After Artifact, Gregory Benford will have to come around, buy me dinner and slip me a few $50 bills before I read another of his books... The guy couldn't do believable characters if they leapt out of the WP and bit his scrotum...
Earth was a singularly horrible book... David Brin has done pretty good stuff and less good stuff, but Earth was the literary equivalent of sticking your arm down your throat and pinching your own pancreas, hard.
The obvious solution for blackout in fighter pilots would be to genetically engineer a supplementary brain somewhere in their knees, where it would be protected from trauma by the kneecap and suppied of nutrients by the big leg arteries.
People talk now about how fast you can make an airliner go, and others talk about just shooting up into orbit and waiting for the earth to move Tokyo to where London was beneath you. One way in one hour.
I'm not a physicist, but... Doesn't that do ugly things to the conservation of angular momentum? You would expect to keep going in the same direction and at the same speed that you were while on the surface, unless I got you wrong, of course...
Errr... Funny you should say that about the monopoly, since even Victorinox doesn't have a monopoly on swiss army knives. There is another company, Wenger, that also makes them (and I don't mean simple utility knives, I mean that they use the Swiss Army name and logo).
Ethernet is the better idea, since it's a lot more flexible... I'd rather have a modem hanging off an ethernet connection than a built-in modem and no ethernet.
Only two ports on the console
Only two ports built in... You can add a virtually unlimited number of ports via USB.
Countries don't serve any useful function anymore... Why should I feel more related to an American whose views and values I despise than to a Frenchman I actually agree with?
Countries aren't worth dying for. Ideas are, but only to the extent to which those ideas won't be better served by living another day.
And the most important ramification, of course, will be that those sicko vegitarians will no longer be able to use humanity to animals as a reason not to eat meat. By definition, that arguement can only apply to animals in the wild, ie ones that have enough mental function to register pain or inhumane treatment. Being inhumane to a meat-vegetable would be like being inhumane to a sponge:)
Actually, as a vegetarian, I don't have anything against any of the above, although I would prefer vat-grown meat to whole anencephalic animals, but as for the "sicko" thing, well, FOAD.
Mile-wide airships for bulk cargo transportation, pleasure cruising and, of course, billboard advertising. Big and stable enough to ride out hurricanes and filled with helium to avoid unpleasant "Hindenburg" episodes. They will never land, dropping elevator cables instead for loading and unloading.
Eventually, airships become so massive and stable that it's possible to launch rockets from them, reducing greatly the cost of placing payloads in orbit. Some people will live on those craft permanently, exploiting tax loopholes.
Airships are just too cool (and potentially useful) not to come back someday...
Morals are implicit in the mental framework of human beings, and absolutely requre no religion whatsoever.
Of course, in any given human being the implicit morals can be outweighted by greed, fear, bigotry, stupidity or sheer ill intent, but in most people aren't.
To claim that morals require of religion in utter nonsense.
Well, you cannot blame anybody if the perception is that the main reasons why people join the military is ether that they enjoy taking orders or that they are looking forward to eventually being giving them. I can't say I care much for either case...
On the other hand, I fully agree about the stupidity of jingoistic civilian idiots whose hides aren't in the line of fire. I don't like the idea of armies' fates being in the hands of civilians without military experience any more than I like the idea of the military types getting their hands on the government, but as long as we have armies I'm not sure there is anything that can be done about either.
I rather disagree. I think that being willing to put your life on the line for an issue should disqualify you from voting on it, since you are obviously unable to make a rational, detached decision.
All issues would come down to be decided by imbecile fundamentalists who think they are going to get their reward in heaven, or some such nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
After Artifact, Gregory Benford will have to come around, buy me dinner and slip me a few $50 bills before I read another of his books... The guy couldn't do believable characters if they leapt out of the WP and bit his scrotum...
it was written by greg bear, though!...
:(
After Eon and Eternity, definitely I appreciate the warning...
Earth was a singularly horrible book... David Brin has done pretty good stuff and less good stuff, but Earth was the literary equivalent of sticking your arm down your throat and pinching your own pancreas, hard.
Yup, both light and heat. Try one some day, they are easier on the eyes than gas lamps...
The obvious solution for blackout in fighter pilots would be to genetically engineer a supplementary brain somewhere in their knees, where it would be protected from trauma by the kneecap and suppied of nutrients by the big leg arteries.
The main reason I'd give is that I already spend fourteen-hour days in front of it... :)
:)
I guess I'll have to grab GCC and get compiling, I was just hoping someone would beat me to it and spare me the effort.
I think that what you are asking for wouldn't be called a "manual"... Maybe an "intellectual"...:)
My SGI doesn't have a development environment, so... Does anybody know where I could grab myself some pre-compiled binaries of this bad boy? :)
People talk now about how fast you can make an airliner go, and others talk about just shooting up into orbit and waiting for the earth to move Tokyo to where London was beneath you. One way in one hour.
I'm not a physicist, but... Doesn't that do ugly things to the conservation of angular momentum? You would expect to keep going in the same direction and at the same speed that you were while on the surface, unless I got you wrong, of course...
Isn't there some serious research on clockless chips? I seem to remember reading something about that...
I originally designed that ASCII penguin (Tom improved on it afterwards).
:)
All I need to do now is actually learn C...
Errr... Funny you should say that about the monopoly, since even Victorinox doesn't have a monopoly on swiss army knives. There is another company, Wenger, that also makes them (and I don't mean simple utility knives, I mean that they use the Swiss Army name and logo).
LSHIH.
No problem.
No direct Internet/networked game support
Ethernet is the better idea, since it's a lot more flexible... I'd rather have a modem hanging off an ethernet connection than a built-in modem and no ethernet.
Only two ports on the console
Only two ports built in... You can add a virtually unlimited number of ports via USB.
I think it would be one of the few potential buyers that would treat SGI with the respect it deserves... Hell, they may even bring back the old logo.
Hmmm... I seem to remember it was indeed "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin".
Spaniards have no sense of humor...
Countries don't serve any useful function anymore... Why should I feel more related to an American whose views and values I despise than to a Frenchman I actually agree with?
Countries aren't worth dying for. Ideas are, but only to the extent to which those ideas won't be better served by living another day.
And the most important ramification, of course, will be that those sicko vegitarians will no longer be able to use humanity to animals as a reason not to eat meat. By definition, that arguement can only apply to animals in the wild, :)
ie ones that have enough mental function to register pain or inhumane treatment. Being inhumane to a meat-vegetable would be like being inhumane to a sponge
Actually, as a vegetarian, I don't have anything against any of the above, although I would prefer vat-grown meat to whole anencephalic animals, but as for the "sicko" thing, well, FOAD.
Mile-wide airships for bulk cargo transportation, pleasure cruising and, of course, billboard advertising. Big and stable enough to ride out hurricanes and filled with helium to avoid unpleasant "Hindenburg" episodes. They will never land, dropping elevator cables instead for loading and unloading.
Eventually, airships become so massive and stable that it's possible to launch rockets from them, reducing greatly the cost of placing payloads in orbit. Some people will live on those craft permanently, exploiting tax loopholes.
Airships are just too cool (and potentially useful) not to come back someday...
Morals are implicit in the mental framework of human beings, and absolutely requre no religion whatsoever.
Of course, in any given human being the implicit morals can be outweighted by greed, fear, bigotry, stupidity or sheer ill intent, but in most people aren't.
To claim that morals require of religion in utter nonsense.
Well, you cannot blame anybody if the perception is that the main reasons why people join the military is ether that they enjoy taking orders or that they are looking forward to eventually being giving them. I can't say I care much for either case...
On the other hand, I fully agree about the stupidity of jingoistic civilian idiots whose hides aren't in the line of fire. I don't like the idea of armies' fates being in the hands of civilians without military experience any more than I like the idea of the military types getting their hands on the government, but as long as we have armies I'm not sure there is anything that can be done about either.
I rather disagree. I think that being willing to put your life on the line for an issue should disqualify you from voting on it, since you are obviously unable to make a rational, detached decision.
All issues would come down to be decided by imbecile fundamentalists who think they are going to get their reward in heaven, or some such nonsense.
The general population of Windows users, I feel, don't seem to be as computer 'intelligent' as the general population of Linux users.
:)
The "computer" qualification is, in fact, unnecessary.
Awesome... He used my ASCII penguin, too. :)