Given that, as is usual with technology, the equipment is only going to get cheaper (and storage larger) at the same time, it's entirely possible that we'll end up with EVERYBODY carrying the stuff as a matter of course. It would take a VERY stupid street criminal to mug somebody who's got a real time record of both the approach and the crime. And there won't be time for a search to make sure ALL the recording equipment disappears along with the victim's purse or wallet.
And from there, it's only a small extension to making a voluntary basis mandatory...
Of course, Murphy's Law being what it is, we'll end up with some future police inspector saying "We had ten thousand citizens wearing fifty thousand cameras and we STILL can't figure out who shot [insert famous national leader name here].
The idea is fifty years old. Sir Arthur C. Clarke's story "Watch This Space" had the gimmick of a lunar expedition launching a sodium cloud for scientific purposes and finding out that some party or parties unknown had tampered with the launcher so that the cloud had a certain pattern. A large percentage of the population of earth was described as having watched the script-letters of a certain "well-known soft drink" emerge glowingly into the sunlight against the backdrop of the crescent moon.
Anybody want to bet that sooner or later somebody will try this for real?
is that it was an attempt made with non-weapons-grade plutonium. Yes, you get plutonium if you irradiate U-238 in a reactor, but you have to change the U-238 slugs every few days, or it gets over-irradiated. What you get is contaminated by a bunch of other Pu isotopes which fission much more easily than the Pu239. If you use those isotopes in a bomb, because of the "easy fission" of the contaminating isotopes, the critical mass blows itself apart inefficiently, resulting in a "fizzle."
Easy to test: no satellite needeed.
From Jerry Pournelle's web site:
TESTS
If anyone does have a candidate device for producing reactionless acceleration -- that is, linear acceleration without throwing mass overboard and without reacting with a medium such as air or water -- the first test is to suspend it on two wires attached so that the plane of the two wires is normal to the direction of thrust-- that is, make a swing and put your gadget on it facing in the normal direction of travel of the swing. Now turn it on. If it will hang non-vertically, get interested. Now cover it with a plastic garbage bag and see if it will still hang non-vertically. If it will still do so, turn it off, and if it settles to a vertical angle, and you can do this repeatedly, and it hasn't lost any mass during the experiments, call your local physics professor. Or call me. I'll take care of notifying the Swedish Academy. But until it will do that, I don't need to look at it...
China is a society/government that regularly stifles "out of the paradigm" thinkers with persecution and hands control of people over to large, state-connected organizations. And they expect to promote innovation in that environment that will be as full of new goodies as Hollywood? Oh, wait...
that studio executives impose restrictions on their products that I strongly doubt THEY would accept if they were buying those products?
What would *I* do with a 16G drive in my pocket?
on
16GB Flash USB Dongle
·
· Score: 1
Back up (with suitable encryption) my entire e-book library plus scans of all my critical documents. Then, if someting like Katrina comes through, I grab (in descending priority order) my wife, my cats, my backup drive, and my clothes, and run. The clothes are optional. The items ahead of them are not readily replaceable and so are not optional.
Anybody whose car was locked up by Robotic Parking sued them yet? They are innocent third parties in the dispute, and I believe (IANAL) that Robotic Parking is liable for depriving them of the use of their property.
WoW isn't killing PC games, the game companies are. I haven't even bothered to LOOK at WoW, much less try it. I finally got kicked out of caring about PC games by two things:
1. The nasty, intrusive copy protection on Half-Life 2 where it took ten minutes saying "mother may I" to the servers every time I tried to start it up (and then the gameplay sucked.)
2. "Starforce" copy protection (which can wreck your CD/DVD drive) being used by game companies.
If the game companies aren't going to make it pleasant to use their product, they have only themselves to blame.
For Rent and Buy Hollywood Hits titles from www.cinemanow.com:
You can burn a copy of a downloaded rental or "buy" title to DVD for storage purposes only. These files are Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected, so you will only be able to watch the video on the computer or device on which it was originally purchased. The video, even though it is burned on a CD or DVD will still be unavailable to you after your viewing period has expired. As such, storing video files to disc is not recommended for rental films because the viewing period is so short; however, we do feel that this is a good solution for storage of Download-to-Own files, as your viewing period is unlimited.
Windows Media Player 10 sometimes does not allow burned copies of protected files, so you may get an error when using WMP 10 to burn the storage only copy of a title to DVD. Please contact microsoft to help troubleshoot this problem.
If you do use another program to copy your video file to a CD or DVD, the same rules apply with regards to playback. Currently you will only be able to play the file back on the computer where you originally made the purchase (where the license is stored). If you have any further questions or concerns please take a look at our FAQ's regarding Licensing.
For titles which are allowed to be Burned to DVD and played back in a DVD player, please check the Burn To DVD Channel.
Pretty much looks like the stuff you might be able to burn to a standard DVD is stuff you might not even care to watch once.
Given that the vicious and intrusive copy-protection of Half-Life 2 has pretty much soured me on buying ANY games, I haven't read a gaming mag in a couple of years.
The question is not "survive?" Humans as a species are pretty bombproof and there will almost certainly be humans around several hundred years from now regardless of where our madness takes us, even if they're starveling primitives.
The question is: How do we survive over the long term (100Myears+) WITH TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE INTACT?
Be it noted: This is only the latest takeoff of Dolton Edwards' massively funny Meihem in ce Klasrum which was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. The more things change...
But this deals with a company that attempted to install rootkits on our machines. Why should we give a damn WHAT they do from now on? I'm *still* not buying anything with their accursed logo on it.
Once you've contacted the box, go to "Tools" and "Time" and you can set the default time server. The field isn't really long enough for the pool.ntp.org, but here in the US, time.nist.gov seems to work just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
"Trust us."
Given that, as is usual with technology, the equipment is only going to get cheaper (and storage larger) at the same time, it's entirely possible that we'll end up with EVERYBODY carrying the stuff as a matter of course. It would take a VERY stupid street criminal to mug somebody who's got a real time record of both the approach and the crime. And there won't be time for a search to make sure ALL the recording equipment disappears along with the victim's purse or wallet.
And from there, it's only a small extension to making a voluntary basis mandatory...
Of course, Murphy's Law being what it is, we'll end up with some future police inspector saying "We had ten thousand citizens wearing fifty thousand cameras and we STILL can't figure out who shot [insert famous national leader name here].
The idea is fifty years old. Sir Arthur C. Clarke's story "Watch This Space" had the gimmick of a lunar expedition launching a sodium cloud for scientific purposes and finding out that some party or parties unknown had tampered with the launcher so that the cloud had a certain pattern. A large percentage of the population of earth was described as having watched the script-letters of a certain "well-known soft drink" emerge glowingly into the sunlight against the backdrop of the crescent moon.
Anybody want to bet that sooner or later somebody will try this for real?
They'll see it and decide there's no intelligent life worth exploiting here.
"Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along."
Or is it the bar raising the Bar?
For a new "viral marketing" scheme?
is that it was an attempt made with non-weapons-grade plutonium. Yes, you get plutonium if you irradiate U-238 in a reactor, but you have to change the U-238 slugs every few days, or it gets over-irradiated. What you get is contaminated by a bunch of other Pu isotopes which fission much more easily than the Pu239. If you use those isotopes in a bomb, because of the "easy fission" of the contaminating isotopes, the critical mass blows itself apart inefficiently, resulting in a "fizzle."
Granted, 500 tons is one HELL of a fizzle.
a series of 'tubes?
Just curious.
China is a society/government that regularly stifles "out of the paradigm" thinkers with persecution and hands control of people over to large, state-connected organizations. And they expect to promote innovation in that environment that will be as full of new goodies as Hollywood? Oh, wait...
that studio executives impose restrictions on their products that
I strongly doubt THEY would accept if they were buying those products?
Back up (with suitable encryption) my entire e-book library plus scans of all my critical documents. Then, if someting like Katrina comes through, I grab (in descending priority order) my wife, my cats, my backup drive, and my clothes, and run. The clothes are optional. The items ahead of them are not readily replaceable and so are not optional.
Anybody whose car was locked up by Robotic Parking sued them yet? They are innocent third parties in the dispute, and I believe (IANAL) that Robotic Parking is liable for depriving them of the use of their property.
After the infamous ROOTKIT incident, I'm not interested in giving Sony a dime ever again.
WoW isn't killing PC games, the game companies are. I haven't even bothered to LOOK at WoW, much less try it. I finally got kicked out of caring about PC games by two things:
1. The nasty, intrusive copy protection on Half-Life 2 where it took ten minutes saying "mother may I" to the servers every time I tried to start it up (and then the gameplay sucked.)
2. "Starforce" copy protection (which can wreck your CD/DVD drive) being used by game companies.
If the game companies aren't going to make it pleasant to use their product, they have only themselves to blame.
Pretty much looks like the stuff you might be able to burn to a standard DVD is stuff you might not even care to watch once.
Given that the vicious and intrusive copy-protection of Half-Life 2 has pretty much soured me on buying ANY games, I haven't read a gaming mag in a couple of years.
The question is not "survive?" Humans as a species are pretty bombproof and there will almost certainly be humans around several hundred years from now regardless of where our madness takes us, even if they're starveling primitives.
The question is: How do we survive over the long term (100Myears+) WITH TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE INTACT?
Be it noted: This is only the latest takeoff of Dolton Edwards' massively funny Meihem in ce Klasrum which was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. The more things change...
"Color depths beyond what the human eye can perceive." Whoopie! Somebody get my retina upgrades at once!
That's all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Riiight! $600 for the console and maybe $50-60 each for the two games (possibly) worth getting.
*THEN* what?
But this deals with a company that attempted to install rootkits on our machines. Why should we give a damn WHAT they do from now on? I'm *still* not buying anything with their accursed logo on it.
Once you've contacted the box, go to "Tools" and "Time" and you can set the default time server. The field isn't really long enough for the pool.ntp.org, but here in the US, time.nist.gov seems to work just fine.