The first place this looks useful is high temperature engine components. Not just sensors, but controllers, and other circuit components.
I wonder what the maximum low temperature would be. But in any case, anything that significantly expands the range of the operating temperature is going to be useful.
Currently, (I have heard) a typical CPU pulls enough power through that one or two square inches of ceramic to power a sixty watt light bulb. With that kind of power (to 500 degrees) inside of a regular computer box, well that might get a bit dangerous for use in the average home.
Boxen glowing from heat would not do well in wooden homes.
Let's see,
There is this Lazy boy echair project. MS is also designing their own napster clone as reported on the Register here. They have also formed a strategic alliance with LEGO as seen here. I am sure there are many more such examples. among other things, MS is famous for buying out companies with cool technologies that never again see the light of day.
It reminds me of the kid in the neighborhood who keeps wanting to be cool, but hasn't got a clue. This is the same kid who only has friends because daddy has money, and he can buy stuff.
It is really sad.
because the right way to be is not to try to be like someone else.
In other words, get your own life, don't try to rent, buy, or steal someone elses'.
You know you are linking to the same site (mozilla.org) so chances are that if I can't get to the actual page, I can't access the mirror list either.
If you check it out, you will find that the www site and the ftp site are different boxes. So linking to the www mirror page will not effect the ftp server
Official name: komodo.mozilla.org
(Aliases: ftp.mozilla.org)
Addresses: 207.200.81.212
Official name: gila.mozilla.org
(Aliases: www.mozilla.org)
Addresses: 207.200.81.215
I am really looking forward to this, because NS and moz0.6 have been just a little bit problematic for me. Little things, like go to page x then open a new window go to page y, and it thinks it is still on page x. Infuriating, but what can I say.
MIT is one of the major hubs of the net. (actually, a number of certain high tech universities are major hubs, but that is another topic)
In some places in there, they have bandwidth that makes OC48 look like a dialup modem.
Ping Flood anyone?
but seriously, maybe one of those type of places would be happy to host X and W on a really really fast machine. or a main frame, all as an experiment in internet security countermeasures.
then add in some sort of code to escalate the response is an attack continues, so that the more a kiddie attacks, the more the kiddies get hammered until they go *poof*!
Here are some more things that are interesting to look over. This is prepakaged with MSN, period. (FEH!!) Games and other high bandwidth activities are problematic at best. They are really really picky about doing the satellite installation themselves. (I guess it is really fine tuned, since you are also transmitting to the bird) If the only choice I had was MSN or no net, I'd move to a city.
What scares me the most is the question about wanting to put it on an RV.
Can I do my own installation?
No. A professional installation by a StarBand certified installer is required. Because this is
a two-way system - the dish antenna both receives from and transmits to the satellite -
the installation must be very precise, and we do not offer the option of self-installs. If you
are not a StarBand-certified installer and you perform your own installation or even a
portion of the installation, you will void any applicable installation warranty and service
warranty.
What is required in a StarBand installation?
The StarBand installation process is very similar to the standard small-dish satellite
television installation process, except that it involves a slightly larger antenna and two
coaxial cables running from the dish to the computer. In addition, because the StarBand
service both sends and receives content via satellite, the dish pointing process requires
greater precision, as compared to receive-only satellite television offerings. (See "Can I
do my own installation?" above)
I have received my equipment, and I am anxious to get it up and running. Can I go ahead and set up the computer before the installer arrives? No. We would ask that you leave all of the equipment boxed and wait for the installer to
unpack it once he or she arrives. By installing any portion of the system yourself, you will
void any applicable installation warranty and service warranty.
Can I mount a StarBand dish antenna on my RV?
Not at this time. Because the StarBand antenna not only receives from but also transmits to the satellite, the installation must be performed with extra precision and in accordance with FCC standards. The installation process requires accurate positioning by the installer of the azimuth, elevation, and skew settings for the antenna, and then a phone call to our Installer Help Desk for additional fine-tuning of these and other settings through tools available only at our satellite uplinking facility.
Are there any applications that will work differently in the StarBand network?
Yes. Certain applications do not perform efficiently in a satellite-delivered environment,
such as voice/video over IP, VPN services, certain online interactive games (particularly "shooter" games that depend on split-second responsiveness for the "survival" of the player), and applications that use non-TCP/IP protocols (such as IPX/SPX).
Freedom requires people exercise responsibility. If I want the freedom to walk the streets, I cannot go around and shoot things up.
So far so good. Is the flip side true?
If I do not exercise responsibility, do I ultimately dinished my freedom? maybe.
What happens if I do not want to take responsibility for something? Ultimately, it is neglected, or someone else picks up the ball.
With really big social problems, who takes responsibility? Maybe some social group, like a club, a political party, a church, some haphazard group of people. If it is big enough, the government, maybe. Hopefully?
You follow this up and track it down, and it starts to look like the government grows to the extent that people push stuff onto it. It grows to the extent that people do not take an individual personal responsibility for something, anything.
So now we blow it all off, and say freedom equals the ability to not be responsible for something, to not have a care in the world, to dance around nekkid and do it in the streets. Does this work?
It works in the short run, just until the point that you have to deal with other folks. You don't do it in the street because you usually gotta watch for cars
Examples include things like you common sports teams. The Celtics coach Rick Pitino just quit in disgust because individual players are more interested in show boating and personal conserns instead of team play. Individual players getting lazy because they have made it and are being paid the big bucks, and now they can relax, even if the team drops pitifully down the standings.
We will be free to the extent we do take real responsibility, and rip it out of the clutches of government. If we blow it off, and let "the other guy" handle it, then the government will step in just as predicted in the article. A bigger more muscular government, because we gave it the power.
The game has got to be that we take control of the internet, instead of letting someone else hijack it for their profitable agenda. Regardless of how impossible that goal seems. (yeh, I know it 's a bitch, ain't it)
Otherwise we'll be no better of than a bunch of clueless basketball players, but we won't even have the paycheck.
I wonder on the energy efficiency of a system like this. I see that the original reporter in the story was not taking this too seriously, even though this does have some potential. Some details provided are interesting
Chew Chew is powered entirely by a tank of chemicals and E. Coli bacteria that break sucrose into glucose, releasing electrons that charge a battery. - Although Wilkinson acknowledges that more oomph can be extracted from animal flesh than plant matter, "Meat has never been, and never will be on the menu for my gastrobots," he told a USF magazine. Besides, meat tends to run away when possible, or fights. Either response presents behavioral challenges too complex for any existing robot.
But just as carbon-based life has worked to exploit every resource possible, might mechanical life attempt the same, starting with the evolutionary line opened up by Wilkinson's research? Add to that competition for resources a powerful motive for revenge against our race, unless their creator makes a significant modification: the gastrobots have been built without the ability to defecate. One trembles at the image of a world plagued by constipated mechanical berserkers.
The drug war as such has gone on for decades, with no major positive result, i.e., the war on drugs certainly has not been won.
I Look at this, and I think of programming maxims that have been passed down, such as here an other excellent places. A few that might be appropriate include:
"There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late"
Craziness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
When troubleshooting, make sure you are trying to fix the right problem.
etc.
Point being, I wonder what we would find if we applied proper bug finding and engineering standards to the drug war. Some solutions we would not want to apply to humans, of course.
But I bet we would find alot of hidden factors that are not being even looked at one way or another.
This story made the AP news Saturday morning as seen here, and I made mention of it earlier in the discussion of the.NET proposal of Microsoft.
My Main observation is to take this into the larger context.
As I said earlier, we seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs.
What makes this all the more believable are little details like this mornings AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:
``In the new century, the Chinese people will build our very own information superhighway,'' the Xinhua report declared. ``The current one by itself has too many faults and is incapable of satisfying the needs of the Chinese government and companies as they enter the digital age.''
it is very easy to take a short range cynical look at all of this. And it is very easy to "poo-poo" all this, and to say that it will never happen here, or that it will never be effective, that it won't last.
But the problem is that we are walking in the direction of a fragmented segmented internet. We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by governments, large corporations, and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs. And all to many people, governments, and companies are willing to sell us the fencing, the barbed wire, for our own good.
Take a look at the incident with Yahoo these past few months in France. I do not think that this is what we want.
It will surely happen if people do not constantly make the internet free.
I can see a house that is intelligent. Star Trek, and all that. That could be useful, fun, etc.
But what I do not want is the intermediate levels of intelligence.
For example, would I want a house as intelligent as a puppy or a parrot?
This gets into matters of personality, etc. Most usable modules would likely not have any viable personality, because otherwise we would have to much independance and possible arguements, and other things that are quite maddening.
I do not want to live in the 21st century equivalent of a Monty Python skit.
All this aside, I would see that a nueral net would be useful for learning to automatically adjust things like heat and air conditioning. Security may be okay, but I've seen too many movies to trust them with things like weapons and other defensive measures.
What I get out of reading about all of this, is that maybe MS is trying to duplicate the success of AOL, but to do it in the business sector. The vision of all of those dollars dedicated to Microsofts' future must be pretty tempting.
The end result is probably something like:
AOL Quality with Microsoft ethics
MS Quality with MS Ethics
Waitaminute. We have the second one already.
The only counter I can imagine to this right now comes out of those occasional rumors of AOL developing their own OS. I am sure everyone is just thrilled by that prospect.
We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs.
What makes this all the more believable are little details like this AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:
``In the new century, the Chinese people will build our very own information superhighway,'' the Xinhua report declared. ``The current one by itself has too many faults and is incapable of satisfying the needs of the Chinese government and companies as they enter the digital age.''
We are walking in the direction of fragmented segmented internet. The glacial slow destruction of the internet as we know it for profit.
The.net as proposed by Microsoft is selling this to us. But maybe it is still only one fence on the wild frontier. Or maybe Microsoft is the fence company, selling us the barbed wire.
I have seen it time and again over the years, where a game on a computer system requires above average knowledge and skill to setup and to play. This seems to be a tradition going back to the earliest dos systems.
Games have always been on the cutting edge. It seems to be a tradition or something
That being said, there is always the problem of the average user. Let's face it, the bell curve of knowledge for computer users is probably biased to the low end of the curve.
The upshot is that the skills needed to setup and install a mildly sophisticated game even on a windows box is likely over the head of an average user.
Some people just don't get the idea of certain products. For example, I can recall someone calling up a tech support line asking for the cheat codes for Flight Simulator.
So now we want to move to the wonderful world of Linux, etc. I can see that there may be problems here until we get the average expertise of people up to speed.
Unfortunately, many people do not care to invest the time and effort needed.
This falls into the category of: "We do not have time to get gas. We are running late already"
Well, with costs like this, only certain executives would generally be able to afford this.
Maybe this should be promoted to those "favorite" pointy haired executives. Then, if it goes "boom", there is still not a problem
Although there is the anecdotal effect of people being out in space and actually having the time to enjoy it, looking out the window, etc. It changes their viewpoint somehow, for the better. Many astronauts have attested to this
All the mystical mumbo jumbo aside, this would probably be good for the planet and culture and politics in the long run.
There is probably a whole series of articles and stories that could be down on the mental/emotional impact of space travel on people. It is one of those things whose consequences would not be easily forseen.
Looks like some components of the beast are available for download already (Sun/Solaris only, however)
SRI plans to gradually release selected EMERALD components to the public domain. One such component, eXpert-BSM, is currently available for download from SRI's Web site (see Resources). eXpert-BSM, a small, host-based sensor that acts as a security daemon, is "particularly good for detecting misuse on Solaris operating systems," Porras said. Since SRI is a nonprofit research institute, the components made available on its Web site are released without charge to the public domain. "If we don't make certain components available on the Internet, we will still make them available to [government organizations] and to the entire DoD research
community," Porras remarked.
The economics of the issue dictate that we need to have a way to cut down the travel time from years to months.
If we have an affordable way to travel in months to the nearby planets, then the solar system and the stars are open to us.
the model is that of the Polynesians as they spread over the Pacific ocean. There plenty of small objects beyond Pluto that could act as stepping stones. never mind things like the asteroid belt. Earth crossing asteroids could suddenly become viable economic entities for carrying things between the inner and outer solar system
There are many problems of supply that would have to be worked out. But we could certainly build a network over time, terraform an asteroid or two, mine a comet for water. the challenges are formidable, but not out of the question.
I recall that some years ago some portions of the State of Louisiana had a pest problem. There was some sort of largish introduced animal that was tearing up the swamps and it was a ecological disaster. I think it was introduced from South America or something
They had a horrible time getting rid of it, and were losing the battle, until they came up with a unique solution.
Someone did some research, and figured out how to cook it, and promote it as a delicacy. The result was that suddenly you had a whole bunch of people hunting down the critter so they could cook it themselves, or sell it to a restaurant, or whatever.
The population is now very nicely under control, and is no longer an ecological threat.
So what has this got to do with spam?
It is my contention that spam will continue to exist as a problem until we make it profitable to go after folks who are spammers. Then it becomes a business.
that is why I have advocated a spam licensing program in the past, so that it would become legal for everyone to bill the spammers for traffic, etc. and business would pop up whose sole purpose in life would be to hunt spammers. The spam hunters would get a piece of the action, and send you a check.
It has to become advantageous for someone to have a business billing spammers on a general basis. Everyone hates bill collectors. We could turn them on the spammers.
well, you would obviously want the palm to be an option so that the palm deficient can still operate the car. but you want the addition of the palm to enhance the operations of the car.
could be fun. and at the rate they are improving....
Professionals often like their systems lean and mean, stripped down with only the essentials to get the maximum performance out of their equipment.
There is also those other strange people who want to put every bell, light and whistle on their rig, even if it is just to scare people, and intimidate the neighbors. Sort of like the Hell's Angels (with paint jobs, etc) or other motor cycle enthuthiasts with lights, radios, and enough gear to outfit a mobile home.
As a side note, this might be related to this story over the holidays describing how men in bars flaunt their mobile phones to attract women (and it works). The geek with the most impressive rack of equipment could attract the best partners. Or so the logic would go.
The only point here is that mental/emotional factors have to be considered as well.
So an opening animated graphic (or even a shockwave/flash file) would be attract to some people, beginners and otherwise. I imagine you could even have a whole operating system where many cues are not done by sound files(as in windows) but are by embedded flash files, etc. The computer could seem to be alive to the beginner, if this were done cleverly.
This would certainly attract alot of people.
Are these people the kind of people we want to attract?
"The Earthweb IT and Internet professional content assets that internet.com is acquiring are among the best
properties available on the Web. They will be a great fit for us and we will be able to greatly leverage these properties in terms of readership and revenue opportunities. We also look forward to potentially establishing other strategic initiatives with dice.com in the coming year," stated internet.com Chairman and CEO Alan M. Meckler.
In addition to earthweb.com, the websites acquired by internet.com include:
Developer.com (www.developer.com), Datamation (www.datamation.com), CrossNodes (www.crossnodes.com),SysOpt.com (www.sysopt.com), ERP Hub (www.erphub.com), Open Source IT (www.opensourceit.com), Javascripts.com (www.javascripts.com), JARS.com (www.jars.com), HTML Goodies (www.htmlgoodies.com), Gamelan
(www.gamelan.com), CodeGuru.com www.codeguru.com), Intranet Journal (www.intranetjournal.com), CIN
(http://www.cin.earthweb.com/) and EarthWeb Direct (www.earthwebdirect.com).
So it looks like The Perl Journal is just being phased out despite being a highly valued professional resource.
of course, this is completely speculative on my part.
More Earthweb press releases located here including a real audio broadcast of the announcement, which might be interesting.
While there are so many things that can be excused, such as access to the house for installation purposes.... well, if they do not explicitly cite this as the purpose of the permission to access, then it becomes very open ended and subject to the potential abuse forseen by some.
Given the lack of trustworthyness of some companies and individuals, this is not unreasonable.
As an old friend of mine once said, when you see a psycho two things can be going on. Either the psycho really is psycho, or their enviroment is psycho, and they as just trying to cope.
This certainly applies to work environments, as we all know. And it goes deeper.
Over the past few years many companies have down sized, eliminating many levels of managers. These have since gone off and retired, or gone into other fields of activity, like programming, dot coms, etc. They will not go back. The very extreme example of this are overseas contractors who come to the US, ignorant of US Law, culture, and mores. They are sometimes hired by pointy haired bosses to do the things that no decent manager would do, as far as treatment of employees, customer service, etc goes.
We now come full circle, imagining this kind of manager combined with this kind of TOS agreement. It is very easy to run screaming into the hills. After all, this is for "our benefit". It is even conceivable that someone like this wrote this TOS Agreement.
Is this likely? I'm am not sure. I so much want to give people the benefit of the doubt.
One thing to consider is that the EMP is a pulse. a huge ragged electromagnetic square wave.
The thing about a pulse is that it is has edges. Imagine, a normal ambient low voltage condition suddenly is whacked to tens or hundreds of thousands of volts induced by the pulse, in a time period measuring nanoseconds. And then it gets whacked in the other direction since this is a wave and it goes back and forth.
Smaller electronics are using smaller wires, and are using smaller voltages. this makes them more vulnerable.
Voltage is induced by magnetism
is a single wire. Although voltages induced by differances in different parts of the system are fun as well.
People also do not realise that electronic logic now is often edge based. in other words, the ones and zeros are not determined by reaching and settling at 0 volts and 5 volts (or 2.3 or 2.4 volts, etc) but by detecting the edge of the shift from zero to max and vice versa. this has the advantadge of being faster because you do no have to wait for things to stabilize as much.
This is much more vulnerable to noise. Even without any damaging voltage levels, a nice heavy edge (such as found in an EMP)can act as a reset command, or lock the system up.
I imagine that high frequency systems are going to have a problem, even if the voltage does not actually fry the system.
I imagine that older technology, like non-digital cars, would have a problem with this. Tube based technology, relay logic, etc. tends to be more robust, but this is not proof against the effects described above.
As it has been kindly pointed out to me, it is ANG LEE, and NOT Ann Lee.
The mis-spelling took place in the original articles I saw.
All Those duly offended rightly deserve the most profound apologies.
An artist of merit of course deserves to have their name spelled correctly, and I certainly apologise for any anguish, agony, or dishonor felt by his expert, knowledgable, and caring fans because of the mis-spelling.
As a final note, I shared the material because I felt it was worthwhile. The karma points are not that important.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what the maximum low temperature would be. But in any case, anything that significantly expands the range of the operating temperature is going to be useful.
Currently, (I have heard) a typical CPU pulls enough power through that one or two square inches of ceramic to power a sixty watt light bulb. With that kind of power (to 500 degrees) inside of a regular computer box, well that might get a bit dangerous for use in the average home.
Boxen glowing from heat would not do well in wooden homes.
It reminds me of the kid in the neighborhood who keeps wanting to be cool, but hasn't got a clue. This is the same kid who only has friends because daddy has money, and he can buy stuff.
It is really sad.
because the right way to be is not to try to be like someone else.
In other words, get your own life, don't try to rent, buy, or steal someone elses'.
If you check it out, you will find that the www site and the ftp site are different boxes. So linking to the www mirror page will not effect the ftp server
Official name: komodo.mozilla.org
(Aliases: ftp.mozilla.org)
Addresses: 207.200.81.212
Official name: gila.mozilla.org
(Aliases: www.mozilla.org)
Addresses: 207.200.81.215
but just in case, for those who do not go there often, dozens of mirrors are listed here:
http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html
I am really looking forward to this, because NS and moz0.6 have been just a little bit problematic for me. Little things, like go to page x then open a new window go to page y, and it thinks it is still on page x. Infuriating, but what can I say.
I have great hopes for this.
In some places in there, they have bandwidth that makes OC48 look like a dialup modem.
Ping Flood anyone?
but seriously, maybe one of those type of places would be happy to host X and W on a really really fast machine. or a main frame, all as an experiment in internet security countermeasures.
then add in some sort of code to escalate the response is an attack continues, so that the more a kiddie attacks, the more the kiddies get hammered until they go *poof*!
What scares me the most is the question about wanting to put it on an RV.
Can I do my own installation?
No. A professional installation by a StarBand certified installer is required. Because this is a two-way system - the dish antenna both receives from and transmits to the satellite - the installation must be very precise, and we do not offer the option of self-installs. If you are not a StarBand-certified installer and you perform your own installation or even a portion of the installation, you will void any applicable installation warranty and service warranty.
What is required in a StarBand installation?
The StarBand installation process is very similar to the standard small-dish satellite television installation process, except that it involves a slightly larger antenna and two coaxial cables running from the dish to the computer. In addition, because the StarBand service both sends and receives content via satellite, the dish pointing process requires greater precision, as compared to receive-only satellite television offerings. (See "Can I do my own installation?" above)
I have received my equipment, and I am anxious to get it up and running. Can I go ahead and set up the computer before the installer arrives?
No. We would ask that you leave all of the equipment boxed and wait for the installer to unpack it once he or she arrives. By installing any portion of the system yourself, you will void any applicable installation warranty and service warranty.
Can I mount a StarBand dish antenna on my RV?
Not at this time. Because the StarBand antenna not only receives from but also transmits to the satellite, the installation must be performed with extra precision and in accordance with FCC standards. The installation process requires accurate positioning by the installer of the azimuth, elevation, and skew settings for the antenna, and then a phone call to our Installer Help Desk for additional fine-tuning of these and other settings through tools available only at our satellite uplinking facility.
Are there any applications that will work differently in the StarBand network?
Yes. Certain applications do not perform efficiently in a satellite-delivered environment, such as voice/video over IP, VPN services, certain online interactive games (particularly "shooter" games that depend on split-second responsiveness for the "survival" of the player), and applications that use non-TCP/IP protocols (such as IPX/SPX).
So far so good. Is the flip side true?
If I do not exercise responsibility, do I ultimately dinished my freedom? maybe.
What happens if I do not want to take responsibility for something? Ultimately, it is neglected, or someone else picks up the ball.
With really big social problems, who takes responsibility? Maybe some social group, like a club, a political party, a church, some haphazard group of people. If it is big enough, the government, maybe. Hopefully?
You follow this up and track it down, and it starts to look like the government grows to the extent that people push stuff onto it. It grows to the extent that people do not take an individual personal responsibility for something, anything.
So now we blow it all off, and say freedom equals the ability to not be responsible for something, to not have a care in the world, to dance around nekkid and do it in the streets. Does this work?
It works in the short run, just until the point that you have to deal with other folks. You don't do it in the street because you usually gotta watch for cars
Examples include things like you common sports teams. The Celtics coach Rick Pitino just quit in disgust because individual players are more interested in show boating and personal conserns instead of team play. Individual players getting lazy because they have made it and are being paid the big bucks, and now they can relax, even if the team drops pitifully down the standings.
We will be free to the extent we do take real responsibility, and rip it out of the clutches of government. If we blow it off, and let "the other guy" handle it, then the government will step in just as predicted in the article. A bigger more muscular government, because we gave it the power.
The game has got to be that we take control of the internet, instead of letting someone else hijack it for their profitable agenda. Regardless of how impossible that goal seems. (yeh, I know it 's a bitch, ain't it)
Otherwise we'll be no better of than a bunch of clueless basketball players, but we won't even have the paycheck.
Of course, this is all new age type aesthetics. Some folks may be uncomfortable with this.
another possibly useful space hobby page with multimedia stuff is here
So maybe Hemos can replace his collection.
I wonder on the energy efficiency of a system like this. I see that the original reporter in the story was not taking this too seriously, even though this does have some potential. Some details provided are interesting
I Look at this, and I think of programming maxims that have been passed down, such as here an other excellent places. A few that might be appropriate include:
etc.Point being, I wonder what we would find if we applied proper bug finding and engineering standards to the drug war. Some solutions we would not want to apply to humans, of course.
But I bet we would find alot of hidden factors that are not being even looked at one way or another.
My Main observation is to take this into the larger context.
As I said earlier, we seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs. What makes this all the more believable are little details like this mornings AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:
it is very easy to take a short range cynical look at all of this. And it is very easy to "poo-poo" all this, and to say that it will never happen here, or that it will never be effective, that it won't last.But the problem is that we are walking in the direction of a fragmented segmented internet. We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by governments, large corporations, and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs. And all to many people, governments, and companies are willing to sell us the fencing, the barbed wire, for our own good.
Take a look at the incident with Yahoo these past few months in France. I do not think that this is what we want.
It will surely happen if people do not constantly make the internet free.
But what I do not want is the intermediate levels of intelligence.
For example, would I want a house as intelligent as a puppy or a parrot?
This gets into matters of personality, etc. Most usable modules would likely not have any viable personality, because otherwise we would have to much independance and possible arguements, and other things that are quite maddening.
I do not want to live in the 21st century equivalent of a Monty Python skit.
All this aside, I would see that a nueral net would be useful for learning to automatically adjust things like heat and air conditioning. Security may be okay, but I've seen too many movies to trust them with things like weapons and other defensive measures.
;-)
The end result is probably something like:
- AOL Quality with Microsoft ethics
- MS Quality with MS Ethics
Waitaminute. We have the second one already.The only counter I can imagine to this right now comes out of those occasional rumors of AOL developing their own OS. I am sure everyone is just thrilled by that prospect.
We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs.
What makes this all the more believable are little details like this AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:
We are walking in the direction of fragmented segmented internet. The glacial slow destruction of the internet as we know it for profit.The .net as proposed by Microsoft is selling this to us. But maybe it is still only one fence on the wild frontier. Or maybe Microsoft is the fence company, selling us the barbed wire.
Games have always been on the cutting edge. It seems to be a tradition or something
That being said, there is always the problem of the average user. Let's face it, the bell curve of knowledge for computer users is probably biased to the low end of the curve.
The upshot is that the skills needed to setup and install a mildly sophisticated game even on a windows box is likely over the head of an average user.
Some people just don't get the idea of certain products. For example, I can recall someone calling up a tech support line asking for the cheat codes for Flight Simulator.
So now we want to move to the wonderful world of Linux, etc. I can see that there may be problems here until we get the average expertise of people up to speed.
Unfortunately, many people do not care to invest the time and effort needed.
This falls into the category of: "We do not have time to get gas. We are running late already"
Maybe this should be promoted to those "favorite" pointy haired executives. Then, if it goes "boom", there is still not a problem
Although there is the anecdotal effect of people being out in space and actually having the time to enjoy it, looking out the window, etc. It changes their viewpoint somehow, for the better. Many astronauts have attested to this
All the mystical mumbo jumbo aside, this would probably be good for the planet and culture and politics in the long run.
There is probably a whole series of articles and stories that could be down on the mental/emotional impact of space travel on people. It is one of those things whose consequences would not be easily forseen.
At Least someone with some brains and experience will be able to look at it and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
If we have an affordable way to travel in months to the nearby planets, then the solar system and the stars are open to us.
the model is that of the Polynesians as they spread over the Pacific ocean. There plenty of small objects beyond Pluto that could act as stepping stones. never mind things like the asteroid belt. Earth crossing asteroids could suddenly become viable economic entities for carrying things between the inner and outer solar system
There are many problems of supply that would have to be worked out. But we could certainly build a network over time, terraform an asteroid or two, mine a comet for water. the challenges are formidable, but not out of the question.
They had a horrible time getting rid of it, and were losing the battle, until they came up with a unique solution.
Someone did some research, and figured out how to cook it, and promote it as a delicacy. The result was that suddenly you had a whole bunch of people hunting down the critter so they could cook it themselves, or sell it to a restaurant, or whatever.
The population is now very nicely under control, and is no longer an ecological threat.
So what has this got to do with spam?
It is my contention that spam will continue to exist as a problem until we make it profitable to go after folks who are spammers. Then it becomes a business.
that is why I have advocated a spam licensing program in the past, so that it would become legal for everyone to bill the spammers for traffic, etc. and business would pop up whose sole purpose in life would be to hunt spammers. The spam hunters would get a piece of the action, and send you a check.
It has to become advantageous for someone to have a business billing spammers on a general basis. Everyone hates bill collectors. We could turn them on the spammers.
could be fun. and at the rate they are improving ....
Then I could program in a set of directions etc, with appropriate feedback, maybe through beeps, or whatever.
heck, it would be cool for programming other elements of my car as well (cd mixes, etc), and then it could walk with me when I leave the car....
but this would be a bit more advanced compared to simple kit for a palm robot.
The possibilities stagger the imagination.
hey, there might even be money in it, somehow.
There is also those other strange people who want to put every bell, light and whistle on their rig, even if it is just to scare people, and intimidate the neighbors. Sort of like the Hell's Angels (with paint jobs, etc) or other motor cycle enthuthiasts with lights, radios, and enough gear to outfit a mobile home.
As a side note, this might be related to this story over the holidays describing how men in bars flaunt their mobile phones to attract women (and it works). The geek with the most impressive rack of equipment could attract the best partners. Or so the logic would go.
The only point here is that mental/emotional factors have to be considered as well.
So an opening animated graphic (or even a shockwave/flash file) would be attract to some people, beginners and otherwise. I imagine you could even have a whole operating system where many cues are not done by sound files(as in windows) but are by embedded flash files, etc. The computer could seem to be alive to the beginner, if this were done cleverly.
This would certainly attract alot of people.
Are these people the kind of people we want to attract?
On the other hand, this is part of the problem when a good property is in the hands of someone who doesn't know what to do with it.
Internet.com would be an excellent place for TPJ. Unfotunately, it looks like Earthweb decided to canniablize the resource, fools that they are.
The EarthWeb press release is HERE
The essential information in part includes
So it looks like The Perl Journal is just being phased out despite being a highly valued professional resource.of course, this is completely speculative on my part.
More Earthweb press releases located here including a real audio broadcast of the announcement, which might be interesting.
Given the lack of trustworthyness of some companies and individuals, this is not unreasonable.
As an old friend of mine once said, when you see a psycho two things can be going on. Either the psycho really is psycho, or their enviroment is psycho, and they as just trying to cope.
This certainly applies to work environments, as we all know. And it goes deeper.
Over the past few years many companies have down sized, eliminating many levels of managers. These have since gone off and retired, or gone into other fields of activity, like programming, dot coms, etc. They will not go back. The very extreme example of this are overseas contractors who come to the US, ignorant of US Law, culture, and mores. They are sometimes hired by pointy haired bosses to do the things that no decent manager would do, as far as treatment of employees, customer service, etc goes.
We now come full circle, imagining this kind of manager combined with this kind of TOS agreement. It is very easy to run screaming into the hills. After all, this is for "our benefit". It is even conceivable that someone like this wrote this TOS Agreement.
Is this likely? I'm am not sure. I so much want to give people the benefit of the doubt.
But Murphy's Law certainly applies here.
One thing to consider is that the EMP is a pulse. a huge ragged electromagnetic square wave.
The thing about a pulse is that it is has edges. Imagine, a normal ambient low voltage condition suddenly is whacked to tens or hundreds of thousands of volts induced by the pulse, in a time period measuring nanoseconds. And then it gets whacked in the other direction since this is a wave and it goes back and forth.
Smaller electronics are using smaller wires, and are using smaller voltages. this makes them more vulnerable.
Voltage is induced by magnetism is a single wire. Although voltages induced by differances in different parts of the system are fun as well.
People also do not realise that electronic logic now is often edge based. in other words, the ones and zeros are not determined by reaching and settling at 0 volts and 5 volts (or 2.3 or 2.4 volts, etc) but by detecting the edge of the shift from zero to max and vice versa. this has the advantadge of being faster because you do no have to wait for things to stabilize as much.
This is much more vulnerable to noise. Even without any damaging voltage levels, a nice heavy edge (such as found in an EMP)can act as a reset command, or lock the system up.
I imagine that high frequency systems are going to have a problem, even if the voltage does not actually fry the system.
I imagine that older technology, like non-digital cars, would have a problem with this. Tube based technology, relay logic, etc. tends to be more robust, but this is not proof against the effects described above.
The mis-spelling took place in the original articles I saw.
All Those duly offended rightly deserve the most profound apologies.
An artist of merit of course deserves to have their name spelled correctly, and I certainly apologise for any anguish, agony, or dishonor felt by his expert, knowledgable, and caring fans because of the mis-spelling.
As a final note, I shared the material because I felt it was worthwhile. The karma points are not that important.
Really.