's a lot of people here who live and breathe computers. They're tools we use every day, for all sorts of tasks, and so the chance that we'd see them as a legitimate tool for expression is much higher.
That said, I still do think that it's possible to create "fine art" using a computer. It's a different medium, certainly. That doesn't make it (in my eyes) any less legitimate. I've seen both purely computer generated art, and art which started as paper sketches only to be scanned and refined, that is of very high quality indeed - stuff which made me think "You did all that in Photoshop?" or something similar.
The art world - especially the world of "fine arts" tends to be a different story. Many probably see the use of computers as "cheating" - that somehow if computers make artistic effect easier to create, then it's just not the same as doing it all by hand. In photography, producing an effect by digital manipulation wouldn't received as well as the same effect produced by techniques such as double exposure.
For all that the art world seems to like to promote avante garde, new expressions, it can also be quite a paradoxically traditional and hidebound institution at times. I get the feeling that it's going to be quite a while yet before computer-created graphic art is considered a legitimate medium by the mainstream of "fine arts".
Then again, I consider quite a number of works of SF to be "literature", too...
AOL's probably going to have to talk to the Frobozz Magic Spell Company about this. There's a scroll called AIMFIZ which teleports the caster to someone else's location. Not only does it have "AIM" in it, but it's a prior technology to allow easier communication over distance, too! Something tells me it doesn't stand for AOL Instant Messenger Found In Zork...
I don't know about anyone else out here, but I've seen almost everything mentioned in the Chronicle article before. Be it in one of the CP Chrome Books, Shadowrun's "Shadowtech" or "Man and Machine", or various other supplements or websites relating to near-future role-playing games. Still, nice of the military to summarise it all for us ;-)
On a slightly more serious note, it's not really any surprise that a large number of things being considered have already been seen in speculative fiction of one sort or another. Consider Arthur C. Clarke's (et al.) visionary contribution to the space program. Other fields certainly aren't immune.
Sure, we need to be careful, but we shouldn't lose out on an opportunity because there's a one in a million chance something will go wrong. After all, what are the odds of that happening?
Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten. :-)
I think the main difference there is that the everyday person-on-the-street knows thrift stores and charitable institutions. They understand them, and recognise what they do. To most people, open source is something they don't know or understand, and their main source of information about it has been FUD marketed to them by people who don't like it.
Debunking that FUD is all well and good, but if people aren't also educated about what open source is and how it works, then they're never going to be able to make an informed decision, one way or the other.
If you can keep the appropriate people focussing their attention on trying to justify themselves, even against rather pointless and ineffectual attacks, they don't get quite as many people thinking "what are they up to?" as they would if they were just getting on with quietly rolling out their .NET plans - they're quite obviously whinging lamely about open source, right?
By giving the more zealous and vocal open source advocates a giant red "Kick Me!" sign to fire at (and fire they will; the target's too good to pass up), then commentary on the other things they're doing might just get lost in the noise.
Welcome to the Machiavellian world of PR. It's a lot more difficult to meta-moderate out there, and Microsoft is trolling.
Only if Ur-Grues wear a lot of black and glower at their computers while running troubleshooting ActiveDirectory, muttering about the cosmic futility life at 100baseT ethernet. =)
Well, now that you mention it...
Woohoo! Good advice. =) It certainly beats getting hit on by a Dellboxen server... over the head, that is, when it falls out of the rack.... =)
The Dellboxen hits! You feel weak... -more-
(Yeah, I know that's a roguelike thing)
Whether people will want to wear a device that shoots laser beams into their eyeballs remains to be seen.
Now, if people could wear a device that shot lasers beams out of their eyeballs, I'm sure it'd be much more popular :-)
I'm not a kernel hacker, but hasn't this already been done with the Adventure shell, and a few others which are based off of MUDs?
This is a configuration tool, not a command shell.
Then again, I guess that it's based off the the Infocom games, so that makes it slightly different. After all, it'll bring back memories to 'get babelfish' and 'put towel over head.'
I just hope it isn't more like 'computer, range is 360, theta is 150, phi is 30.'
But, darn, you gotta watch for them Grues....
Count yourself lucky you're not likely to come across any kobolds or paskalds. They're Red Purple Black Purple Red, through and through.
Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World "I am an IT-Goth and an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Hmm... is an IT-Goth like an Ur-Grue? :-)
> WEAR BOOTS
They are nice. You are likely to be hit on by a Goth...
The Lantern grows dim.
The Lantern goes out.
The code is debugged.
It is dark.
What are you doing, debugging with the lights on? :-) Also, from a walkthrough for Infocom's "The Lurking Horror":
"Some notes about the game before we start, TURN OFF the FLASHLIGHT when you are in lighted areas to conserve the batteries, I won't mention this is the solution. When and where you start getting tired will vary depending upon the number of moves you've made. So when you are told that you are getting tired go back to the kitchen in the computer block and drink from the bottle of Coke which you will find in the refrigerator."
Later on, it gives instructions on how to get the hacker to repair your filesystem, and borrow his valuable master key for some Chinese food.
I sure hope ESR has implemented these features...
Where I grew up (which shall rename nameless) the local utility used tones sent thru the power mains to turn on/off things like street lights and electric hot water heaters/storage heaters during peak times (this was really low tech using reed-relays)
Not sure where you grew up, but I seem to remember New Zealand using ripple-relays like the ones you mentioned in a lot of centres. Odd that ;-) They've since gone a bit higher tech, at least in the larger cities.
On an unrelated note, is there any chance of someone sending malformed data through these lights in order to, say, trigger an epileptic seizure? I mean, fluroescent lights aren't necessarily the best on that score to start with. (Granted, IANANeurophysiologist)