At the point in time that this extinction occured (440 million years ago) mammalian life hadn't even evolved yet. Plants weren't even that evolved yet. We don't see evidence of land animals until later in the Devonian period. You should actually read this article. It does answer your question more or less.
This is a much more frightening spector than anything else Tim mentions in his column. This mantra can and would be applied to many other areas if such a policy became commonplace. Apply this to dissemination of knowledge. Suppose I have data available on my webserver that is viewed as "malicious" say how to build a bomb or exploit commonly known vulnerabilities in a web server. Does this give someone the right to remove said data from my server simply because I have a disclaimer saying I have no responsibility for how someone might use this data? This sounds like a piggy back onto another round of "strategic protection of US citizens" i.e. read "strategic reduction of fundamental freedoms of US citizens".
"No responsibility means no rights" gimme a break.
- Both world trade center towers collapsed
- at least one of the planes was a 767 en route from Boston to LA.
- a smaller plane has crashed into the Pentagon
- a 767 is down in Somerset PA
- a United Aircraft flight 93 is alleged by the FBI to have crashed at or near Camp David
- today is the anniversery of the Camp David Accords
- the state department denies a car bomb outside of a DC statebuilding contrary to early reports
With this new jacket and my new CyberAngel (or whatever it was called) implant chips you can trace me wherever I go! I'll be soooo safe and secure...thanx uncle Sam!
Bringing you a CyberPunk tomorrow... TODAY!
-ParadoX-
"God I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Aside from positional tracking they're aiming for, the chip also tracks you medically. With a wireless transmission system you know that more than just you and your designated data recipient can easily listen in on your data. An idea comes to mind about doing wireless bank transactions sort of like a credit card without all the verification and signature hastle. Chip readers could just scan you and automatically deduct the necessary amount. sounds like a good idea... in theory. Also sounds like the next logical step for this hardware if it became prevalant. You thought you were easy to track now, imagine all your medical, financial, and positional data at the fingertips of the wrong person, or insurance agency, or government beauro, or angry 16 yr old, etc....
Voxels do have one significant advantage over polygons. Consider: You have a large rendered obeject.. say a tank. Now you fire a missile or something into that tank and your graphics card has to render all the little bits flying around. In order to even create those little bits, you have to break apart the original polys and re render all of them. That takes cpu crunch time. With Voxels you can break down a large complex object into smaller complex object without special algorithems or processes since each voxel is an independent object in and of it self. A large object of tiny voxels is easier to utilize than a few large many sided polys, and easier to render too if you've got the right hardware (which could be as standard as other grpahics chips if the market was there for them).
We could all whine about the ineffectiveness of filtering software in general, or more specifically its ability to parse what's "good" and what's "bad". This is just another rehashing of the age old debate on moral issues. In a world where parents can't watch ou tfor their kids 24/7 who is responsible for them? The schools? The government? The main problem isn't the filtering software, it's who chooses what's to be filtered and what's not. A system whereby some boxes are filtered and some aren't is a better system, though once again parents aren't going to play an active role in deciding what should be filtered even if given the opprotunity. They'll most likely just cave to the media hype and effect a blanket clause to "protect" their kids from the evils of free speech.
-me
"GOD I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning!"
If you have the software available (i.e. decent graphics editing/creation such as photoshop or painter, and Dreamweaver or even Microshaft's front-something-or-other) I know I would have appreciated time to design and create a webpage in class. This also allows you to get into some java and possibly PERL as well. Other ideas including creating an online learning/gaming environment (i.e. a MUD or MOO). The core components are all freeware and not to tough to program. Students could create their own room complete with a machine of some type and an automated robot. Just a few thoughts.
-ParadoX- 'What's that?' 'I dunnow... lets hit it with a rock.'
As a friend just mentioned to me... All the MPAA really needs to do is get the government to classify DVD technology as a state secret, that way they'd get the protection that they're looking for, and save lots of money in trial fees as well. Of course then it would be illegal/treason to import or export DVDs, but hey, when's a little thing like that ever stopped big industry....
The only reason that people have got this foolish tax-free notion about the internet being "tax-free" is because these people havn't been observant enough to see whether they are buying in-state or out-of-state. If you buy online in-state, you pay the same sales tax you would at your local store. If you purchase out-of-state, there's no immediate sales tax, just like if you used a mail order catalog. Each state has it's own regulations about reimbursing its residents for sales tax paid out of state or for charging sales tax on items that didn't have an immediate sales tax. They have had these laws on the books longer than I've been alive. The people who think that they don't have to worry about online sales tax are obviously the same people who think that they don't have to keep track of the sales tax they pay on vacations out of state (surprise people, check your local laws, you probably were supposed to report it).
As for a national sales tax (which would be necessary for a uniform internet tax), it is an incredibly foolish idea that udermines the federalist system that this country is supposed to be operating under. Power to the states, not Washington D.C.
I too must add my two bits in defense of this flick. Aside from the beautiful graphics, the movie was fun to watch. Granted some parts were predictable, but that's not the point. The point is this is a major box office animation made by someone other than Disney (thank God) which isn't geared at 10 and under kids. The dialogue was witty and though the characters were, as stated above, a little underdeveloped, Titan was a step in the right direction, and entertaining in and of itself not just because of special effects, which so many other movie makers fail to see nowdays.
-ParadoX- Quisquis amat valeat, Pereat qui nescit amare. Bis tanto pereat, quisquis amare vetat.
This really blows. Halo looked promising from the press releases I've read and was actually going to go buy the game, but as Microshaft now got a hold of it, I'm sure their wonderful software techs will want a add a few constructive bits of code here and there to slim things up a bit and generally just hose the whole damn thing up with their wonderful peicemeal Microshaft AI. And lets not forget the beautiful prospect of having IE 5.5 bundled nicely in there just in case we backwards folk need a web browser too. GAH!! and that's only if it sees release on a PC platform. Chances are they'll stay the release from the PC market for a year after their initial X-Box release. Which means I have to wait even longer. Oh well... guess Tribes 2 will have to do...
I think a Gecko suit or gecko shoes would be cool... I can think of a million applications that would benefit from hanging from a wall or a ceiling (i.e. cleaning, painting, changing lightbulbs, becoming a master thief, etc...). It would certainly add a new element to swat or SEAL team assults on a building full of hostile people as well. Aside from that, someone could finally develop some version of sticky-tac that actually works in the extreme temperature varation that my dorm room goes through during an average school year so I wouldn't have to keep hanging up my posters every morning again...
Banning annonyminity on the internet was something that I never thought I would see in my day. It's right out of an Orwellian novel. Free speech depends on it. It provides the base for the internet to stand on. Granted as it sits right now it is still possible (as has been expressed above) to rather simply trace a person back to their home or office, but to the common public this is a witchcraft worthy feat. It's not pure anonyminity, but it seems like it. It's the illusion of being ambiguous that draws so many people and so many new ideas out of the woodwork and on to the net. Over of the people today fear public speaking more than anything else. Adding an ID tag to every internet user would mean that everyone once again knows who you are and once again all the prejudices and social stigmatas come flying back into play again until jumping onto the net is nothing more than walking into your crowded school cafeteria again and facing of the issues that are abound.
Aside from this problem, what happens when people start spoofing thier ID's or any other number of ways that will inevitable arrise to avoid being labelled or numbered. The people that truly want to commit crimes in Cyberspace will have the methods they need to avoid getting caught, just as hackers today do. So you will have changed nothing at all, except of course destroying one of the main pillars that the entire net revolves around, but hey the man's always looking out for your best interests right?
-ParadoX-
Sieze the day... otherwise someone else will do it for you.
An interesting thing to note about Lars' observation that Napster users downloaded 1.4 million songs in 48 hours. Assuming that the US has a nice round population of 1.4 billion people (i don't know how close this is to the actual size), and an average CD has 10 songs on it. It turns out that only one half of a tenth of a percent of the population is guilty of coyright infringements on any one day. This, in my mind at least is comparable to what Lars comments on as trading my Iron Maiden record recordings with friends, and doesn't seem like a large threat to his money making potentials or the shareholders of his recording company.
It was modified to fit in the belly of a large cargo like plane resembling a hollowed out 747. The laser was gererated in the belly of the plane and directed out the nose below the cockpit with some sort of steering control pod that could direct the beam. The whole philosophy was "get the laser up high in the atmosphere and cut down the amount of thick air you need to cut through." This concept was planned to shoot down ICBM's, though could feasibly be used to shoot down sat's too.
Kidproof, that's not to tough, we've been making radio's that can withstand hurricanes for years. And don't whine about data loss from dropping your HD, they're durable, we spiked one off a concrete parking lot, then tossed it bout 20 feet up in the air an it still ran fine, though ours was probably some fluke super drive or something.
As for the actual concept, you can't go wrong with computers. The mere plethora of tools available for educational institutions are enormous and usually very cheap or free. It would encourage kids to program at an earlier age, and become familiar with basic concepts of operating a computer as well. The only downside I can see is the mentioned "Pre-Censoring" of the internet. No really acceptable means to do this has been discovered so far that doesn't completely neuter the net as a whole.
What frightens me the most about this whole situation is as such: Pinkerton has NO LIABILITY for what happens to the information it sends out. What would happen if your credit card companies, banks, and schools started releasing all their information on you to the public. Your credit history in plain view, your police record, open for everyone, all your grades, your medical history, your bank account info, in plain view for all to see. Of course the companies have no liability or responsibility to keep this info private so their not at fault if you get screwed.
Second question: What about social implications of this. If some kid gets accused, even falsely, and years down the road he's trying to get a job, but the employer finds out he's on WAVE America's watched list. What are the odds of that person eer getting a good job. What happens to that kid trying to get into Perdue or Yale. Schools don't what trouble makers.
Even our government has liability. Why should the Pinkerton Corp. have no liability whatsoever for what happens to the kids it accuses (and yes, it will do the accusing, becuase even if someone anonymously reports a child, I doubt that the corp. will do any serious validation of that accusation and just add the kid to the list, which it distributes, thus making it the accuser).
Props to Katz for the effort. One of the previous posts had an idea of a ribbon campaign. I second the motion. Let's get the ball rolling on this.
Constructing a wormhole wouldn't be that difficult if we could infact produce enough energy to do so. That and overcome the enormous effects that warping space to such a degree would impose. Consider the classical Einstien-Rosen bridge (i.e. wormholes/blackholes), under this postulation black holes are essentially wormholes with one end. Stuff goes in but doesn't come out. Either way, the space around a black hole warps the same way the space around a wormhole would. Assuming you could create one, could you create a craft capable of withsanting the freakish forces exerted on it by the wormhole? or are we just hoping that there won't be any turbulence?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a few other links to similar data:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876
http://www.dvhardware.net/article.php?sid=1894 Has PDF's of the Spec.
http://www.intel.com/update/contents/dt10031.htm
At the point in time that this extinction occured (440 million years ago) mammalian life hadn't even evolved yet. Plants weren't even that evolved yet.
We don't see evidence of land animals until later in the Devonian period. You should actually read this article. It does answer your question more or less.
Wasn't this the plot of "screamers" or something like that? Though they had a hot robotic girl too....
Here's another link to a similar story at Scientific American if your interested:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?artThis is a much more frightening spector than anything else Tim mentions in his column. This mantra can and would be applied to many other areas if such a policy became commonplace. Apply this to dissemination of knowledge. Suppose I have data available on my webserver that is viewed as "malicious" say how to build a bomb or exploit commonly known vulnerabilities in a web server. Does this give someone the right to remove said data from my server simply because I have a disclaimer saying I have no responsibility for how someone might use this data? This sounds like a piggy back onto another round of "strategic protection of US citizens" i.e. read "strategic reduction of fundamental freedoms of US citizens".
"No responsibility means no rights" gimme a break.
- Both world trade center towers collapsed
- at least one of the planes was a 767 en route from Boston to LA.
- a smaller plane has crashed into the Pentagon
- a 767 is down in Somerset PA
- a United Aircraft flight 93 is alleged by the FBI to have crashed at or near Camp David
- today is the anniversery of the Camp David Accords
- the state department denies a car bomb outside of a DC statebuilding contrary to early reports
I'm sure that using all that butter you could make and sculpt at least 3 mac n cheese palms....
I wonder what duct tape looks like burning up on reentry?
ETA: 2001-03-14 13:42:33
-ParadoX-
A monk once asked another, "Why is a frog?"
Aftersome thought, the other monk replied,
"Because the higher he jumps, the much."
With this new jacket and my new CyberAngel (or whatever it was called) implant chips you can trace me wherever I go! I'll be soooo safe and secure...thanx uncle Sam!
Bringing you a CyberPunk tomorrow... TODAY!
-ParadoX-
"God I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Aside from positional tracking they're aiming for, the chip also tracks you medically. With a wireless transmission system you know that more than just you and your designated data recipient can easily listen in on your data. An idea comes to mind about doing wireless bank transactions sort of like a credit card without all the verification and signature hastle. Chip readers could just scan you and automatically deduct the necessary amount. sounds like a good idea... in theory. Also sounds like the next logical step for this hardware if it became prevalant. You thought you were easy to track now, imagine all your medical, financial, and positional data at the fingertips of the wrong person, or insurance agency, or government beauro, or angry 16 yr old, etc....
-ParadoX-
Know only what I am, not what I may be.
Voxels do have one significant advantage over polygons. Consider: You have a large rendered obeject.. say a tank. Now you fire a missile or something into that tank and your graphics card has to render all the little bits flying around. In order to even create those little bits, you have to break apart the original polys and re render all of them. That takes cpu crunch time. With Voxels you can break down a large complex object into smaller complex object without special algorithems or processes since each voxel is an independent object in and of it self. A large object of tiny voxels is easier to utilize than a few large many sided polys, and easier to render too if you've got the right hardware (which could be as standard as other grpahics chips if the market was there for them).
We could all whine about the ineffectiveness of filtering software in general, or more specifically its ability to parse what's "good" and what's "bad". This is just another rehashing of the age old debate on moral issues. In a world where parents can't watch ou tfor their kids 24/7 who is responsible for them? The schools? The government? The main problem isn't the filtering software, it's who chooses what's to be filtered and what's not. A system whereby some boxes are filtered and some aren't is a better system, though once again parents aren't going to play an active role in deciding what should be filtered even if given the opprotunity. They'll most likely just cave to the media hype and effect a blanket clause to "protect" their kids from the evils of free speech.
-me
"GOD I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning!"
If you have the software available (i.e. decent graphics editing/creation such as photoshop or painter, and Dreamweaver or even Microshaft's front-something-or-other) I know I would have appreciated time to design and create a webpage in class. This also allows you to get into some java and possibly PERL as well. Other ideas including creating an online learning/gaming environment (i.e. a MUD or MOO). The core components are all freeware and not to tough to program. Students could create their own room complete with a machine of some type and an automated robot. Just a few thoughts.
-ParadoX-
'What's that?'
'I dunnow... lets hit it with a rock.'
As a friend just mentioned to me... All the MPAA really needs to do is get the government to classify DVD technology as a state secret, that way they'd get the protection that they're looking for, and save lots of money in trial fees as well. Of course then it would be illegal/treason to import or export DVDs, but hey, when's a little thing like that ever stopped big industry....
The only reason that people have got this foolish tax-free notion about the internet being "tax-free" is because these people havn't been observant enough to see whether they are buying in-state or out-of-state. If you buy online in-state, you pay the same sales tax you would at your local store. If you purchase out-of-state, there's no immediate sales tax, just like if you used a mail order catalog.
Each state has it's own regulations about reimbursing its residents for sales tax paid out of state or for charging sales tax on items that didn't have an immediate sales tax. They have had these laws on the books longer than I've been alive. The people who think that they don't have to worry about online sales tax are obviously the same people who think that they don't have to keep track of the sales tax they pay on vacations out of state (surprise people, check your local laws, you probably were supposed to report it).
As for a national sales tax (which would be necessary for a uniform internet tax), it is an incredibly foolish idea that udermines the federalist system that this country is supposed to be operating under. Power to the states, not Washington D.C.
I too must add my two bits in defense of this flick. Aside from the beautiful graphics, the movie was fun to watch. Granted some parts were predictable, but that's not the point. The point is this is a major box office animation made by someone other than Disney (thank God) which isn't geared at 10 and under kids. The dialogue was witty and though the characters were, as stated above, a little underdeveloped, Titan was a step in the right direction, and entertaining in and of itself not just because of special effects, which so many other movie makers fail to see nowdays.
-ParadoX-
Quisquis amat valeat, Pereat qui nescit amare.
Bis tanto pereat, quisquis amare vetat.
This really blows. Halo looked promising from the press releases I've read and was actually going to go buy the game, but as Microshaft now got a hold of it, I'm sure their wonderful software techs will want a add a few constructive bits of code here and there to slim things up a bit and generally just hose the whole damn thing up with their wonderful peicemeal Microshaft AI. And lets not forget the beautiful prospect of having IE 5.5 bundled nicely in there just in case we backwards folk need a web browser too. GAH!! and that's only if it sees release on a PC platform. Chances are they'll stay the release from the PC market for a year after their initial X-Box release. Which means I have to wait even longer. Oh well... guess Tribes 2 will have to do...
thats all that information that is illegal for you to know. That's right. It's ILLEGAL for you to have knowledge.
I think a Gecko suit or gecko shoes would be cool... I can think of a million applications that would benefit from hanging from a wall or a ceiling (i.e. cleaning, painting, changing lightbulbs, becoming a master thief, etc...). It would certainly add a new element to swat or SEAL team assults on a building full of hostile people as well. Aside from that, someone could finally develop some version of sticky-tac that actually works in the extreme temperature varation that my dorm room goes through during an average school year so I wouldn't have to keep hanging up my posters every morning again...
Banning annonyminity on the internet was something that I never thought I would see in my day. It's right out of an Orwellian novel. Free speech depends on it. It provides the base for the internet to stand on. Granted as it sits right now it is still possible (as has been expressed above) to rather simply trace a person back to their home or office, but to the common public this is a witchcraft worthy feat. It's not pure anonyminity, but it seems like it. It's the illusion of being ambiguous that draws so many people and so many new ideas out of the woodwork and on to the net. Over of the people today fear public speaking more than anything else. Adding an ID tag to every internet user would mean that everyone once again knows who you are and once again all the prejudices and social stigmatas come flying back into play again until jumping onto the net is nothing more than walking into your crowded school cafeteria again and facing of the issues that are abound.
Aside from this problem, what happens when people start spoofing thier ID's or any other number of ways that will inevitable arrise to avoid being labelled or numbered. The people that truly want to commit crimes in Cyberspace will have the methods they need to avoid getting caught, just as hackers today do. So you will have changed nothing at all, except of course destroying one of the main pillars that the entire net revolves around, but hey the man's always looking out for your best interests right?
-ParadoX-
Sieze the day... otherwise someone else will do it for you.
An interesting thing to note about Lars' observation that Napster users downloaded 1.4 million songs in 48 hours. Assuming that the US has a nice round population of 1.4 billion people (i don't know how close this is to the actual size), and an average CD has 10 songs on it. It turns out that only one half of a tenth of a percent of the population is guilty of coyright infringements on any one day. This, in my mind at least is comparable to what Lars comments on as trading my Iron Maiden record recordings with friends, and doesn't seem like a large threat to his money making potentials or the shareholders of his recording company.
It was modified to fit in the belly of a large cargo like plane resembling a hollowed out 747. The laser was gererated in the belly of the plane and directed out the nose below the cockpit with some sort of steering control pod that could direct the beam. The whole philosophy was "get the laser up high in the atmosphere and cut down the amount of thick air you need to cut through." This concept was planned to shoot down ICBM's, though could feasibly be used to shoot down sat's too.
-ParadoX-
Cogito ergo sum.
Kidproof, that's not to tough, we've been making radio's that can withstand hurricanes for years. And don't whine about data loss from dropping your HD, they're durable, we spiked one off a concrete parking lot, then tossed it bout 20 feet up in the air an it still ran fine, though ours was probably some fluke super drive or something.
As for the actual concept, you can't go wrong with computers. The mere plethora of tools available for educational institutions are enormous and usually very cheap or free. It would encourage kids to program at an earlier age, and become familiar with basic concepts of operating a computer as well. The only downside I can see is the mentioned "Pre-Censoring" of the internet. No really acceptable means to do this has been discovered so far that doesn't completely neuter the net as a whole.
What frightens me the most about this whole situation is as such: Pinkerton has NO LIABILITY for what happens to the information it sends out. What would happen if your credit card companies, banks, and schools started releasing all their information on you to the public. Your credit history in plain view, your police record, open for everyone, all your grades, your medical history, your bank account info, in plain view for all to see. Of course the companies have no liability or responsibility to keep this info private so their not at fault if you get screwed.
Second question: What about social implications of this. If some kid gets accused, even falsely, and years down the road he's trying to get a job, but the employer finds out he's on WAVE America's watched list. What are the odds of that person eer getting a good job. What happens to that kid trying to get into Perdue or Yale. Schools don't what trouble makers.
Even our government has liability. Why should the Pinkerton Corp. have no liability whatsoever for what happens to the kids it accuses (and yes, it will do the accusing, becuase even if someone anonymously reports a child, I doubt that the corp. will do any serious validation of that accusation and just add the kid to the list, which it distributes, thus making it the accuser).
Props to Katz for the effort. One of the previous posts had an idea of a ribbon campaign. I second the motion. Let's get the ball rolling on this.
-Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am.
Constructing a wormhole wouldn't be that difficult if we could infact produce enough energy to do so. That and overcome the enormous effects that warping space to such a degree would impose. Consider the classical Einstien-Rosen bridge (i.e. wormholes/blackholes), under this postulation black holes are essentially wormholes with one end. Stuff goes in but doesn't come out. Either way, the space around a black hole warps the same way the space around a wormhole would. Assuming you could create one, could you create a craft capable of withsanting the freakish forces exerted on it by the wormhole? or are we just hoping that there won't be any turbulence?