The article mentions the 'researcher' Graham Hancock. This same guy has written a few books and hosted a few shows about his alternative history of the civilization in ancient times. Basically he contradicts the history that most of us probably know wrt Egypt and the Aztecs. He's considered somewhat of a quack.
He does has some good points though. One of which is that every major civilization has a flood myth of some fashion. This doesn't mean that this is evidence for a creationist view of the universe. What he argues is that there most likely existed a global environmental disaster, most likely a flood, that occured in ancient times and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures.
Part of the reason that this is so complicated is because auto manufacturers are trying to give dealers, specifically the service department, more business. In the past, most of income of a dealer didn't come from selling cars, it came from servicing them! Every time something broke the dealer made money either from the manufacturer (warranty repair) or from you.
Have you ever wondered why warranty repairs sometimes take so long; its because for every major repair there is a district service manager that has to okay the repairs that the manufacturer will pay the dealer for.
But ever since the 80s, people have wanted more reliable cars which results in less service work for the dealers. A perfect car could be built, but all the dealers would go backrupt so they wouldn't be able to sell any of them! As a result, the manufacturers have had to find ways to make the dealers money. Part of the reason cars are more complicated is that only the dealer service shops will be able to work on them. Some components will have specialty tools made specifically for the one platform.
They also do other stuff. Try looking under to hood of a new VW to check the tranny fluid. You can't get to it. If you phone up VW and ask how you check the fluid yourself they'll say "Oh, we will check that for you the next time you come for your scheduled maintenance".
okay, considering that I'm canadian, your comments sound american anyway. Personally I love strange brew. They almost made a sequel of it recently. Bob and Doug Mackenzie are the best, so take off eh.. Anyways. Oh an by the way, the correct answer for #3 is Rocket Richard because your still in mourning..
Anyways, here's the real questions that would be asked:
#1: Say "The Rant" blindfolded. #2: What is Canada's greatest aerospace acheivement? #3. When was the last time the leafs won the Stanley Cup? #4: What is the Royal Canadian Air Farce? #5: What is the tallest free standing structure in the world? #6: Spell Color.
That's good enough. Any Canadian should be able to answer all of those without any thought..
That's a good point, especially if you consider than most nuclear reactors in north america are growing old and there isn't the political will to build more nuclear reactors. When those reactors retire, guess what they're going to be replaced with, natural gas/coal/etc reactors. So much for Kyoto.
Are standards groups really the key to developing successful new protocols on the net, probably not. This is going to be a crude comparison by contrast the ICQ protocol with the vcal/ical/icard/iwhatever protocol.
ICQ was inovative and as a result of the programs success, the ICQ program spread to unofficial clients and as a result the protocl has enjoyed success..
Ical on the other hand is the next generation calendar protocol for interfacing calenders over the net. It is being designed by a standards group that is acting more like a special interests group for its members than a council that will guide a major protocol of the future. The members of this standards group are more interested in making sure that their current market share of the scheduling application market is maintained then developing a protocol that would make all of the current scheduling applications obsolete and redundant.
My point here is that the open source community doesn't neccessarily have to be member of a standards group or a group that projects what technology in the future will be used. Instead whats needed is a community that not only develops inovative open source ideas, but helps in the success of the best of these ideas instead of hindering them.
This seems like the first time something like this has happened to the crowd here. We've always read the articles that have been pointed to which were written with the intent of making a profit for the publisher, not necessarily with makeing sure that the facts were right. Jane's is a different kind of publisher. Its in their best interest and actually their intent to get things right the first time and not post FUD.
A Problem though, even though this first encounter was a good one, how long will it be before certain members become experts and become inevitably become distant from the online community while still maintaining their expert status with the outside world. How can we make sure that this doesn't happen?
I like that. It follows the the idea of words are fine but actions are what really make a difference. Should we be making a snapshot of technology then? A yearbook of sorts that doesn't contain information, instead it contains methods (ie how programs/information interact with each other)..
I took a look at that page a while ago and I came to the conclusion that the protocols that they are proposing really are impotenet compared to the power of proprietary protocols that each company involved with that organization already promote. What they are interested in is a way for their scheduling programs to still be used on intranets (their current user base), but with the ability to share schedules and make appointments across the internet to other people.
Personally, I feel that what's needed is an internet protocol that isn't mean't to share data between programs, but is the protocol with which data is shared. To my knowledge, those protocols have have made no effort to include location scheduling, groups, etc. Besides, what is needed isn't something with which one can schedule meetings (although that would be the basis), for scheduling to be used extensively on the internet, there will need to be ways to include data from web sides automatically and have some sort of time finding features built into the protocol.
Imagine being able to buy an airline ticket, the ticket is automatically added sent to your calendar where to acknoledge it (since it came from an outside source) and an acknoledgement is sent back to the airline so that they know that it wasn't a fraud. Or, on a more local level, you can schedule that your house is re-roofed while you are not there. Personally I think that scheduling is the next best thing on the net, but the only "open source" scheduling on the net right now isn't for the advancement of scheduling, its for the interaction of existing scheduling software between proprietary systems.
Currently internet scheduling seems to be guided by commercial interests. The only thing that I've been able to find that shows any advancement is this page. From reading over this, the proposed extensions are more of a way to add internet functionality to existing schedules.
Personally I think that this is the wrong way to go. Personally I think what's needed is a system that similar to email. Imagine being able to subscribe to a scheduling-mailing-list that instead of just sending you an email with this years football games (for example), you can get this information added to your schedule and, given an rights system, updates can automatically be sent to you and you calendar can be updated accordingly.
Actually as a born and bred Canadian it's really funny watching how ignorant americans are of Canada. Basically up here we think that americans are complete idiots. You always hear stories of americans crossing the border in the middle of summer with skis on the roofs of their cars expecting the whole of Canada to be under 10 feet of snow. You laugh and think americans can't really be that stupid. Then you go down to the US and you get stupid questions (from college engineering students!) asking how living in an igloo is!
But its all good for laughs. It works both ways. Recently when I saw Big Daddy (in Canada) and the line "you know Canadian beer, its like moonshine" came up, the whole theatre went up in a roar of applause. Personally I find molson to be a bit week.
So take off eh, ya hosebrain. Like okay, pass me a beer eh.. And ah, now I get I'm done.
That's basially the same thing that happened to me. I moved out and I lost 10 pounds simply because whenever I finished eating I didn't have someone always saying "you havn't had enough to eat, here's some more"..
That cube is just a multi-headed display (?) all with the different displays mapped to a different side of the cube. There really isn't anything 3d about it. Each display itself is 2d.
There is something out already that is called L-band. It is more similar to normal radio in that it is transmitted form normal radio towers. Except that L-band is line of sight and is only 800W!. An L-band network will act similar to how cell phone networks work and it is cd-quality as well, except it is local stations.
L-band features 44khz(?), stereo, digital audio and many existing stations are already transmitting on it as an experimental step. I like in Toronto and one 800W source from the CD tower reaches all the way to Oshawa (about 40 km, ~25 miles).
One of the nice features about L-band though is that the there is a data stream separate from the audio stream that can transmit information like the name of the song, current weather, etc.
Before you go out and get an satellite radio receiver, remember this, if an L-band source get's knocked out then it only costs a couple thousand to replace (and there are tons of them spread around), mean while if a satellite gets knocked out, then its a couple hundred million to replace (these will have to be geo-synchronous satellites, not LEO,)..
Think about what your suggesting for the moment. An area the size of 1/1000 the area of the united states. That may not seem like a lot, but it is.
First, I don't doubt your facts, actually I think that they are very conservative estimates but I'm argueing from a logistics point of view.
There are only two ways that I can see inwhich that large an area of solar panels can be setup, either on top of existing infrastructure (roofs, etc), or on open area.
On top of existing infrastructure would prove impossible to maintain. Think about how long it takes roofers to get onto a roof or cable remair men to get to cables. So that is out of the question.
The second is open areas. 1/1000 the size of the united states. From an ecological standpoint it would be a disaster. If you wanted to sacrifice that much area then you could do it for a lot less with hydroelectic dams (falling water is also free).
Even if you didn't worry about surface area, then you would have to look at material costs. Solar panels are made up of silicon. I personally can't even imagine producing 1000 mi^2 of solar panels. Roads are made in a bulk process and don't even come close to covering 1000 mi^2 in the us. Add into that quality control and you would have a process that makes fusion power look like peanuts. Its just not a feasible alternative.
Remember in the doj trial when said that billy saying that it would help him a lot if if he "had a survey of developers who wanted an internet browser integrated into the operating system" and he was able to get that.
Now we have linux making significant inroads into markets that microsoft wants NT to enter. Shall we ask bill if "he wanted a survey that suggests that linux can't handle server load on high performance machines compared to NT".
ITER is really one of the last big projects left from the 80s that is still running. It was designed with the philosophy if we get a small reaction with a small reactor, we'll get a big reaction with a big reactor. And, as a result, they hope to get the efficiencies required for ignition. I totally agree though that it is the wrong philosophy. However, as you noted, the only country that seems to be the notable exception is japan, who is one of the major contributors to ITER.
For those of you who havn't heard of ITER, its really a massive reactor. In present day reactors it isn't common for to have to crouch when doing maintenance inside, however the ITER reactor is 3 stories tall inside! Its really an amazing feat when you consider the stresses that the walls of the tokamak are subjected to.
Solar collectors are terribly inefficient and require a LOT of space even working at 100% efficiency. When you make something that big, then you have problems with keeping it together and maintenance on top of that. If you keep it on earth they you have the problem with cleaning them, finding room for them (imagine trying to power a city with solar collectors, you'd need an area the size of a city with solar collectors to power a city. Combined with the fact that that many solar collectors would cost a ton in materials (cost of assembly would be small due to mass production).
Next suggestion, put it in space. Sure, but they you have the problem with maintenace up there, microasteroids, and transmission problems.
Fusion has one big advantage over solar power. Its small and portable. Try using solar power under the sea. Impossible. Put a fusion reactor on the deck of the titanic with some tritium collectors and you have a self sustaining energy supply.
What real/ibm now need is some exclusive content to back things up. Unfortunately Yahoo/Broadcast.com supports both windows media and real media and I wouldn't be surprised if nbc starts to put more web content out in the future and I wouldn't be surprised if it is only available for windows media (due to the whole msnbc thing).
So where does this leave real/ibm. First of all, they can put add a bit more weight by working more closely with AOL/Netscape/Sun since their also countering the small and squishy company. Second, they need content, and lots of it. Ibm/real seem to have a good head start with audio but video is where the future is. Get working with Apple, Fox and some of the cable networks. A good pilot would be to test out weekly boardcasts of South Part/ Simpsons/ etc. There is already a market there that can be used. And from there, who knows what can happen..
Ah, those were the good old days. There must be some way of implementing that in html though, then that would be sweet. The only way I can think of would be a java client but that would just suck. The only way I can think to implement it is with Dynamic DOM rewriting that was just mentioned on mozillazine today. It allows you to rewrite parts of the screen instead of doing a total refresh. In that way you could have more of an ANSI session implemented in html (which brings up the point, the more we advance technology, the more we re-invent old ideas).
Bre would get really interesting though. Imagine a game of bre between/., segfault, bedope and userfriendly. You'd have litterly a couple thousand people on each team. That would be unreal. I think the most people I've ever seen on one team was about 50 (HOD rules, ya!). And we won of course.
But one other thing, it would have to be the classic tradewars that was released about 12 years ago, not the updated one that came out about 6 years ago, that "newer" one was as good. Cloaks failed on you, way to many new ship types. The ferengi sucked, etc.
Check the listing for top users. One guy has an average time per work group of 10.3 seconds. It took me 4 hours to do one. He's running it one something VERY nice..
The reason why mainframes need massive cpu power is not because of the logging, its because they have a TON a power all packed together that is needed in certain applications. One person at my work commented that pcs are great for word processessing but if you have to do any number cruching they just get bogged down (and in the case of a windows pc, crash.. I mean it). Meanwhile, the same number crunching can just be thrown onto a mainframe and it'll get done. You don't have to worry wether or not it will be done at all.
Not to mention what happens when you put too much current through a strand of dna. Personally, I wouldn't want to fry my dna. Next thing that will happen is that I'll start to grow a microsoft symbol on my forehead.
Slashdot Mirror
The article mentions the 'researcher' Graham Hancock. This same guy has written a few books and hosted a few shows about his alternative history of the civilization in ancient times. Basically he contradicts the history that most of us probably know wrt Egypt and the Aztecs. He's considered somewhat of a quack.
He does has some good points though. One of which is that every major civilization has a flood myth of some fashion. This doesn't mean that this is evidence for a creationist view of the universe. What he argues is that there most likely existed a global environmental disaster, most likely a flood, that occured in ancient times and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures.
Part of the reason that this is so complicated is because auto manufacturers are trying to give dealers, specifically the service department, more business. In the past, most of income of a dealer didn't come from selling cars, it came from servicing them! Every time something broke the dealer made money either from the manufacturer (warranty repair) or from you.
Have you ever wondered why warranty repairs sometimes take so long; its because for every major repair there is a district service manager that has to okay the repairs that the manufacturer will pay the dealer for.
But ever since the 80s, people have wanted more reliable cars which results in less service work for the dealers. A perfect car could be built, but all the dealers would go backrupt so they wouldn't be able to sell any of them! As a result, the manufacturers have had to find ways to make the dealers money. Part of the reason cars are more complicated is that only the dealer service shops will be able to work on them. Some components will have specialty tools made specifically for the one platform.
They also do other stuff. Try looking under to hood of a new VW to check the tranny fluid. You can't get to it. If you phone up VW and ask how you check the fluid yourself they'll say "Oh, we will check that for you the next time you come for your scheduled maintenance".
okay, considering that I'm canadian, your comments sound american anyway. Personally I love strange brew. They almost made a sequel of it recently. Bob and Doug Mackenzie are the best, so take off eh.. Anyways. Oh an by the way, the correct answer for #3 is Rocket Richard because your still in mourning..
Anyways, here's the real questions that would be asked:
#1: Say "The Rant" blindfolded.
#2: What is Canada's greatest aerospace acheivement?
#3. When was the last time the leafs won the Stanley Cup?
#4: What is the Royal Canadian Air Farce?
#5: What is the tallest free standing structure in the world?
#6: Spell Color.
That's good enough. Any Canadian should be able to answer all of those without any thought..
That's a good point, especially if you consider than most nuclear reactors in north america are growing old and there isn't the political will to build more nuclear reactors. When those reactors retire, guess what they're going to be replaced with, natural gas/coal/etc reactors. So much for Kyoto.
Are standards groups really the key to developing successful new protocols on the net, probably not. This is going to be a crude comparison by contrast the ICQ protocol with the vcal/ical/icard/iwhatever protocol.
ICQ was inovative and as a result of the programs success, the ICQ program spread to unofficial clients and as a result the protocl has enjoyed success..
Ical on the other hand is the next generation calendar protocol for interfacing calenders over the net. It is being designed by a standards group that is acting more like a special interests group for its members than a council that will guide a major protocol of the future. The members of this standards group are more interested in making sure that their current market share of the scheduling application market is maintained then developing a protocol that would make all of the current scheduling applications obsolete and redundant.
My point here is that the open source community doesn't neccessarily have to be member of a standards group or a group that projects what technology in the future will be used. Instead whats needed is a community that not only develops inovative open source ideas, but helps in the success of the best of these ideas instead of hindering them.
This seems like the first time something like this has happened to the crowd here. We've always read the articles that have been pointed to which were written with the intent of making a profit for the publisher, not necessarily with makeing sure that the facts were right. Jane's is a different kind of publisher. Its in their best interest and actually their intent to get things right the first time and not post FUD.
A Problem though, even though this first encounter was a good one, how long will it be before certain members become experts and become inevitably become distant from the online community while still maintaining their expert status with the outside world. How can we make sure that this doesn't happen?
I like that. It follows the the idea of words are fine but actions are what really make a difference. Should we be making a snapshot of technology then? A yearbook of sorts that doesn't contain information, instead it contains methods (ie how programs/information interact with each other)..
I took a look at that page a while ago and I came to the conclusion that the protocols that they are proposing really are impotenet compared to the power of proprietary protocols that each company involved with that organization already promote. What they are interested in is a way for their scheduling programs to still be used on intranets (their current user base), but with the ability to share schedules and make appointments across the internet to other people.
Personally, I feel that what's needed is an internet protocol that isn't mean't to share data between programs, but is the protocol with which data is shared. To my knowledge, those protocols have have made no effort to include location scheduling, groups, etc. Besides, what is needed isn't something with which one can schedule meetings (although that would be the basis), for scheduling to be used extensively on the internet, there will need to be ways to include data from web sides automatically and have some sort of time finding features built into the protocol.
Imagine being able to buy an airline ticket, the ticket is automatically added sent to your calendar where to acknoledge it (since it came from an outside source) and an acknoledgement is sent back to the airline so that they know that it wasn't a fraud. Or, on a more local level, you can schedule that your house is re-roofed while you are not there. Personally I think that scheduling is the next best thing on the net, but the only "open source" scheduling on the net right now isn't for the advancement of scheduling, its for the interaction of existing scheduling software between proprietary systems.
Currently internet scheduling seems to be guided by commercial interests. The only thing that I've been able to find that shows any advancement is this page. From reading over this, the proposed extensions are more of a way to add internet functionality to existing schedules.
Personally I think that this is the wrong way to go. Personally I think what's needed is a system that similar to email. Imagine being able to subscribe to a scheduling-mailing-list that instead of just sending you an email with this years football games (for example), you can get this information added to your schedule and, given an rights system, updates can automatically be sent to you and you calendar can be updated accordingly.
Actually as a born and bred Canadian it's really funny watching how ignorant americans are of Canada. Basically up here we think that americans are complete idiots. You always hear stories of americans crossing the border in the middle of summer with skis on the roofs of their cars expecting the whole of Canada to be under 10 feet of snow. You laugh and think americans can't really be that stupid. Then you go down to the US and you get stupid questions (from college engineering students!) asking how living in an igloo is!
But its all good for laughs. It works both ways. Recently when I saw Big Daddy (in Canada) and the line "you know Canadian beer, its like moonshine" came up, the whole theatre went up in a roar of applause. Personally I find molson to be a bit week.
So take off eh, ya hosebrain. Like okay, pass me a beer eh.. And ah, now I get I'm done.
Okay eh..
That's basially the same thing that happened to me. I moved out and I lost 10 pounds simply because whenever I finished eating I didn't have someone always saying "you havn't had enough to eat, here's some more"..
That cube is just a multi-headed display (?) all with the different displays mapped to a different side of the cube. There really isn't anything 3d about it. Each display itself is 2d.
There is something out already that is called L-band. It is more similar to normal radio in that it is transmitted form normal radio towers. Except that L-band is line of sight and is only 800W!. An L-band network will act similar to how cell phone networks work and it is cd-quality as well, except it is local stations.
L-band features 44khz(?), stereo, digital audio and many existing stations are already transmitting on it as an experimental step. I like in Toronto and one 800W source from the CD tower reaches all the way to Oshawa (about 40 km, ~25 miles).
One of the nice features about L-band though is that the there is a data stream separate from the audio stream that can transmit information like the name of the song, current weather, etc.
Before you go out and get an satellite radio receiver, remember this, if an L-band source get's knocked out then it only costs a couple thousand to replace (and there are tons of them spread around), mean while if a satellite gets knocked out, then its a couple hundred million to replace (these will have to be geo-synchronous satellites, not LEO,)..
-?-
Think about what your suggesting for the moment. An area the size of 1/1000 the area of the united states. That may not seem like a lot, but it is.
First, I don't doubt your facts, actually I think that they are very conservative estimates but I'm argueing from a logistics point of view.
There are only two ways that I can see inwhich that large an area of solar panels can be setup, either on top of existing infrastructure (roofs, etc), or on open area.
On top of existing infrastructure would prove impossible to maintain. Think about how long it takes roofers to get onto a roof or cable remair men to get to cables. So that is out of the question.
The second is open areas. 1/1000 the size of the united states. From an ecological standpoint it would be a disaster. If you wanted to sacrifice that much area then you could do it for a lot less with hydroelectic dams (falling water is also free).
Even if you didn't worry about surface area, then you would have to look at material costs. Solar panels are made up of silicon. I personally can't even imagine producing 1000 mi^2 of solar panels. Roads are made in a bulk process and don't even come close to covering 1000 mi^2 in the us. Add into that quality control and you would have a process that makes fusion power look like peanuts. Its just not a feasible alternative.
Remember in the doj trial when said that billy saying that it would help him a lot if if he "had a survey of developers who wanted an internet browser integrated into the operating system" and he was able to get that.
Now we have linux making significant inroads into markets that microsoft wants NT to enter. Shall we ask bill if "he wanted a survey that suggests that linux can't handle server load on high performance machines compared to NT".
ITER is really one of the last big projects left from the 80s that is still running. It was designed with the philosophy if we get a small reaction with a small reactor, we'll get a big reaction with a big reactor. And, as a result, they hope to get the efficiencies required for ignition. I totally agree though that it is the wrong philosophy. However, as you noted, the only country that seems to be the notable exception is japan, who is one of the major contributors to ITER.
For those of you who havn't heard of ITER, its really a massive reactor. In present day reactors it isn't common for to have to crouch when doing maintenance inside, however the ITER reactor is 3 stories tall inside! Its really an amazing feat when you consider the stresses that the walls of the tokamak are subjected to.
Actually there is antimatter around us naturally. Except it is very rare.
Solar collectors are terribly inefficient and require a LOT of space even working at 100% efficiency. When you make something that big, then you have problems with keeping it together and maintenance on top of that. If you keep it on earth they you have the problem with cleaning them, finding room for them (imagine trying to power a city with solar collectors, you'd need an area the size of a city with solar collectors to power a city. Combined with the fact that that many solar collectors would cost a ton in materials (cost of assembly would be small due to mass production).
Next suggestion, put it in space. Sure, but they you have the problem with maintenace up there, microasteroids, and transmission problems.
Fusion has one big advantage over solar power. Its small and portable. Try using solar power under the sea. Impossible. Put a fusion reactor on the deck of the titanic with some tritium collectors and you have a self sustaining energy supply.
What real/ibm now need is some exclusive content to back things up. Unfortunately Yahoo/Broadcast.com supports both windows media and real media and I wouldn't be surprised if nbc starts to put more web content out in the future and I wouldn't be surprised if it is only available for windows media (due to the whole msnbc thing).
So where does this leave real/ibm. First of all, they can put add a bit more weight by working more closely with AOL/Netscape/Sun since their also countering the small and squishy company. Second, they need content, and lots of it. Ibm/real seem to have a good head start with audio but video is where the future is. Get working with Apple, Fox and some of the cable networks. A good pilot would be to test out weekly boardcasts of South Part/ Simpsons/ etc. There is already a market there that can be used. And from there, who knows what can happen..
Ah, those were the good old days. There must be some way of implementing that in html though, then that would be sweet. The only way I can think of would be a java client but that would just suck. The only way I can think to implement it is with Dynamic DOM rewriting that was just mentioned on mozillazine today. It allows you to rewrite parts of the screen instead of doing a total refresh. In that way you could have more of an ANSI session implemented in html (which brings up the point, the more we advance technology, the more we re-invent old ideas).
/., segfault, bedope and userfriendly. You'd have litterly a couple thousand people on each team. That would be unreal. I think the most people I've ever seen on one team was about 50 (HOD rules, ya!). And we won of course.
Bre would get really interesting though. Imagine a game of bre between
But one other thing, it would have to be the classic tradewars that was released about 12 years ago, not the updated one that came out about 6 years ago, that "newer" one was as good. Cloaks failed on you, way to many new ship types. The ferengi sucked, etc.
Check the listing for top users. One guy has an average time per work group of 10.3 seconds. It took me 4 hours to do one. He's running it one something VERY nice..
The reason why mainframes need massive cpu power is not because of the logging, its because they have a TON a power all packed together that is needed in certain applications. One person at my work commented that pcs are great for word processessing but if you have to do any number cruching they just get bogged down (and in the case of a windows pc, crash.. I mean it). Meanwhile, the same number crunching can just be thrown onto a mainframe and it'll get done. You don't have to worry wether or not it will be done at all.
Current activity of my box. Goodbye distributed.net, hello sETi.
How much do you want to bet that DHBrown is one of those "independant" computer institutes that is funded entirely by a certain redmond based company.
Not to mention what happens when you put too much current through a strand of dna. Personally, I wouldn't want to fry my dna. Next thing that will happen is that I'll start to grow a microsoft symbol on my forehead.