Use PKI over VPN to carry all Air Force traffic and reject everything else. The VPN solution would run on customized hardened nodes spread across the globe. These would provide multiple redundant paths and the ability to reject 'electronic attacks', 'hostile traffic' and 'anonymous hackers'...
Already done in many areas, and spreading. You still have the problem of how to run www.af.mil in a manner open to the public, as well as the public sites for many military bases, while still securing them.
Still, wouldn't you LIKE to find out who's sending you spam/phishing attacks/etc... so you can, if nothing else, impolitely ask them to stop at 0100 in the morning?
Sorry if I'm redundant but it's one thing to say there is a link and another to say it is the cause.
Very much true.
I remember one study that went through and looked at people violent enough to warrant criminal arrest/conviction* and whether or not they played video games - the result was that the rate of violent game players tracked with the rate of overall game players in the population, or even fewer - IE people who played video games tended to NOT get convicted for violent acts.
Can't find the sucker right now though. I do remember reading that some of the more violent people today didn't play video games at all.
As the saying goes: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
*One of the better places to put the demarcation point, I think. Personally, as long as nobody gets seriously hurt, a little aggression isn't a bad thing while playing. It's when it becomes serious that we need to look into matters.
Then it's probably a good thing that he's posting on a web forum, not submitting a paper in your class.
Slashdot gets 5-10 minutes if it's lucky. If I was actually doing a paper, I figure I'd start at a half hour for a daily type assignment and go up from there.
He even noted that it's a correlation, not causation. There are many initiatives, including some more effective measures against bullies and fighting in schools, even if they go overboard and get silly at times. The most recent of which was a boy hauled in for a psych evaluation. because he made his scary mask picture, with the assistance of the art teacher, too scary for his homeroom teacher. It was a kid picture of a vampire with blood tears - the homeroom teacher thought they might be gang signs.
Let's see. Not turning up any estimates on hours played per person, but the NES(1983) sold 62 million units, while the PS2 racked up 140M and the XBox 24M.
I'd want to get a lot more information, but over a similar period of time, the PS2 sold twice as many units, and violence dropped during this period.
The problem is, however, that while it is relatively easy to decide objectively whether a parent has smacked their child, it was incredibly difficult to convict even somebody who regularly beat up the kids, if they can say "I have a right to discipline my children".
Maybe in history, where they didn't just spank children, they even used belts and paddles to do it. Today, it should be simple enough: Is the child injured? A quite firm spanking can leave nothing more than a bit of redness, that will disappear within minutes/hours.
On the other hand, bruises, burns, wrenched limbs, concussions, etc... All are much easier to diagnose, and we're smart enough today to be able to tell the difference between an 'active but clumsy child'(me), and an abused one.
Going by dogs/cats raising their kids, it's quite possible to swat a child without harming them. Heck, I remember watching a full grown tiger with her cubs - one finally went over the line chewing on mama, got swatted such that it went head over tail several body lengths along. You could tell that said hit was nothing on what the mother could have done. Said cub sat up, shook it's head for a moment, then went to play with it's sibling.
[quote]I suppose the idea was that it would be easier to get to a fair verdict if the starting point is that any corporeal punishment is illegal. Ideally, if a parent has smacked their child because, say, they had a tantrum in a dangerous situation, the judge should say "Well, this is illegal, but in the circumstances, permissible". I don't know if it works that way.[/quote]
Used to work that way, unfortuantly, you get some crazy things today. For example, just getting hauled in front of a judge is a great expense - legal fees for the lawyer, time out of work, etc...
For something rare like legal self defense of a lethal/serious injury nature, it works. For something fairly common like discliplining a child, it shouldn't get that far.
Someone needs to produce network capable TVs. I think there's one or two manufacturers out there that do wireless ones, but hardwired is fine too.
I haven't seen any wireless TVs, but from studying the information about the slingbox, for HD video wired is best - you can get into bandwidth limitations very quickly if you're not careful with wireless.
The slingbox, if it works correctly, seems to be one of the better options at this time. I'd be hesitant with an integrated device at this time.
With multiple TV/monitors in homes nowadays, it's much easier to move a disk from player to player than network a home.
It's still coming, though. With the proliferation of wireless, things like Ethernet over power, it's easy enough. I looked through some manufactured homes at the state fair - one was wired with cat 5, including a line to the anticipated home theater area. They said it's a very common request, almost standard now. If people buying double wides in North Dakota are going for this stuff, what does that tell you?
Last week I saw a ad for some cable/internet provider where one of their advertised features was the ability to playback DVR recorded video on any TV in the house. How this was done wasn't mentioned. There are a number of options. For example, the Slingbox @$300 will put your DVR/cable/whatever onto the network. For another $300 you can get the 'slingcatcher' which will hook up to any remote television and allow access.
[quote]What is more apparent to me is that there is a stratification between DVD and BluRay.[/quote]
Very much true. Without some sort of method to get the contents to a DVD or networked DVR, it's difficult to get any blueray movie to, say, the standard definition TV in the kids room, the playroom, master bedroom, whatever. You end up buying any movie twice if you want to watch at HighDef AND in a convienent location, assuming you're not rich enough to upgrade to bigscreen highdef blueray systems in the whole house.
The more blueray is cracked, though, the more transferability is enabled, the more attractive the media is to the consumer.
One thing to consider with physical media, especially with the spread of DVRs, is space. Consider how many DVDs an individual who buys a mere 2 a month - $30-60, That's 24 a year, 240 over the course of a decade, and I've been collecting for more than a decade. Over 200 videos starts to get to be a pain in the butt without a good media management system. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to archive the discs down in the basement somewhere and free up the space in my living room.
Disrupting the consumers from viewing the new shiney will actually make them sit up and pay attention. I hope this screws a lot of people really hard to the point they say "HEY! WHAT THE HELL!"
I think this has actually happened a couple times. My first negative experience with DRM was as a kid - I bought a video game that kept insisting I 'insert the original disc'. Turns out they fubared the pressing such that even the original disc was seen as copied - didn't impress me with the quality control. It was something where pulling even a single disc and trying it out would have found the problem.
My second was with an E-Book program. I decided to check out this 'ebook' thing, downloaded the one Stephen King wrote years ago - the idea was that if you liked the book, you paid for the next installment. While I found the installment nice, the reader broke so many things that after reading it I uninstalled the reader and therefore the book. Never again. For example, it mostly broke copy/paste, as well as various other things in attempting to stop screen captures.
I mean, if I had wanted to copy the book, it would have only taken a few hours of my time to [i]retype the bloody thing[/i] using dual screens or even two computers. It wasn't a hugely long book, and I am a trained(if out of practice) typist. If I wanted to do a lot of books, some sort of OCR system would work.
Or just find & download it off the internet today.
Especially with the popularity of MP3 players that are quickly turning into media players, the 'average user' is seeing the effects of DRM more and more. Especially when they buy that DVD duplicator and discover it won't work for 'copyprotected' discs.
I firmly believe that the final box, the one containing ammunition, is much more useful as a threat than in use.
You see, it makes the other side wonder 'is this the final straw that will cause them to erupt in violence?'. The ammo box is expensive - to both sides.
Otherwise you get the situation you see here - where the government just keeps on growing.
And I'm saying that it's been tried, and it screwed up the game for everyone else. Suddenly those "power gamer" newbies (*) can't even buy a toothpick, much less a weapon, without paying millions for it.
Then you're making crafting too difficult, ironically enough. Or making selling too difficult. Whatever, you get huge prices because so few can construct the items compared to demand.
The solution to prices being too high would be to make construction easier - you'd get more players making stuff, eventually overwhelming the gold-buyers and second character 'anonymous gifters', clanners and so on.
Of course, in WoW you have level restrictions for items - It's not like a 1st level can even wear 9/10ths the equipment out there. When I played, it tended to annoy me a bit when I happened to get a random drop that I couldn't even wear yet. For truly low level characters the equipment matters less, what you can wear offers lower bonuses after all. So it's not like it's actually very helpful to give a 1st level a million gold - he can't spend that much on equipment he can use anyways. By the same token LET him pay 10X the price for equipment 10% better than what the ones playing without getting massive 'gifts' of money can afford. They'll burn through the cash soon enough.
Wood frame construction, mostly. What I was refering to was some coastal areas that, on average, get nailed with a huge hurricane every decade or so. You get flooding along with that, not to mention that along with the hurricane force winds you get even worse tornados.
Depending on the exact spot, there are areas that will destroy a house unless it's built like a military bunker - IE extremely expensively. Even then it's not a sure thing if you get unlucky. My point was that in some cases it'd actually be cheaper on average, to just go with 2-4 cheap houses than 1 expensive one.
Working in an area that's known for knocking everything down every decade and being paid/budgeting for appropriately.
I think building a simple house costs you a certain 50K euro's... besides, last time i checked, you could just repaint, or if you're more thorough , redo your plaster cast
You can get a brand spanking new, if cheap, single wide for $24k - $35k USD here in the states. Or ~€19K - €27k
At that rate, it's only $240/month if you figure on replacing the thing every 120 months. Less if you invest the money, a bit more if you get a loan to pay it.
It's far from 'all terrain'. By the looks of it, it'd have trouble with paths that cars would be able to handle. At 60 meters/hour, it's slower than people, so an electric golf cart would work better than a tool box.
Filled with batteries it'd exceed the strength of the legs, and it'd be cheaper to toss a generator in the back of a truck, maybe with a battery pack and transfer panel to provide uninteruppted power.
For that matter, a hybrid truck would be cheaper and more useful.
Though I do like the idea of construction robots. Just don't think that legs are in the solution for most of them.
You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but there are limits to the number of people who can go your way.
As a result, my goal is to compensate as well as possible. It's entirely possible to eliminate much of the noise - tall buildings with you far up can help eliminate ground noise, proper construction methods can help eliminate internal noise transmission between apartments. The roof of a sufficiently large building can be set up as a recreation area/park/garden for the inhabitants - perfect for those who don't want to maintain their own. The greenery can also help keep heat/pollution down. If that's not enough, you can have the southern facing be greenhouses and run the air you're recycling through there.
In addition if designs enable 90% of travel to be on foot and elevator, you can virtually eliminate one of the biggest sources of pollution, noise and chemical in cities - cars.
Cities today are far cleaner than a hundred years ago, and we can make them cleaner yet.
I think you're mostly right, except that there's another variable, which is historical significance.
That would be the 'antique' exception that I forgot to mention. Applies with cars, furniture, and such as well. A model-T isn't a great car in the face of it, but it is a 'classic'. Problem with exceptions is that you end up making posts extremely long trying to cover them.
Still, the 'average' house doesn't gain value from this, and the McMansions almost certainly won't. They lack the possibility of soul of houses considered antique today have. To be fair; there were buildings such as them back in the day when the antique houses were new - but they didn't survive.
I'd estimate that less than 1% of homes will achieve 'antique' status - IE a substantial portion of their value is derived because of their old age, not despite it.
If I wanted to live my entire life in a single building I'd join the navy. Or become Alan Partridge.
Didn't mean for you to live your entire life in a single building, and I probably should have kept the mention of roof garden/play area more explicit in there. My point was that you'd be able to exist just fine day to day completely inside the building, using relatively extremely fast and efficient elevators.
In addition, for such an enterprise it'd be completely possible to have the areas vary widely - essentially modular construction within the shell of the building. Different paint schemes, different elevator treatments(you'd want mostly different elevators for the housing areas), etc...
It's not a big deal if your doctor's office is in a different building. It's not a big deal if the school the kids go to is in a different building. Etc... It's just that all the little details add up into big deals eventually; resulting in sprawl, extended travel times, etc... I mean, just imagine if NYC changed ways such that 50% of people lived in the building they work in. On average, one spouse works in the building they live in, the other commutes. Some have both people working in the same building, some neither do. How much traffic on the roads would be eliminated? How less crowded would the subways be?
From the personal side - Which would you rather do, spend 5 minutes on an elevator and a couple minutes walking to get to work, or drive 20 minutes(possibly in heavy traffic), still have to walk several minutes to get from your car to work. Maintaining a car is probably $400/month, minimum, a bus pass in some areas is $100 or more(unsubsidized), even subway tokens cost money. Or you can ride a free elevator*. It could easily free up an hour/day for other pursuits.
*Well, the cost of the elevator is in the rent/association dues, but would be there anyways for multilevel dwellings.
Re:Its a trailer with legs
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The Walking House
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· Score: 3, Interesting
None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.
Despite everything else, this isn't a good usage of limited land*. Consider, a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents four times the floor space in about the same amount of actual land, far more luxury in the sense of having actual water and sewer, air conditioning, etc... Make it 6-10 stories and each apartment can be luxurious, space wise. I doubt you'd be able to stack these 6 high. Worried about flooding? I saw a condo being built that was 6 levels of parking garage and 12 levels of condo.
Humans wanting to live denser calls more for multistory buildings, and I'd like to see more arcology type structures - retail businesses on the bottom, offices in the middle, living quarters on the top, except for maybe a rooftop restaurant. Even that's flexible. Want to put the housing on even floors and the businesses on odd? That'd work too.
So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land!
The idea of the common man having a large house is a very new one in the scheme of things. I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.
Sure, land is limited, especially when you consider we need to grow crops on it still, and want a reasonable commute to work. As I said earlier - I think vertical integration, especially 'mini arcologies' is the answer. If I was a city planner I'd be working on ways to encourage them. Probably through tax breaks if they build at least as much housing into the building as they'd be anticipating working there.
Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.
Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...
As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.
*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.
That's a really neat link, especially since I more or less thought of this in response to Katrina - build a house capable of floating, held in place by two or more anchoring poles. I was thinking more air cushion, but foam was considered.
A house overall might be quite heavy, but it's nothing compared to many ships, and you have a lot of square footage to work with. Weight per square foot isn't bad.
From what I've read about concrete, it's entirely possible that they might use the foam pellet variation - you mix the pellets in with the concrete, and end up with a lighter concrete - some mixes are substantially lighter than water. Heck, some variaties of concrete, even without foam, are lighter than water. Still, concrete by default isn't waterproof, so it wouldn't be a long term solution. Putting the concrete around a foam structure that also acts as insulation is a great idea.
Please substitute 1600 times the speed instead of 600. This thing is capable of 60 meters an hour. A standard RV should be capable of at least 60 mph, and a mile is 1,609.344 meters.
Re:Maybe a dorm room...
on
The Walking House
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· Score: 3, Interesting
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours
Not that I object to this - Just that New Orleans ended up being far more than just a harbour, so I think the correct response would be to build housing for the area - whether it be on stilts to let tidal wash from hurricanes pass underneath and survive the occasional flood, to having everybody simply live in RVs/Mobile homes and simply pull out for the occasional hurricane, to crazier stuff like building your house on a float pallet or being able to crank it up to keep it above the water line.
Either that or build cheap and simply accept that you'll be buying/building a new house every ten years or so. Or have your insurance pay, and pay the corresponding premiums. Therefore, the only people who can 'afford' to work there are the ones essential to the harbour industry who get correspondingly huge wages.
Housing in the USA today has gotten somewhat crazy. People are buying a LOT more than they need. Personally, I think that, in some circumstances, 'disposable' housing is a perfectly reasonable response. Build it cheap, replace when destroyed.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
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The Walking House
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· Score: 2, Informative
First, found a MUCH better link about the house here
Technical specifications: Basic module: Height: 3.5 meters Width: 3.5 meters Length: 3.72 meters Weight: 1200 kg Max speed: 60 meters/hour Component list: Plating and framework wood and plywood Legs made of steel and mechanical components 12 linear actuators solar panels micro windmills polycarbonate plates interior equipment
Height - not bad, but going by pictures goes from pavement to roof - you lose a foot or so before the floor. Width - definetly counting the legs in, reducing it's usefullness as a measurement of living area.
From the last time I bothered to look inside of a trailorhome/motorhome(mall display, wasn't shopping for them), they're relative basins of luxury, and probably have 3 times the square footage(especially the expanding models) than what this one looks to have - it looks about the size of a car.
The $100k+ motorhomes come with bathroom, kitchen, living room, and even two bedrooms, even if microsized compared to standard houses. Most even come with bathtubs.
The walking one looks like you don't even have room to lay flat in the sleeping area.
Still, 3.5 meters long, figure 2 meters 'average' for floorspace(I think I'm being generous). That's 7 square meters, 75 square feet for the Americans. The 'Interstate', a microsized motorhome, calcs out to about 87.5 square feet, is capable of speeds around 600 times that of the walking house. Though it does retail for for ~$98k, verus $49k for the walking home. Still, you actually get a private bath with the Interstate. Then again, it looks like Airstream is expensive. Damon Motor Coach has a Class-A starting at $96k. Length of 33' 7" = 10 meters, motor homes are generally 70" wide, 1.77 meters. 17.7 m^2, 190 feet^2 of space. Even if we drop it to 9m for the engine, that's still 15 M^2, 161 ft^2.
Double the price, much nicer accomidations, a bit it actual insualtion in the walls, air conditioning, capable 600+ times the speed, a shower, furniture, etc...
They also like to say that these various reactor designs are "bad" and that we would never build one like that now. Problem with that logic is at the time each was designed, it was thought to be "good" with adequate protections that made them "safe".
First, I'd like to mention that the RBMK-1000 design would have never been approved in the USA or most of the rest of the world Second, we would have put a containment dome over it before operation - stopping the contamination and eliminating the need to build the sarcophogaus. Third, would you argue that a modern car isn't significantly safer than a Model-T? Sure, I'm sure we can still improve safety, but it really gets tough to top zero casualties in two decades for nuclear power plants.
Of course, if someone doesn't die immediately, then it can't be blamed on exposure, can it? I guess all the birth defects, mental illnesses, infant deaths in the Ukrane are due to sunspots - or maybe all that mercury that coal plants release.
Well, from all my readings the USSR, and Russia today, have had some very big problems with pollution - both chemical and nuclear.
Looking at the accident list - I'd say keeping Russians away from nuclear stuff could almost be considered a safety measure.
By the way, have you reached Mr. Slippery's colon yet?
Slashdot Mirror
Use PKI over VPN to carry all Air Force traffic and reject everything else. The VPN solution would run on customized hardened nodes spread across the globe. These would provide multiple redundant paths and the ability to reject 'electronic attacks', 'hostile traffic' and 'anonymous hackers' ...
Already done in many areas, and spreading. You still have the problem of how to run www.af.mil in a manner open to the public, as well as the public sites for many military bases, while still securing them.
Still, wouldn't you LIKE to find out who's sending you spam/phishing attacks/etc... so you can, if nothing else, impolitely ask them to stop at 0100 in the morning?
That's called 'Somebody makes a call' and 'Guys with automatic weapons show up to ask questions'.
Sorry if I'm redundant but it's one thing to say there is a link and another to say it is the cause.
Very much true.
I remember one study that went through and looked at people violent enough to warrant criminal arrest/conviction* and whether or not they played video games - the result was that the rate of violent game players tracked with the rate of overall game players in the population, or even fewer - IE people who played video games tended to NOT get convicted for violent acts.
Can't find the sucker right now though. I do remember reading that some of the more violent people today didn't play video games at all.
As the saying goes: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
*One of the better places to put the demarcation point, I think. Personally, as long as nobody gets seriously hurt, a little aggression isn't a bad thing while playing. It's when it becomes serious that we need to look into matters.
Then it's probably a good thing that he's posting on a web forum, not submitting a paper in your class.
Slashdot gets 5-10 minutes if it's lucky. If I was actually doing a paper, I figure I'd start at a half hour for a daily type assignment and go up from there.
He even noted that it's a correlation, not causation. There are many initiatives, including some more effective measures against bullies and fighting in schools, even if they go overboard and get silly at times. The most recent of which was a boy hauled in for a psych evaluation. because he made his scary mask picture, with the assistance of the art teacher, too scary for his homeroom teacher. It was a kid picture of a vampire with blood tears - the homeroom teacher thought they might be gang signs.
Let's see. Not turning up any estimates on hours played per person, but the NES(1983) sold 62 million units, while the PS2 racked up 140M and the XBox 24M.
I'd want to get a lot more information, but over a similar period of time, the PS2 sold twice as many units, and violence dropped during this period.
The problem is, however, that while it is relatively easy to decide objectively whether a parent has smacked their child, it was incredibly difficult to convict even somebody who regularly beat up the kids, if they can say "I have a right to discipline my children".
Maybe in history, where they didn't just spank children, they even used belts and paddles to do it. Today, it should be simple enough: Is the child injured? A quite firm spanking can leave nothing more than a bit of redness, that will disappear within minutes/hours.
On the other hand, bruises, burns, wrenched limbs, concussions, etc... All are much easier to diagnose, and we're smart enough today to be able to tell the difference between an 'active but clumsy child'(me), and an abused one.
Going by dogs/cats raising their kids, it's quite possible to swat a child without harming them. Heck, I remember watching a full grown tiger with her cubs - one finally went over the line chewing on mama, got swatted such that it went head over tail several body lengths along. You could tell that said hit was nothing on what the mother could have done. Said cub sat up, shook it's head for a moment, then went to play with it's sibling.
[quote]I suppose the idea was that it would be easier to get to a fair verdict if the starting point is that any corporeal punishment is illegal. Ideally, if a parent has smacked their child because, say, they had a tantrum in a dangerous situation, the judge should say "Well, this is illegal, but in the circumstances, permissible". I don't know if it works that way.[/quote]
Used to work that way, unfortuantly, you get some crazy things today. For example, just getting hauled in front of a judge is a great expense - legal fees for the lawyer, time out of work, etc...
For something rare like legal self defense of a lethal/serious injury nature, it works. For something fairly common like discliplining a child, it shouldn't get that far.
Someone needs to produce network capable TVs. I think there's one or two manufacturers out there that do wireless ones, but hardwired is fine too.
I haven't seen any wireless TVs, but from studying the information about the slingbox, for HD video wired is best - you can get into bandwidth limitations very quickly if you're not careful with wireless.
The slingbox, if it works correctly, seems to be one of the better options at this time. I'd be hesitant with an integrated device at this time.
With multiple TV/monitors in homes nowadays, it's much easier to move a disk from player to player than network a home.
It's still coming, though. With the proliferation of wireless, things like Ethernet over power, it's easy enough. I looked through some manufactured homes at the state fair - one was wired with cat 5, including a line to the anticipated home theater area. They said it's a very common request, almost standard now. If people buying double wides in North Dakota are going for this stuff, what does that tell you?
Last week I saw a ad for some cable/internet provider where one of their advertised features was the ability to playback DVR recorded video on any TV in the house. How this was done wasn't mentioned. There are a number of options. For example, the Slingbox @$300 will put your DVR/cable/whatever onto the network. For another $300 you can get the 'slingcatcher' which will hook up to any remote television and allow access.
[quote]What is more apparent to me is that there is a stratification between DVD and BluRay.[/quote]
Very much true. Without some sort of method to get the contents to a DVD or networked DVR, it's difficult to get any blueray movie to, say, the standard definition TV in the kids room, the playroom, master bedroom, whatever. You end up buying any movie twice if you want to watch at HighDef AND in a convienent location, assuming you're not rich enough to upgrade to bigscreen highdef blueray systems in the whole house.
The more blueray is cracked, though, the more transferability is enabled, the more attractive the media is to the consumer.
One thing to consider with physical media, especially with the spread of DVRs, is space. Consider how many DVDs an individual who buys a mere 2 a month - $30-60, That's 24 a year, 240 over the course of a decade, and I've been collecting for more than a decade. Over 200 videos starts to get to be a pain in the butt without a good media management system. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to archive the discs down in the basement somewhere and free up the space in my living room.
Disrupting the consumers from viewing the new shiney will actually make them sit up and pay attention. I hope this screws a lot of people really hard to the point they say "HEY! WHAT THE HELL!"
I think this has actually happened a couple times. My first negative experience with DRM was as a kid - I bought a video game that kept insisting I 'insert the original disc'. Turns out they fubared the pressing such that even the original disc was seen as copied - didn't impress me with the quality control. It was something where pulling even a single disc and trying it out would have found the problem.
My second was with an E-Book program. I decided to check out this 'ebook' thing, downloaded the one Stephen King wrote years ago - the idea was that if you liked the book, you paid for the next installment. While I found the installment nice, the reader broke so many things that after reading it I uninstalled the reader and therefore the book. Never again. For example, it mostly broke copy/paste, as well as various other things in attempting to stop screen captures.
I mean, if I had wanted to copy the book, it would have only taken a few hours of my time to [i]retype the bloody thing[/i] using dual screens or even two computers. It wasn't a hugely long book, and I am a trained(if out of practice) typist. If I wanted to do a lot of books, some sort of OCR system would work.
Or just find & download it off the internet today.
Especially with the popularity of MP3 players that are quickly turning into media players, the 'average user' is seeing the effects of DRM more and more. Especially when they buy that DVD duplicator and discover it won't work for 'copyprotected' discs.
I firmly believe that the final box, the one containing ammunition, is much more useful as a threat than in use.
You see, it makes the other side wonder 'is this the final straw that will cause them to erupt in violence?'. The ammo box is expensive - to both sides.
Otherwise you get the situation you see here - where the government just keeps on growing.
If they're associated with the federal government section 508 specifies accessibility requirements.
There's lots of information for semi-government organizations to make their stuff compliant.
And I'm saying that it's been tried, and it screwed up the game for everyone else. Suddenly those "power gamer" newbies (*) can't even buy a toothpick, much less a weapon, without paying millions for it.
Then you're making crafting too difficult, ironically enough. Or making selling too difficult. Whatever, you get huge prices because so few can construct the items compared to demand.
The solution to prices being too high would be to make construction easier - you'd get more players making stuff, eventually overwhelming the gold-buyers and second character 'anonymous gifters', clanners and so on.
Of course, in WoW you have level restrictions for items - It's not like a 1st level can even wear 9/10ths the equipment out there. When I played, it tended to annoy me a bit when I happened to get a random drop that I couldn't even wear yet. For truly low level characters the equipment matters less, what you can wear offers lower bonuses after all. So it's not like it's actually very helpful to give a 1st level a million gold - he can't spend that much on equipment he can use anyways. By the same token LET him pay 10X the price for equipment 10% better than what the ones playing without getting massive 'gifts' of money can afford. They'll burn through the cash soon enough.
what do you guys build with ? paper?
Wood frame construction, mostly. What I was refering to was some coastal areas that, on average, get nailed with a huge hurricane every decade or so. You get flooding along with that, not to mention that along with the hurricane force winds you get even worse tornados.
Depending on the exact spot, there are areas that will destroy a house unless it's built like a military bunker - IE extremely expensively. Even then it's not a sure thing if you get unlucky. My point was that in some cases it'd actually be cheaper on average, to just go with 2-4 cheap houses than 1 expensive one.
... errrr ... How are you gonna afford that?
Working in an area that's known for knocking everything down every decade and being paid/budgeting for appropriately.
I think building a simple house costs you a certain 50K euro's ... besides, last time i checked, you could just repaint, or if you're more thorough , redo your plaster cast
You can get a brand spanking new, if cheap, single wide for $24k - $35k USD here in the states. Or ~€19K - €27k
At that rate, it's only $240/month if you figure on replacing the thing every 120 months. Less if you invest the money, a bit more if you get a loan to pay it.
It's far from 'all terrain'. By the looks of it, it'd have trouble with paths that cars would be able to handle. At 60 meters/hour, it's slower than people, so an electric golf cart would work better than a tool box.
Filled with batteries it'd exceed the strength of the legs, and it'd be cheaper to toss a generator in the back of a truck, maybe with a battery pack and transfer panel to provide uninteruppted power.
For that matter, a hybrid truck would be cheaper and more useful.
Though I do like the idea of construction robots. Just don't think that legs are in the solution for most of them.
You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but there are limits to the number of people who can go your way.
As a result, my goal is to compensate as well as possible. It's entirely possible to eliminate much of the noise - tall buildings with you far up can help eliminate ground noise, proper construction methods can help eliminate internal noise transmission between apartments. The roof of a sufficiently large building can be set up as a recreation area/park/garden for the inhabitants - perfect for those who don't want to maintain their own. The greenery can also help keep heat/pollution down. If that's not enough, you can have the southern facing be greenhouses and run the air you're recycling through there.
In addition if designs enable 90% of travel to be on foot and elevator, you can virtually eliminate one of the biggest sources of pollution, noise and chemical in cities - cars.
Cities today are far cleaner than a hundred years ago, and we can make them cleaner yet.
I think you're mostly right, except that there's another variable, which is historical significance.
That would be the 'antique' exception that I forgot to mention. Applies with cars, furniture, and such as well. A model-T isn't a great car in the face of it, but it is a 'classic'. Problem with exceptions is that you end up making posts extremely long trying to cover them.
Still, the 'average' house doesn't gain value from this, and the McMansions almost certainly won't. They lack the possibility of soul of houses considered antique today have. To be fair; there were buildings such as them back in the day when the antique houses were new - but they didn't survive.
I'd estimate that less than 1% of homes will achieve 'antique' status - IE a substantial portion of their value is derived because of their old age, not despite it.
If I wanted to live my entire life in a single building I'd join the navy. Or become Alan Partridge.
Didn't mean for you to live your entire life in a single building, and I probably should have kept the mention of roof garden/play area more explicit in there. My point was that you'd be able to exist just fine day to day completely inside the building, using relatively extremely fast and efficient elevators.
In addition, for such an enterprise it'd be completely possible to have the areas vary widely - essentially modular construction within the shell of the building. Different paint schemes, different elevator treatments(you'd want mostly different elevators for the housing areas), etc...
It's not a big deal if your doctor's office is in a different building. It's not a big deal if the school the kids go to is in a different building. Etc... It's just that all the little details add up into big deals eventually; resulting in sprawl, extended travel times, etc... I mean, just imagine if NYC changed ways such that 50% of people lived in the building they work in. On average, one spouse works in the building they live in, the other commutes. Some have both people working in the same building, some neither do. How much traffic on the roads would be eliminated? How less crowded would the subways be?
From the personal side - Which would you rather do, spend 5 minutes on an elevator and a couple minutes walking to get to work, or drive 20 minutes(possibly in heavy traffic), still have to walk several minutes to get from your car to work. Maintaining a car is probably $400/month, minimum, a bus pass in some areas is $100 or more(unsubsidized), even subway tokens cost money. Or you can ride a free elevator*. It could easily free up an hour/day for other pursuits.
*Well, the cost of the elevator is in the rent/association dues, but would be there anyways for multilevel dwellings.
None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.
Despite everything else, this isn't a good usage of limited land*. Consider, a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents four times the floor space in about the same amount of actual land, far more luxury in the sense of having actual water and sewer, air conditioning, etc... Make it 6-10 stories and each apartment can be luxurious, space wise. I doubt you'd be able to stack these 6 high. Worried about flooding? I saw a condo being built that was 6 levels of parking garage and 12 levels of condo.
Humans wanting to live denser calls more for multistory buildings, and I'd like to see more arcology type structures - retail businesses on the bottom, offices in the middle, living quarters on the top, except for maybe a rooftop restaurant. Even that's flexible. Want to put the housing on even floors and the businesses on odd? That'd work too.
So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land!
The idea of the common man having a large house is a very new one in the scheme of things. I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.
Sure, land is limited, especially when you consider we need to grow crops on it still, and want a reasonable commute to work. As I said earlier - I think vertical integration, especially 'mini arcologies' is the answer. If I was a city planner I'd be working on ways to encourage them. Probably through tax breaks if they build at least as much housing into the building as they'd be anticipating working there.
Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.
Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...
As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.
*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.
That's a really neat link, especially since I more or less thought of this in response to Katrina - build a house capable of floating, held in place by two or more anchoring poles. I was thinking more air cushion, but foam was considered.
A house overall might be quite heavy, but it's nothing compared to many ships, and you have a lot of square footage to work with. Weight per square foot isn't bad.
From what I've read about concrete, it's entirely possible that they might use the foam pellet variation - you mix the pellets in with the concrete, and end up with a lighter concrete - some mixes are substantially lighter than water. Heck, some variaties of concrete, even without foam, are lighter than water. Still, concrete by default isn't waterproof, so it wouldn't be a long term solution. Putting the concrete around a foam structure that also acts as insulation is a great idea.
Please substitute 1600 times the speed instead of 600. This thing is capable of 60 meters an hour. A standard RV should be capable of at least 60 mph, and a mile is 1,609.344 meters.
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours
Not that I object to this - Just that New Orleans ended up being far more than just a harbour, so I think the correct response would be to build housing for the area - whether it be on stilts to let tidal wash from hurricanes pass underneath and survive the occasional flood, to having everybody simply live in RVs/Mobile homes and simply pull out for the occasional hurricane, to crazier stuff like building your house on a float pallet or being able to crank it up to keep it above the water line.
Either that or build cheap and simply accept that you'll be buying/building a new house every ten years or so. Or have your insurance pay, and pay the corresponding premiums. Therefore, the only people who can 'afford' to work there are the ones essential to the harbour industry who get correspondingly huge wages.
Housing in the USA today has gotten somewhat crazy. People are buying a LOT more than they need. Personally, I think that, in some circumstances, 'disposable' housing is a perfectly reasonable response. Build it cheap, replace when destroyed.
First, found a MUCH better link about the house here
Technical specifications:
Basic module:
Height: 3.5 meters
Width: 3.5 meters
Length: 3.72 meters
Weight: 1200 kg
Max speed: 60 meters/hour
Component list:
Plating and framework wood and plywood
Legs made of steel and mechanical components
12 linear actuators
solar panels
micro windmills
polycarbonate plates
interior equipment
Height - not bad, but going by pictures goes from pavement to roof - you lose a foot or so before the floor.
Width - definetly counting the legs in, reducing it's usefullness as a measurement of living area.
From the last time I bothered to look inside of a trailorhome/motorhome(mall display, wasn't shopping for them), they're relative basins of luxury, and probably have 3 times the square footage(especially the expanding models) than what this one looks to have - it looks about the size of a car.
The $100k+ motorhomes come with bathroom, kitchen, living room, and even two bedrooms, even if microsized compared to standard houses. Most even come with bathtubs.
The walking one looks like you don't even have room to lay flat in the sleeping area.
Still, 3.5 meters long, figure 2 meters 'average' for floorspace(I think I'm being generous). That's 7 square meters, 75 square feet for the Americans. The 'Interstate', a microsized motorhome, calcs out to about 87.5 square feet, is capable of speeds around 600 times that of the walking house. Though it does retail for for ~$98k, verus $49k for the walking home. Still, you actually get a private bath with the Interstate. Then again, it looks like Airstream is expensive. Damon Motor Coach has a Class-A starting at $96k. Length of 33' 7" = 10 meters, motor homes are generally 70" wide, 1.77 meters. 17.7 m^2, 190 feet^2 of space. Even if we drop it to 9m for the engine, that's still 15 M^2, 161 ft^2.
Double the price, much nicer accomidations, a bit it actual insualtion in the walls, air conditioning, capable 600+ times the speed, a shower, furniture, etc...
They also like to say that these various reactor designs are "bad" and that we would never build one like that now. Problem with that logic is at the time each was designed, it was thought to be "good" with adequate protections that made them "safe".
First, I'd like to mention that the RBMK-1000 design would have never been approved in the USA or most of the rest of the world
Second, we would have put a containment dome over it before operation - stopping the contamination and eliminating the need to build the sarcophogaus.
Third, would you argue that a modern car isn't significantly safer than a Model-T? Sure, I'm sure we can still improve safety, but it really gets tough to top zero casualties in two decades for nuclear power plants.
Of course, if someone doesn't die immediately, then it can't be blamed on exposure, can it? I guess all the birth defects, mental illnesses, infant deaths in the Ukrane are due to sunspots - or maybe all that mercury that coal plants release.
Well, from all my readings the USSR, and Russia today, have had some very big problems with pollution - both chemical and nuclear.
Looking at the accident list - I'd say keeping Russians away from nuclear stuff could almost be considered a safety measure.
By the way, have you reached Mr. Slippery's colon yet?
I was simply summarizing your own links.
Still, if we're going to widen the net to environmental effects possibly decades down the road, we can add some more coal deaths in.
24,000 a year in the USA, 2,800 from lung cancer?
Or maybe it's 25,100?
Or pneumoconiosis, killing an estimated 1,500 former coal miners a year?
I'm NOT arguing that nuclear power is 100% safe - but then, nothing is. What I'm arguing is that it's better than the most common alternative.