Though I'm on the fence about the probability, there is, I suppose, the possibility of intelligent influence as well. Since NASA has no explanation, it might very well be worth considering that an extraterrestrial entity could be responsible.
I have always been of the opinion that if alien life can't find a better way to communicate than anal probing -- and now maybe monkeying ever so slightly with the course of our abandoned spacecraft -- then they are not worth talking to. Worth bombing, maybe.
I have a side-flipping model (Pioneer CLD-3060), they have been around forever. Pioneed even made a 2-drawer model (LD-W2 I think), where each platter got each side played. But side-flipping added a lot to the cost, and AFAIK most LD people didn't have that feature.
Laserdisc never had mass-market appeal because the disks were much more expensive than VHS
I have been collecting laser disks since the late '80s, so I know a little about this.
Back in The Day, LD was a STEAL. Years ago a pre-recorded videotape was often $90+. Yes, even popular movies. VHS wasn't always a buyer's market, it started as a renter's market. You were expected to get your VHS fix from the neighborhood rental store, and tapes were priced insanely high, because stores bought them, not individual people.
LD, on the other hand, was priced for collectors. In 1989 I could buy Die Hard on VHS for $100, or I could buy it on DVD for $50. Many DVDs were only $30-40, when the video tapes cost up to twice as much! Us laser disc people were smug up until the late 80s, and rightfully so. We were getting a good approximation of the DVD experience years ahead of schedule, and for less money than a VHS habit would have cost.;)
Eventually the studios figured out they could make a forune from selling $10 VHS tapes of hit movies in supermarkets, and at this point the LD price advantage disappeared. For the most popular software, anyway -- but there were still lots of more obscure movies and specials you could get on LD far cheaper than VHS.
There was never a software scarcity problem with LDs, either. I could find any movie I wanted, it's not like only the top 10 were pressed onto LD. There was also a lot of educationa;/reference programming... I have this great Apollo project documentary with zillions of stills and lots of footage. That was just never released on VHS that I know of.
Of course things are changed now, but Back Then LD was a sweet thing. I got about 10 good years of use out of my $1000 LD player.
LD ultimately failed because people didn't have the tolerance for disk-flipping, I think. It was also poorly marketed. DVDs succeeded because they are smaller, have less flipping, have better image/sound, and are usually less expensive too. I've switched to DVD and I have never looked back, though there are still some LDs that I continue to use -- Star Wars, for example.
I will always miss that weird laser disc smell, though... the color printing on the jacket, and the plastic and adhesives of the disc... kind of like a new car smell. Good memories.
The only problem with this new Sony drive is that it's a Sony. Every Sony CD burner I have encountered has failed. In my experience at least, they suck and I'll never buy a Spressa drive again. Ick!
There are plenty of low-tech sci-fi settings that rock. Remember Aliens? Even Star Wars had a much lower level of technology that Star Trek. In fact, the tech is the WORST THING about Star Trek, aside from the characters and the stories... oh, wait... yeah, I guess all of Trek has sucked lately.
Anyway, the low-tech setting will force them into trying some new things. If we had a series set yet farther in the future, it would be all time-ships and glowing beings of pure energy, and who needs that crap? I want crudely-improvised antimatter weapons and women in miniskirts. I want robots to clean the floors, not paint pictures and own cats. I want ships are angular and dangerous-looking, not smooth and wimpy like some kind of alien suppository.
Naturally I am fearful, but the news of the setting gives me hope (though it has yet to be confirmed). To have any hope of regaining its status as quality entertainment, Trek needs to try something new. This is it.
To a lesser extent, so is TrueType (being the essence of their desktop publishing market hold).
Just to pick nits, TrueType is nigh useless for pro-level publishing. Only PostScript fonts are used in serious works. Most service bureaus and printers will refuse to accept a job that uses TrueType fonts. They want PostScript only, because that's what the very expensive imagesetter that makes film that makes plates for the press understands. Or what the very expensive direct-to-plate machine understands.
TrueType is great for homebrew stuff that is rendered on a cheap inkjet printer, but the head cheese at my printer will throw my files back at me if I try to give it to her.
PostScript is the heart of the publishing industry.
Game Designer is the title for the guy with a management hat who gets the last word in making gameplay mechanics decisions and balance decisions...
Where I worked, the game's Director took over that job. None of the designers got a say in anything, and the damn director would make drastic changes in gameplay on a whim. The project was getting later and later, and people started quitting left & right... including me. My only experience in video game design was a disaster. Having Activision as a publisher didn't help either.
On the other hand, I have a lot of collectible card game and RPG credits. Fun work, but it doesn't pay much unless you are one of the R&D guys at Wizards of the Coast.
How is it any more impressive than any other voice-over-IP telephone application?/i?
It's not "impressive" so much as just plain useful.
I appreciate the problem-solving nature of the ham hobby but in the end I want results. I want to talk to other hams easily, reliably, and inexpensively. I don't have the time, money or space for a HF rig -- but being able to reach distant repeaters with my HT, well, that's empowering me. It's cool, and it's useful, and I don't give a rat's ass if the data takes a trip over the Internet.
I seriously cannot believe the number of sour-pusses posting on this story! Instead of bitching about what someone else is doing, do something to help the hobby yourself, like recruiting a friend and getting him tested. Or if this technology isn't "impressive" enough, build something better already.
All the guys who are on your case about this, who don't want to see the convergence of ham radio and other technologies -- they are the ones that are killing the hobby.
20 years from now, when all of our spectrum is allocated to pay-per-view crapola, we'll have these guys to thank for it. By not embracing projects like yours, they are helping ham radio stagnate, and eventually it's going to kill us. Anything that gets more people interested is good; IRLP sure seems like it qualifies.
Flame away, you ham luddites. And rock on, IRLP!
73,
IronChef
Re:Security for Mac Users
on
Cracking OSX
·
· Score: 2
Hrm, well IE 5 for Mac isn't nearly as bad as IE for Windows. Hell, I wouldn't ever use any other browser for Mac but IE.
If you use OSX at all, try OmniWeb. It's free and it's darn good. Doesn't lock up when downloading like IE5.1 on OSX.
Cooperative multitasking? Pfft, even Win9x multitasks better then Mac OS 9. I wouldn't touch it.
I understand all the technical reasons that coop multitasking sucks... but it still doesn't prevent me from running a zillion apps, including heavy hitters like Photoshop, with no problems. So where does mac multitasking fail? It sure isn't anywhere in my digital prepress/web site monkeying workflow. I've been a mac user for many years and my productivity has never been hampered by cooperative multitasking. I think that most of the people who complain about it haven't had any experience with it, or have some very specific needs that don't match the needs of the average mac user.
You want to complain about something serious, talk about the lack of protected memory.
(and yes, I think OS X rocks too. The UI stinks, they have thrown out a decade of development there, but the technical foundation is wonderful. bash on my mac! neat.)
I have @Home as well, and here in Seattle the terms of service are a little different. They explicity told me that they did not care about running multiple computers via NAT.
Cable broadband providers seem to have very different policies across their own networks. For example, in los angeles MediaOne cable can't provide you with a fixed IP or multiple email accounts -- which they can do in most other places. Go figure.
The only conceivable way would be morally no different from conceiving a child and suppressing growth of other body parts...
Maybe that's the only thing you can conceive of, and the guy who replied to your post. But things like space travel were once considered crazy too. As a biochemist myself I am confident that it's a solveable problem, if society decides to tackle it. All your talk about deformed children sounds like anti-progress scare tactics to me.
"Spare hearts in a vat" or a "brainless clone in a tube" are no different than conceiving a child the normal way and abusing it for said purposes; a clone merely gives you a genetic match.
I disagree, at least in the case of the Vat O' Hearts. If they could take a blood sample, squirt it into some magic machine and produce a cloned heart a week later -- how is that a moral issue? I don't see that as anything like "conceiving a child the normal way and abusing it." Instead, it seems like a way to remove that temptation.
This is just a new facet of an existing problem. Our freedoms have been eroded in other ways prior to this. For example, for a while it's been illegal to build a radio that can receive about 800-950MHz -- because that's where cell phones are. They recently added cordless phones freqs, too.
It's insane, if you think about it. The right combination of elementary electronic components -- just a hardful of parts that is PASSIVE when powered up -- makes you a felon in the USA.
IMHO, if EM radiation is passing through my meatspace, I've got the right to intercept it, letter of the law be damned. If privacy is important, the phone companies should be using encryption, not legislation.
Since education is the key, would you be opposed to gun safety education in public schools? "This is a gun. If you find one don't touch it, and for the love of pete don't point it at anyone. Now, we'll show a video of what happens to people who get shot." Who could not be in favor of that?
They do this for cars. And I know cars aren't guns, but there are some similarities -- there are a lot of them, daddy might have one, and they are both dangerous if misused.
Sadly, most anti-gun folks recoil in horror at the idea of public education, unless the "education" comes from gun control propaganda. I think it's because they see a *real* education program as acceptance of the fact that guns are part of the culture... they'd rather people be ignorant and afraid than aware and perhaps a bit safer, and lose some ground in their fight.
Slashdot Mirror
someone mod this up.
Though I'm on the fence about the probability, there is, I suppose, the possibility of intelligent influence as well. Since NASA has no explanation, it might very well be worth considering that an extraterrestrial entity could be responsible.
I have always been of the opinion that if alien life can't find a better way to communicate than anal probing -- and now maybe monkeying ever so slightly with the course of our abandoned spacecraft -- then they are not worth talking to. Worth bombing, maybe.
Damn aliens.
I have a side-flipping model (Pioneer CLD-3060), they have been around forever. Pioneed even made a 2-drawer model (LD-W2 I think), where each platter got each side played. But side-flipping added a lot to the cost, and AFAIK most LD people didn't have that feature.
Laserdisc never had mass-market appeal because the disks were much more expensive than VHS
;)
I have been collecting laser disks since the late '80s, so I know a little about this.
Back in The Day, LD was a STEAL. Years ago a pre-recorded videotape was often $90+. Yes, even popular movies. VHS wasn't always a buyer's market, it started as a renter's market. You were expected to get your VHS fix from the neighborhood rental store, and tapes were priced insanely high, because stores bought them, not individual people.
LD, on the other hand, was priced for collectors. In 1989 I could buy Die Hard on VHS for $100, or I could buy it on DVD for $50. Many DVDs were only $30-40, when the video tapes cost up to twice as much! Us laser disc people were smug up until the late 80s, and rightfully so. We were getting a good approximation of the DVD experience years ahead of schedule, and for less money than a VHS habit would have cost.
Eventually the studios figured out they could make a forune from selling $10 VHS tapes of hit movies in supermarkets, and at this point the LD price advantage disappeared. For the most popular software, anyway -- but there were still lots of more obscure movies and specials you could get on LD far cheaper than VHS.
There was never a software scarcity problem with LDs, either. I could find any movie I wanted, it's not like only the top 10 were pressed onto LD. There was also a lot of educationa;/reference programming... I have this great Apollo project documentary with zillions of stills and lots of footage. That was just never released on VHS that I know of.
Of course things are changed now, but Back Then LD was a sweet thing. I got about 10 good years of use out of my $1000 LD player.
LD ultimately failed because people didn't have the tolerance for disk-flipping, I think. It was also poorly marketed. DVDs succeeded because they are smaller, have less flipping, have better image/sound, and are usually less expensive too. I've switched to DVD and I have never looked back, though there are still some LDs that I continue to use -- Star Wars, for example.
I will always miss that weird laser disc smell, though... the color printing on the jacket, and the plastic and adhesives of the disc... kind of like a new car smell. Good memories.
The only problem with this new Sony drive is that it's a Sony. Every Sony CD burner I have encountered has failed. In my experience at least, they suck and I'll never buy a Spressa drive again. Ick!
I agree, and would provide Larry Niven as a great example too. I just don't trust the pinheads at Paramount with that kind of power. :)
From the safety of my General products hull,
IronChef
There are plenty of low-tech sci-fi settings that rock. Remember Aliens? Even Star Wars had a much lower level of technology that Star Trek. In fact, the tech is the WORST THING about Star Trek, aside from the characters and the stories... oh, wait... yeah, I guess all of Trek has sucked lately.
Anyway, the low-tech setting will force them into trying some new things. If we had a series set yet farther in the future, it would be all time-ships and glowing beings of pure energy, and who needs that crap? I want crudely-improvised antimatter weapons and women in miniskirts. I want robots to clean the floors, not paint pictures and own cats. I want ships are angular and dangerous-looking, not smooth and wimpy like some kind of alien suppository.
Naturally I am fearful, but the news of the setting gives me hope (though it has yet to be confirmed). To have any hope of regaining its status as quality entertainment, Trek needs to try something new. This is it.
To a lesser extent, so is TrueType (being the essence of their desktop publishing market hold).
Just to pick nits, TrueType is nigh useless for pro-level publishing. Only PostScript fonts are used in serious works. Most service bureaus and printers will refuse to accept a job that uses TrueType fonts. They want PostScript only, because that's what the very expensive imagesetter that makes film that makes plates for the press understands. Or what the very expensive direct-to-plate machine understands.
TrueType is great for homebrew stuff that is rendered on a cheap inkjet printer, but the head cheese at my printer will throw my files back at me if I try to give it to her.
PostScript is the heart of the publishing industry.
Game Designer is the title for the guy with a management hat who gets the last word in making gameplay mechanics decisions and balance decisions...
Where I worked, the game's Director took over that job. None of the designers got a say in anything, and the damn director would make drastic changes in gameplay on a whim. The project was getting later and later, and people started quitting left & right... including me. My only experience in video game design was a disaster. Having Activision as a publisher didn't help either.
On the other hand, I have a lot of collectible card game and RPG credits. Fun work, but it doesn't pay much unless you are one of the R&D guys at Wizards of the Coast.
How is it any more impressive than any other voice-over-IP telephone application?/i?
It's not "impressive" so much as just plain useful.
I appreciate the problem-solving nature of the ham hobby but in the end I want results. I want to talk to other hams easily, reliably, and inexpensively. I don't have the time, money or space for a HF rig -- but being able to reach distant repeaters with my HT, well, that's empowering me. It's cool, and it's useful, and I don't give a rat's ass if the data takes a trip over the Internet.
I seriously cannot believe the number of sour-pusses posting on this story! Instead of bitching about what someone else is doing, do something to help the hobby yourself, like recruiting a friend and getting him tested. Or if this technology isn't "impressive" enough, build something better already.
All the guys who are on your case about this, who don't want to see the convergence of ham radio and other technologies -- they are the ones that are killing the hobby.
20 years from now, when all of our spectrum is allocated to pay-per-view crapola, we'll have these guys to thank for it. By not embracing projects like yours, they are helping ham radio stagnate, and eventually it's going to kill us. Anything that gets more people interested is good; IRLP sure seems like it qualifies.
Flame away, you ham luddites. And rock on, IRLP!
73,
IronChef
Hrm, well IE 5 for Mac isn't nearly as bad as IE for Windows. Hell, I wouldn't ever use any other browser for Mac but IE.
If you use OSX at all, try OmniWeb. It's free and it's darn good. Doesn't lock up when downloading like IE5.1 on OSX.
Cooperative multitasking? Pfft, even Win9x multitasks better then Mac OS 9. I wouldn't touch it.
I understand all the technical reasons that coop multitasking sucks... but it still doesn't prevent me from running a zillion apps, including heavy hitters like Photoshop, with no problems. So where does mac multitasking fail? It sure isn't anywhere in my digital prepress/web site monkeying workflow. I've been a mac user for many years and my productivity has never been hampered by cooperative multitasking. I think that most of the people who complain about it haven't had any experience with it, or have some very specific needs that don't match the needs of the average mac user.
You want to complain about something serious, talk about the lack of protected memory.
(and yes, I think OS X rocks too. The UI stinks, they have thrown out a decade of development there, but the technical foundation is wonderful. bash on my mac! neat.)
"Support Boundaries?" Sounds interesting and hateful. Please elaborate!
C'mon, no one's going to complain about how FreeBSD isn't free?! Let's get a big GPL rant going, it'll be fun.
I have @Home as well, and here in Seattle the terms of service are a little different. They explicity told me that they did not care about running multiple computers via NAT.
Cable broadband providers seem to have very different policies across their own networks. For example, in los angeles MediaOne cable can't provide you with a fixed IP or multiple email accounts -- which they can do in most other places. Go figure.
Depending on where you live, you don't have control over your baby's name either. France has strict laws, so does Norway and maybe Germany.
The only conceivable way would be morally no different from conceiving a child and suppressing growth of other body parts...
Maybe that's the only thing you can conceive of, and the guy who replied to your post. But things like space travel were once considered crazy too. As a biochemist myself I am confident that it's a solveable problem, if society decides to tackle it. All your talk about deformed children sounds like anti-progress scare tactics to me.
We have the technology to grow hearts in jars...
You're wrong.
If you can prove otherwise, I'll gladly eat my words.
Spare body parts can already be grown without the need to clone a human. Just look at the mouse with an ear on it's back...
That was an ear-shaped patch of skin, growing on a sculpted ear-shaped scaffold. Neat, but trivial compared to the "heart in a jar" problem.
If you know where I can get fresh, healthy human livers grown on demand, please post.
"Spare hearts in a vat" or a "brainless clone in a tube" are no different than conceiving a child the normal way and abusing it for said purposes; a clone merely gives you a genetic match.
I disagree, at least in the case of the Vat O' Hearts. If they could take a blood sample, squirt it into some magic machine and produce a cloned heart a week later -- how is that a moral issue? I don't see that as anything like "conceiving a child the normal way and abusing it." Instead, it seems like a way to remove that temptation.
This is just a new facet of an existing problem. Our freedoms have been eroded in other ways prior to this. For example, for a while it's been illegal to build a radio that can receive about 800-950MHz -- because that's where cell phones are. They recently added cordless phones freqs, too.
It's insane, if you think about it. The right combination of elementary electronic components -- just a hardful of parts that is PASSIVE when powered up -- makes you a felon in the USA.
IMHO, if EM radiation is passing through my meatspace, I've got the right to intercept it, letter of the law be damned. If privacy is important, the phone companies should be using encryption, not legislation.
Hey, *I* never said "teach fear." You're preaching to the NRA choir here.
You're just jealous because YOU can't take it to the hole.
But seriously, those guys will be flipping burgers for a living. It sucks to be in school with them now, but you'll have the last laugh.
Since education is the key, would you be opposed to gun safety education in public schools? "This is a gun. If you find one don't touch it, and for the love of pete don't point it at anyone. Now, we'll show a video of what happens to people who get shot." Who could not be in favor of that?
They do this for cars. And I know cars aren't guns, but there are some similarities -- there are a lot of them, daddy might have one, and they are both dangerous if misused.
Sadly, most anti-gun folks recoil in horror at the idea of public education, unless the "education" comes from gun control propaganda. I think it's because they see a *real* education program as acceptance of the fact that guns are part of the culture... they'd rather people be ignorant and afraid than aware and perhaps a bit safer, and lose some ground in their fight.