The people interested in space are usually a little bit smarter, and less swayed by advertising stunts I'm sure that's true; but on the other hand when you advertise during the superbowl you're doing nothing to further the cause of football; you're just paying a network a wodge of money. If you give the Russians a load of cash to help them boldly go where no Russian has gone before you're furthering the cause of exploration. This is a Good Thing.
You'd think after the mandrake fiasco people'd learn to wait for official announcements. I know that it's where were were told it was, but it's possible Red Hat are waiting for a reason. News sources vying for market share may have a reason for being first with every story, but you'd think slashdot'd be above that sort of thing. Any attempts to log onto ftp.redhat.com before typing this are purely hypocracy on my part, but should not invalidate my point.
According to the bbc, "separate review committees have already been formed to investigate the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter - the internal JPL peer group and a special review board of JPL and outside experts. An independent Nasa failure review board will be formed shortly. "
Of course, they may well come to the reasonable conclusion: use only metric measurements. But has anyone thought about how a ridiculously bureaucratic organisation such as NASA can implement these changes before the sun runs out of fuel? A compromise solution may be necessary, which is probably how they got into this sort of trouble in the first place.
As was pointed out earlier, the reason people should stay indoors is because of the possibility of radioactive rain. As for the 'wash it off'; that's exactly what you should do. Radioactivity isn't some sort of ephemeral aether that can't be detected; it has a physical presence, and if you get it on your skin you should wash it off ASAFP.
This is Good News. If any country (especially one the size of Canada) decides that this system is silly, then we'll see a mass migration of web sites to Canada. Everyone who wants an unrated site can set up there, and the entire system will be rendered useless. Of course, the rest of the world could then decide to a) bomb canada b) block every canadian site c) sulk and complain to the canadian government
All of which will probably be in vain. Bwahahahaha!
The fact that there is no fair, reasonable, managable, or even remotely feasible way to rate the Internet is the most fortunate thing about this whole affair
This would be true if everyone realised that. I said 'unfortunately' because the impracticality is not seen as a hinderance, and will only cause layer upon layer of subclauses inevitably to be added in attempt to make the system fair(er). This will result in a bureaucratic mess that will end up persecuting sites for such ridiculous things as 'link to a link to porn'.
It is a human rights problem, but one that is exacerbated by the intransigence of the censors in recognising the impracticality of their task.
Technical people have the capacity to generate different types of art; you can't see any painter coming up with the Mendelbrot set, can you? Any branch of mathematics has its own aesthetic, and some of these can be stunning. Take elliptic curves, for example. Techies may have problems generating something like Constable's The Haywain, but I doubt Constable could come up with something as cool as the formula e^i*pi=-1, which to me is artistic as pretty much anything.
I notice that the noble censors (pardon, raters) are planning on getting together a bunch of advisors from around the world to help with such things as national and ethnic considerations. Twelve people. Do not take the following as an 'I hate Americans' statement The problem is that as far as the US is concerned, everyone else is secondary. To a certain extent this is admirable; no government can succeed unless the needs of its people are paramount. But when that nation is as powerful as America, and that nation perceives international web sites as a threat to its moral purity ("for the children!!!") then by gosh the world better fall in line with the US. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the Americans could come up with a reasonable and fair system of rating. Unfortunately, there ain't no such animal. So we're likely to be stuck with a shitty rating system that pays lip service to the problem of American Children Seeing Breasts and proves to be (at least) an inconvenience to the majority of surfers around the world.
Yes, I know Bertelsmann's report hailed from Germany. I never said the Americans had a copyright on stupidity.
Another question, would the persons personality revert to 'normal' if you removed the extra power My guess is no. The brain works so well because it remembers its state. If it were to reset at the drop of a voltage, we'd all wake up every moring to a brand new experience.
Any idea to what extent you would alter someones personality by minutely adjusting the signal to the brain If you can manage it, there's a Nobel prize in it for you. Of course, ECT will fry the brain in a random way, but that's not what you were on about, I suspect. As for governmental intervention: sounds like the CIA's MK-ULTRA experiments (sort of).
What happens if you boost the electrical charge, just a little bit mind you. You'd turn into a jerry springer fan. The brain's cognitive strengths come from the fact that it's not a binary system; synapeses can be more than just on or off. To that extent, the brain's a lot like a quantum computer (is that in someone's sig?). If you increase the signal, you're changing the contents of the brain, not making it faster.
I wonder if there is a strange spacetime drag going on here It's funny how explanations like this pop up readily; my own first thoughts were along similar lines. I blame Star Trek. The problem with any sort of drag is that it doesn't seem to affect everything. In order to get to Saturn Cassini has to fly around a whole bunch of planets (Venus twice), and that sort of calculation wouldn't be possible. The V'gers would also have missed out on the outer planets. If this drag is a feature of spacetime, however, and acts only on accelerating bodies, it may be negated by gravity. Which is why we can't detect it near the sun. Usual warning:IANAA and I'm making it all up.
Let's face it, no-one trusts the CIA. And I mean no-one on the planet. However, in their time, they've done some interesting things. They were behind a number of foundations that sponsored artists, particularly modern artists (noteably Jackson Pollock). Just goes to show there's a little good in everyone. Even Bill Gates probably likes puppies.
1. If dark matter is real, it must be concentrated more densely near the sun and less densely farther away. Otherwise the distribution of dark matter would not slow the probes. I don't think so. If the dark matter were concentrated near the sun, we'd automatically include it in our calculations; most likely in Newton's gravitational constant. General relativity answered the problems Newton's theory had with Mercury's orbit, and does a damn fine job with all predictions gravitational around the sun. If this is the case, dark matter has to exert a force other than gravity. And if that's the case, the Pioneers' acceleration away from the sun should increase as it moves out of the dark matter's influence. Of course, I could be talking bollocks.
I don't think it's dust, or hydrogen, or heat radiation. If you read the original paper, it refers to an "anomalous, constant acceleration (my boldies). I initially balked at the idea of 'new physics' to explain this, but when you consider how narrow our field of vision is, there cannot but be more than is dream't of in our philosophy. These probes have travelled farther than pretty much anything else created by man; anything funky with gravity may only begin to manifest itself over billions of klicks. My own wild and unsupported theory must go unpublished lest the drooling masses call to my door armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.
Okay, so a direct link'll avoid a bunch of ads, but ultimately eBay are going to lose business on this one. I've never bought stuff in an auction, but if I did I'd be more likely to go to a sort of meta-auction (pardon) like BiddersEdge than to restrict myself to one site. If BiddersEdge can't list ebay items, then eBay customers are going to lose out because I couldn't bid. The other side of the argument, I suppose, is that the only reason these companies are worth the billions that they are is because of eyeball counts. If that really is the case, we can expect to see lots more suits of this type.
It'll cause deaths; no doubt about that. But that's no reason to hold back on it. All we can do is hope that when it's some asshole's time to go, s/he doesn't take too many passers by with him/^H^Her. Theres no (no) technology that can't be misused to the extremely prejudicial detriment of the hapless luser. I'm willing to bet some moron accidently killed himself by choking on cotton balls.
You can almost set your calendar by it; every year since 1975 I've seen a story about videophones and how they're just around the corner. It's a bit like deorbiting Mir; everyone expects it to happen any day now but it just keeps being put off. The difference? This time it looks like it might actually happen. And if it actually does work at 384kbps... coolness epitomised.
Brin! Gosh diddly darn it, if you haven't read The Uplift War and the rest of that series, you haven't read some of the finest science fiction written. Essential reading also includes The Postman (on which that fuckawful film was allegedly based).
Perhaps Avalon sold more copies to the general (non-sci-fi fan or sci-fi author) community, though. Speaking as a former bookseller, I can safely say that a lot of people came looking for Mists of Avalon without knowing who MZB was; it was the book they heard of. However, on the strength of that book I was able to convince a few to try the Darkover books; Stormqueen and Two to Conquer are my favourites and ones that never failed to convert. Avalon, BTW, had inferior sequels but remains second only to TH White's Once and Future King in essential Arthurian reading. There've been thousands since, but none to match these two.
Worthless or inexpensive, it amounts to the same thing. The world is filled with crap that costs nothing to make but sells for ridiculous amounts. Take Nike. Neither to I think that gambling is really an issue. For a start, it's not just accepted, it's expected. I used to work in a comic shop that also sold every type of trading card imaginable, and we sold fewer of the ones that didn't have some ridiculous card that was signed, kissed, hollow, embossed or covered in chronotron particles. So the real issue is: should these be sold to kids? I don't see anything wrong with this; the solution, as others have pointed out, is parental control. Kids will always want more stuff than they have; it's up to the parents to decide which worthless piece of crap will make them happiest, or to let them decided for themselves on a fixed budget.
I'm not sure about your definition of 'worthless'. I'd consider a signed first edition of American Psycho to be worthless, but someone who owned a copy would probably think the same of my signed first edition of Maps in a Mirror. If the kids want it, it has worth.
Of course, that's not to say I disagree with you. But neither do I think Nintendo are doing anything that no other toy company is doing; the only difference is that a booster pack of Pokemon cards is a lot cheaper than a Malibu Stacy house, and therefore the kids can usually pay for it without requests for additional funding.
They spent thousands of dollars trying to get a card "that could be sold for up to $100". Obviously I'd never refer to someone I don't know as a "moron", but...
Slashdot Mirror
The people interested in space are usually a little bit smarter, and less swayed by advertising stunts
I'm sure that's true; but on the other hand when you advertise during the superbowl you're doing nothing to further the cause of football; you're just paying a network a wodge of money.
If you give the Russians a load of cash to help them boldly go where no Russian has gone before you're furthering the cause of exploration.
This is a Good Thing.
You'd think after the mandrake fiasco people'd learn to wait for official announcements.
I know that it's where were were told it was, but it's possible Red Hat are waiting for a reason.
News sources vying for market share may have a reason for being first with every story, but you'd think slashdot'd be above that sort of thing.
Any attempts to log onto ftp.redhat.com before typing this are purely hypocracy on my part, but should not invalidate my point.
A distro that installs under windows? Wow. Phat Linux has run off a windows partition for, oh, ages.
According to the bbc,
"separate review committees have already been formed to investigate the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter - the internal JPL peer group and a special review board of JPL and outside experts. An independent Nasa failure review board will be formed shortly. "
Of course, they may well come to the reasonable conclusion: use only metric measurements. But has anyone thought about how a ridiculously bureaucratic organisation such as NASA can implement these changes before the sun runs out of fuel? A compromise solution may be necessary, which is probably how they got into this sort of trouble in the first place.
As was pointed out earlier, the reason people should stay indoors is because of the possibility of radioactive rain.
As for the 'wash it off'; that's exactly what you should do. Radioactivity isn't some sort of ephemeral aether that can't be detected; it has a physical presence, and if you get it on your skin you should wash it off ASAFP.
This is Good News. If any country (especially one the size of Canada) decides that this system is silly, then we'll see a mass migration of web sites to Canada. Everyone who wants an unrated site can set up there, and the entire system will be rendered useless.
Of course, the rest of the world could then decide to
a) bomb canada
b) block every canadian site
c) sulk and complain to the canadian government
All of which will probably be in vain. Bwahahahaha!
I was unclear; sorry about that.
The fact that there is no fair, reasonable, managable, or even remotely feasible way to rate the Internet is the most fortunate thing about this whole affair
This would be true if everyone realised that. I said 'unfortunately' because the impracticality is not seen as a hinderance, and will only cause layer upon layer of subclauses inevitably to be added in attempt to make the system fair(er). This will result in a bureaucratic mess that will end up persecuting sites for such ridiculous things as 'link to a link to porn'.
It is a human rights problem, but one that is exacerbated by the intransigence of the censors in recognising the impracticality of their task.
Technical people have the capacity to generate different types of art; you can't see any painter coming up with the Mendelbrot set, can you? Any branch of mathematics has its own aesthetic, and some of these can be stunning. Take elliptic curves, for example.
Techies may have problems generating something like Constable's The Haywain, but I doubt Constable could come up with something as cool as the formula e^i*pi=-1, which to me is artistic as pretty much anything.
I notice that the noble censors (pardon, raters) are planning on getting together a bunch of advisors from around the world to help with such things as national and ethnic considerations.
Twelve people.
Do not take the following as an 'I hate Americans' statement
The problem is that as far as the US is concerned, everyone else is secondary. To a certain extent this is admirable; no government can succeed unless the needs of its people are paramount. But when that nation is as powerful as America, and that nation perceives international web sites as a threat to its moral purity ("for the children!!!") then by gosh the world better fall in line with the US.
This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the Americans could come up with a reasonable and fair system of rating. Unfortunately, there ain't no such animal. So we're likely to be stuck with a shitty rating system that pays lip service to the problem of American Children Seeing Breasts and proves to be (at least) an inconvenience to the majority of surfers around the world.
Yes, I know Bertelsmann's report hailed from Germany. I never said the Americans had a copyright on stupidity.
Another question, would the persons personality revert to 'normal' if you removed the extra power
My guess is no. The brain works so well because it remembers its state. If it were to reset at the drop of a voltage, we'd all wake up every moring to a brand new experience.
Any idea to what extent you would alter someones personality by minutely adjusting the signal to the brain
If you can manage it, there's a Nobel prize in it for you.
Of course, ECT will fry the brain in a random way, but that's not what you were on about, I suspect.
As for governmental intervention: sounds like the CIA's MK-ULTRA experiments (sort of).
What happens if you boost the electrical charge, just a little bit mind you.
You'd turn into a jerry springer fan. The brain's cognitive strengths come from the fact that it's not a binary system; synapeses can be more than just on or off. To that extent, the brain's a lot like a quantum computer (is that in someone's sig?).
If you increase the signal, you're changing the contents of the brain, not making it faster.
Supposicell... with the copper coloured bottom. Also available as a rumble pack.
I wonder if there is a strange spacetime drag going on here
It's funny how explanations like this pop up readily; my own first thoughts were along similar lines. I blame Star Trek.
The problem with any sort of drag is that it doesn't seem to affect everything. In order to get to Saturn Cassini has to fly around a whole bunch of planets (Venus twice), and that sort of calculation wouldn't be possible. The V'gers would also have missed out on the outer planets.
If this drag is a feature of spacetime, however, and acts only on accelerating bodies, it may be negated by gravity. Which is why we can't detect it near the sun.
Usual warning:IANAA and I'm making it all up.
Let's face it, no-one trusts the CIA. And I mean no-one on the planet. However, in their time, they've done some interesting things. They were behind a number of foundations that sponsored artists, particularly modern artists (noteably Jackson Pollock).
Just goes to show there's a little good in everyone. Even Bill Gates probably likes puppies.
1. If dark matter is real, it must be concentrated more densely near the sun and less densely farther away. Otherwise the distribution of dark matter would not slow the probes.
I don't think so. If the dark matter were concentrated near the sun, we'd automatically include it in our calculations; most likely in Newton's gravitational constant.
General relativity answered the problems Newton's theory had with Mercury's orbit, and does a damn fine job with all predictions gravitational around the sun. If this is the case, dark matter has to exert a force other than gravity. And if that's the case, the Pioneers' acceleration away from the sun should increase as it moves out of the dark matter's influence.
Of course, I could be talking bollocks.
I don't think it's dust, or hydrogen, or heat radiation. If you read the original paper, it refers to an "anomalous, constant acceleration (my boldies).
I initially balked at the idea of 'new physics' to explain this, but when you consider how narrow our field of vision is, there cannot but be more than is dream't of in our philosophy.
These probes have travelled farther than pretty much anything else created by man; anything funky with gravity may only begin to manifest itself over billions of klicks.
My own wild and unsupported theory must go unpublished lest the drooling masses call to my door armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.
Okay, so a direct link'll avoid a bunch of ads, but ultimately eBay are going to lose business on this one. I've never bought stuff in an auction, but if I did I'd be more likely to go to a sort of meta-auction (pardon) like BiddersEdge than to restrict myself to one site. If BiddersEdge can't list ebay items, then eBay customers are going to lose out because I couldn't bid.
The other side of the argument, I suppose, is that the only reason these companies are worth the billions that they are is because of eyeball counts. If that really is the case, we can expect to see lots more suits of this type.
It'll cause deaths; no doubt about that. But that's no reason to hold back on it. All we can do is hope that when it's some asshole's time to go, s/he doesn't take too many passers by with him/^H^Her.
Theres no (no) technology that can't be misused to the extremely prejudicial detriment of the hapless luser. I'm willing to bet some moron accidently killed himself by choking on cotton balls.
You can almost set your calendar by it; every year since 1975 I've seen a story about videophones and how they're just around the corner. It's a bit like deorbiting Mir; everyone expects it to happen any day now but it just keeps being put off.
The difference? This time it looks like it might actually happen.
And if it actually does work at 384kbps... coolness epitomised.
Brin!
Gosh diddly darn it, if you haven't read The Uplift War and the rest of that series, you haven't read some of the finest science fiction written. Essential reading also includes The Postman (on which that fuckawful film was allegedly based).
Perhaps Avalon sold more copies to the general (non-sci-fi fan or sci-fi author) community, though.
Speaking as a former bookseller, I can safely say that a lot of people came looking for Mists of Avalon without knowing who MZB was; it was the book they heard of. However, on the strength of that book I was able to convince a few to try the Darkover books; Stormqueen and Two to Conquer are my favourites and ones that never failed to convert.
Avalon, BTW, had inferior sequels but remains second only to TH White's Once and Future King in essential Arthurian reading. There've been thousands since, but none to match these two.
Worthless or inexpensive, it amounts to the same thing. The world is filled with crap that costs nothing to make but sells for ridiculous amounts. Take Nike. Neither to I think that gambling is really an issue. For a start, it's not just accepted, it's expected. I used to work in a comic shop that also sold every type of trading card imaginable, and we sold fewer of the ones that didn't have some ridiculous card that was signed, kissed, hollow, embossed or covered in chronotron particles.
So the real issue is: should these be sold to kids? I don't see anything wrong with this; the solution, as others have pointed out, is parental control. Kids will always want more stuff than they have; it's up to the parents to decide which worthless piece of crap will make them happiest, or to let them decided for themselves on a fixed budget.
I'm not sure about your definition of 'worthless'. I'd consider a signed first edition of American Psycho to be worthless, but someone who owned a copy would probably think the same of my signed first edition of Maps in a Mirror.
If the kids want it, it has worth.
Of course, that's not to say I disagree with you. But neither do I think Nintendo are doing anything that no other toy company is doing; the only difference is that a booster pack of Pokemon cards is a lot cheaper than a Malibu Stacy house, and therefore the kids can usually pay for it without requests for additional funding.
They spent thousands of dollars trying to get a card "that could be sold for up to $100".
Obviously I'd never refer to someone I don't know as a "moron", but...