It`d be nice if people went `wait a minute, i dont like (for example) the `war on drugs`, lets vote for someone who`ll dump it and spend the money saved on free health insurance`. As soon as they do, the war on drugs will go away.
But one group you do not vote for which actually assist in implementing laws and policies are the appointed and hired "civil service". This is one avenue of a democratic society which does not have direct involvement with choice.
Sure, you vote for the person that you want to put into government, and they try to pass laws and policies, but often when people get in, various shifts in civil service management occur as people are promoted or shifted to other departments.
Whenever this occurs, the people under management get shifted around. This can take them a year at least to readjust and become efficient in new departments. This happens every couple of years (depends on your democratic model for holding elections).
This is the bind that causes problems. Stop political appointments now!
I just love the restrictions on servers in the home - I always ask ISPs what CGI scripts they provide, and which ones I can add: They provide suck-ass lame guestbooks, and don't allow you to add yours to the site. The only other option is either stupid java and javascripts or run a server on your home machine...
Although I use an !@H*ME service, and they have similar discussions about servers being run from the home, I haven't been cut... Mind you, I'm not running MUDs, news servers, mail servers, etc - just some extra flair for my crummy website.
Yup - sounds like they're going to be draconian about the whole thing. What they're going to get are some former AOL/WebTV people who are more than happy just flipping around the brightly-coloured pages filled with midi muzak'd tunes reading about cousin Phyllis' trip to Newmarket.
Just because there don't seem to be many changes in day-to-day life wrt what you needed to do in the 50s doesn't mean that there haven't been changes. And these changes are for the good and will only get better.
Harriet can now do what she wants to do - socially, our acceptance of women in the workplace, and the social world has changed considerably. She can run for political office, and in some parts of the world, she can vote.
Ozzy can decide he doesn't want to devote the remainder of his life to a single company - he can change jobs easily. He can even leave Harriet knowing that she could take care of herself quite fine. That pressure alone could drive people to drink - which is what they did.
The kids have more openings available to them than they'd ever have (even being boomer kids - man that bunch is spoiled). Never before could they relax knowing that the world is not on the verge of a major war.
Both Harriet and Juniorette would appreciate advances in feminine hygeine products - with or without wings.
Don't forget - these people would be leaving an era of constant threat of warfare, the McCarthy witch-hunts, extreme limitations on free speech, and a good chunk of the population (not in their neighbourhood) could not even sit at the front of a bus or use the same water fountain.
And the key factors here are technology changes, communication opening up ideas amongst people, and a good economy. And the only way to acheive this technology is through automation and technological advances.
I find Flash stuff to be annoying, and it doesn't run very well on lynx. (teeheehee) Seriously - although it is cutesy, and has some application or use in the world - it's annoying even with the [skip intro] buttons. More annoyingly so, is that there are so many sites that skip content and go for "flash" (literally). Generally if I can't get the info I want via lynx, then the site isn't worth visiting...
Oh well, someone will get off on this new introduction to the world...
I have a sparc5 in my basement, waiting for me to get a CD-burner to start putting Linux on it.
Right now it's got some older version of solaris, but hey - it's a 64Mb machine, SCSI toys, and to be honest, it's an excellent machine.
A buddy of mine picked up a pile of Sparc 1's, and they're doing great for him.
Re:Am I the only one that thinks this would be coo
on
Cassini Glitches
·
· Score: 1
I envision that it would be the remote probe version of two teenagers taking pictures of each other with their polaroid cameras...
But yeah, that would be real cool. You are not the only one thinking this. I wonder if somebody could post a link to an overlay of where Cassini (the space probe not the body) is now with where Galileo (the space probe not the body) is now?
I'd say the first push would be the moon - fire up rocket after rocket, building up the infrastructure until the colony reaches a critical mass - just large enough to be self-supporting, but small enough not to have everybody die through heat death/internal pollution. As I said before, permament status comes when the first child is born and raised away from the Earth.
It wouldn't be a pretty colony - there'd be many deaths, and the first attempts might not make it, but they would be the first country I'd expect to be able to pull it off. Supply missions would be sparse if they planned it right, but even now, the ISS is running into issues about failing components. I suspect the Chinese will land a series of probes on the moon, and begin trying out heavier industrial methods in space such as smelting.
Mars eh? I still think it's too far away - the moon is just nice and close enough.
They may even skip the whole space station phase and just go for the moon colony. Personally I think that's be best route anyway.
The wonderful teacher who said, "go ahead and try to break the security system."
"The teacher was probably trying to get the students interested in computers and invited them to do it," he said. "He gave them a challenge, probably thinking they couldn't do it and didn't think of the ramifications of what might happen if they did do it."
Just another case where teachers who get to comfortable in their jobs make flippant remarks to people (teenagers) who have a lot of extra energy and zeal. They tend to forget that a few of their students might still be awake, paying attention to their words - and even more so when there is a possibility of reward and challenge!
The security software company has said it isn't aware of any reward for anyone hacking into its software.
And probably won't be any - that's not the greatest publicity: that out of a flippant challenge, a high-school kid broke into your system. Mind you, there's not a lot of details as to what the measures were, and how he circumvented them (probably protected for our safety by the DMCA).
I honestly would have done the same thing if I was in the student's shoes. It sounded like a cool thing, and if you can't trust your teachers...
The current ion-drive is awesome on DS-1, but the big issue is how to power it. Even with the new solar panels on DS-1, I doubt that it could power the drive sufficiently. I think it would be another nuclear RTG jobby...
Certainly as fast as possible would be nice, but I think the esxisting probe design will still get it there in time to watch it all happen.
I'd honestly love to be around for the next time that it melts - but by that time (I hope) we'll have a whole bevy of probes and satellites around each planet in our system.
I wouldn't call you a Luddite. Ned and his bunch were responding to what they considered to be a real threat. It turns out that people are still employed - not replaced by machines as much as the intellectuals would have enjoyed. Ludd wasn't against machines so much of the de-humanizing effect as he was against the loss of jobs. Theodore K. however was more against the de-humanizing effect that he forsaw as a looming disaster to man. Machines were not bad, it's just sometimes their implementation is bad.
Certainly there is merit and worth with human face-to-face interaction, but I can tell you that I have never been closer to so many friends now that I have a webcam and e-mail. There are whole communities of people who can get in touch with people of their like mind which otherwise would have been difficult if not impossible.
It's nothing really new though - moving from talking with only your family to talking with other families, to other groups of families, to states, and societies happened in the past. And everytime, change occurred, and we move forward just a little bit further.
If anything, the computers and networks of the world have just allowed the archetypal primate grooming to just extend itself to more people.
It certainly beats waiting around 248 years before the planet becomes warm enough to thaw its atmosphere out again. Although we could send a probe out later, it would be nice to have data collected on this planet before the freeze, during the freeze, and hopefully after the freeze.
Speaking about freezes, I hope this doesn't turn into a stupid, "Well, we gave you the Pluto thingy, and now you want another probe to Europa? No - we in government think that we've been more than generous." conversation.
It's coming up to the next century, and we don't have a permament presence in space yet? A space station does not constitute a permament presence - having children in a colony away from the Earth, growing up, and having their own children would do so. I expect China would pull it off before the Americans do so - they seem to have the gumption to just go for broke.
But, kudos for NASA for getting out to Pluto, but I feel it'll be at the expense of other missions from a government perspective. Fools.
Yeah, I just re-read this article in Tragedy of the Moon? That's cool - hang on, here's the book - yep - it's on Chapter IV, The Week Excuse.
Oddly enough, though, a 13-month year would be perfect in this respect, since 364 = 13 x 28, and 28 = 7 x 4. In a 13-month year, each month would be just four weeks long and, of course, twenty-eight days long.
According to the publishing date, this was originally printed in 1972 by Mercury Press. A very good book with some interesting theories...
It's interesting that this article goes on about open sourced codecs - there's a company here in Ottawa called Lumic which is doing stuff in this field:
Lumic's low-power, reconfigurable solution makes it possible for 2.5G/3G wireless handset OEMs and PDA vendors to offer real-time, interactive mobile multimedia applications, using MPEG-4 and other open industry standards.
I just thought it interesting as I recently had a job offer from them, and here is an article about MPEG-4.
But MPEG4 on wireless? I'd like to see that happen - true two-way video conversations.
Nortel is running these ads showing off this type of technology too. We're into some fun toys in the next year or two for sure.
Yes, it appears that we are moving forward to accelerated healing though light-emitting devices. I doubt that we'd see immediate healing, but a 40-50% speedup in recovery would certainly reduce hospital stays, and allow people to get back to their lives faster. If it's as inobtrusive as just holding the device up to the healing area, then this would allow for home use as well...
But one thing I'd be interested in is whether the speedup has some future side-effect issue such as cells not lining up properly because they're normal process is accelerated.
And so State funded censorship is a good idea? I just personally couldn't trust the buggers - especially if I were living in the USA. As I said before, it wouldn't be long before something new became "questionable material."
If I wanted 'Giant Jugs' and 'Bomb Making for Dummies' at my public library for whatever purposes, then I would normally go through regular channels to acquire them through the library. It's just nicer now that the internet can bring this information to me far faster. And having that public is great! More information, more education!
More information, more education is much better - gives the general citizenry a better stand to make decisions for themselves instead of relying on Government or Religion. It gives them the freedom to do so.
Your biggest threat isn't blocking porn in the libraries or schools, it's blocking questionable material.
What constitutes questionable material?
That would depend on who defines the filter and the laws - right now it might be porn, and information on making bombs or drugs. Tomorrow it could even be deemed that reading about world events that become censored. Future people might not be able to read contrary (contrary to the state's views) opinions on open bulletin-boards.
Although you might have control within your own house, why should people who do not have that in-house access be subjected to different laws. These are public sites and should be left free.
I lost my disks for that game - used to play it on my XT for years. I always loved the RPG side of it, and man, it wasted some of the best hours of my life. Oh - what a trip!
I used to have a tactic of throwing the rules of the game out, visiting Las Vegas on repeated trips, building up one or two characters, allowing the rest to die, and then sacking the Monks and Nuns up in their crazy stronghold. After that, I'd have powered armour, proton axes, and just nuke everything that moved...
This smells like a hoax - imagine these people putting so much effort into converting the PS2s into viable development stations and networking them? It doesn't seem likely. I get visions of Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader working into the wee hours of the night, building new kernel loads...
On the other hand, if this article isn't a spoof, then it could be an elaborate plot to deprive American children of their decadent and infidel Christmas celebrations. Once again, I get visions of Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader wringing their hands in glee knowing that they have disrupted life in Frostbite Falls...
Moose and Squirrel, where are you when we need you?
Trinity was quite fun - I never quite finished the game, and lost the disk while moving from apartment to apartment. It was such an odd game, and I loved it. Whenever I talk to people about text adventure games, I mention Trinity, and they think I'm talking about the babe in The Matrix.
Although I thought it was too bad that the Iridium venture didn't work out, I was glad to hear that the sattelites could be salvaged to do some usefull work. At first I had heard that the military had purchased them, and I was afraid that they would be squandered into some useless project.
But now, we can get a nice big map of upper atmosphere electromagnetic interactions! Wooo! What would be nice though is to see some dynamic graphics of the atmosphere EM data. If somebody has a link to this data or the results, I think it would be usefull to post it here. I'd like to know how much the data changes, and what it looks like.
Although this may help a few of the disabled, quite a few people do not have the fine motor control over the motion of their head. I think this technology will be nice for some, and that is good, but there are still people out of reach.
There are a lot of people who do not have eyes to be able to make use of this technology. This is similar to the proposals of having retina scanners for ATM access.
It's a nice idea, and I think that the eye-scanning technology is cool, but I still think that the ultimate solution will be the brain/machine interface. Although waaaaay off in the future, it would truly allow all people access to computers and the future.
As an aside - coupling this with the enforced ads replacing pop-ups on webpages, marketers could truly tell whether or not people were really looking at their ads.
my first wordprocessor that really had oomph! I had used Paperclip on the C64, but Wordstar was great. I only stopped using Wordstar after I discovered a copy of Chi-writer on a pile of diskettes loaned to me ages ago.
Chi-writer by far was awesome - great WYSIWYG mathematics/symbols all on a diskette or two!
Slashdot Mirror
But one group you do not vote for which actually assist in implementing laws and policies are the appointed and hired "civil service". This is one avenue of a democratic society which does not have direct involvement with choice.
Sure, you vote for the person that you want to put into government, and they try to pass laws and policies, but often when people get in, various shifts in civil service management occur as people are promoted or shifted to other departments.
Whenever this occurs, the people under management get shifted around. This can take them a year at least to readjust and become efficient in new departments. This happens every couple of years (depends on your democratic model for holding elections).
This is the bind that causes problems. Stop political appointments now!
I just love the restrictions on servers in the home - I always ask ISPs what CGI scripts they provide, and which ones I can add: They provide suck-ass lame guestbooks, and don't allow you to add yours to the site. The only other option is either stupid java and javascripts or run a server on your home machine...
Although I use an !@H*ME service, and they have similar discussions about servers being run from the home, I haven't been cut... Mind you, I'm not running MUDs, news servers, mail servers, etc - just some extra flair for my crummy website.
Yup - sounds like they're going to be draconian about the whole thing. What they're going to get are some former AOL/WebTV people who are more than happy just flipping around the brightly-coloured pages filled with midi muzak'd tunes reading about cousin Phyllis' trip to Newmarket.
Not only can the robotic ants find the minerals to make things, they might be able to actually build the tiny screws, and then sort them!
I just find this funny since there once was a discussion (no joke) to train ants on a satellite to sort tiny screws...
Just because there don't seem to be many changes in day-to-day life wrt what you needed to do in the 50s doesn't mean that there haven't been changes. And these changes are for the good and will only get better.
Harriet can now do what she wants to do - socially, our acceptance of women in the workplace, and the social world has changed considerably. She can run for political office, and in some parts of the world, she can vote.
Ozzy can decide he doesn't want to devote the remainder of his life to a single company - he can change jobs easily. He can even leave Harriet knowing that she could take care of herself quite fine. That pressure alone could drive people to drink - which is what they did.
The kids have more openings available to them than they'd ever have (even being boomer kids - man that bunch is spoiled). Never before could they relax knowing that the world is not on the verge of a major war.
Both Harriet and Juniorette would appreciate advances in feminine hygeine products - with or without wings.
Don't forget - these people would be leaving an era of constant threat of warfare, the McCarthy witch-hunts, extreme limitations on free speech, and a good chunk of the population (not in their neighbourhood) could not even sit at the front of a bus or use the same water fountain.
And the key factors here are technology changes, communication opening up ideas amongst people, and a good economy. And the only way to acheive this technology is through automation and technological advances.
Blathering has now ended...
I find Flash stuff to be annoying, and it doesn't run very well on lynx. (teeheehee) Seriously - although it is cutesy, and has some application or use in the world - it's annoying even with the [skip intro] buttons. More annoyingly so, is that there are so many sites that skip content and go for "flash" (literally). Generally if I can't get the info I want via lynx, then the site isn't worth visiting...
Oh well, someone will get off on this new introduction to the world...
The really cool looking ones were the phones with the cameras - two-way video conversations? Wild. I want one now.
$10,000? Where'd you get that number?
I have a sparc5 in my basement, waiting for me to get a CD-burner to start putting Linux on it.
Right now it's got some older version of solaris, but hey - it's a 64Mb machine, SCSI toys, and to be honest, it's an excellent machine.
A buddy of mine picked up a pile of Sparc 1's, and they're doing great for him.
I envision that it would be the remote probe version of two teenagers taking pictures of each other with their polaroid cameras...
But yeah, that would be real cool. You are not the only one thinking this. I wonder if somebody could post a link to an overlay of where Cassini (the space probe not the body) is now with where Galileo (the space probe not the body) is now?
That would be a cool synching up.
Kudos for raising the question.
Blue screen of death. Works almost everytime!
I just had to put those $0.02 in...
Laugh - it's kind of funny...
I'd say the first push would be the moon - fire up rocket after rocket, building up the infrastructure until the colony reaches a critical mass - just large enough to be self-supporting, but small enough not to have everybody die through heat death/internal pollution. As I said before, permament status comes when the first child is born and raised away from the Earth.
It wouldn't be a pretty colony - there'd be many deaths, and the first attempts might not make it, but they would be the first country I'd expect to be able to pull it off. Supply missions would be sparse if they planned it right, but even now, the ISS is running into issues about failing components. I suspect the Chinese will land a series of probes on the moon, and begin trying out heavier industrial methods in space such as smelting.
Mars eh? I still think it's too far away - the moon is just nice and close enough.
They may even skip the whole space station phase and just go for the moon colony. Personally I think that's be best route anyway.
The wonderful teacher who said, "go ahead and try to break the security system."
"The teacher was probably trying to get the students interested in computers and invited them to do it," he said. "He gave them a challenge, probably thinking they couldn't do it and didn't think of the ramifications of what might happen if they did do it."
Just another case where teachers who get to comfortable in their jobs make flippant remarks to people (teenagers) who have a lot of extra energy and zeal. They tend to forget that a few of their students might still be awake, paying attention to their words - and even more so when there is a possibility of reward and challenge!
The security software company has said it isn't aware of any reward for anyone hacking into its software.
And probably won't be any - that's not the greatest publicity: that out of a flippant challenge, a high-school kid broke into your system. Mind you, there's not a lot of details as to what the measures were, and how he circumvented them (probably protected for our safety by the DMCA).
I honestly would have done the same thing if I was in the student's shoes. It sounded like a cool thing, and if you can't trust your teachers...
The current ion-drive is awesome on DS-1, but the big issue is how to power it. Even with the new solar panels on DS-1, I doubt that it could power the drive sufficiently. I think it would be another nuclear RTG jobby...
Certainly as fast as possible would be nice, but I think the esxisting probe design will still get it there in time to watch it all happen.
I'd honestly love to be around for the next time that it melts - but by that time (I hope) we'll have a whole bevy of probes and satellites around each planet in our system.
I wouldn't call you a Luddite. Ned and his bunch were responding to what they considered to be a real threat. It turns out that people are still employed - not replaced by machines as much as the intellectuals would have enjoyed. Ludd wasn't against machines so much of the de-humanizing effect as he was against the loss of jobs. Theodore K. however was more against the de-humanizing effect that he forsaw as a looming disaster to man. Machines were not bad, it's just sometimes their implementation is bad.
Certainly there is merit and worth with human face-to-face interaction, but I can tell you that I have never been closer to so many friends now that I have a webcam and e-mail. There are whole communities of people who can get in touch with people of their like mind which otherwise would have been difficult if not impossible.
It's nothing really new though - moving from talking with only your family to talking with other families, to other groups of families, to states, and societies happened in the past. And everytime, change occurred, and we move forward just a little bit further.
If anything, the computers and networks of the world have just allowed the archetypal primate grooming to just extend itself to more people.
It certainly beats waiting around 248 years before the planet becomes warm enough to thaw its atmosphere out again. Although we could send a probe out later, it would be nice to have data collected on this planet before the freeze, during the freeze, and hopefully after the freeze.
Speaking about freezes, I hope this doesn't turn into a stupid, "Well, we gave you the Pluto thingy, and now you want another probe to Europa? No - we in government think that we've been more than generous." conversation.
It's coming up to the next century, and we don't have a permament presence in space yet? A space station does not constitute a permament presence - having children in a colony away from the Earth, growing up, and having their own children would do so. I expect China would pull it off before the Americans do so - they seem to have the gumption to just go for broke.
But, kudos for NASA for getting out to Pluto, but I feel it'll be at the expense of other missions from a government perspective. Fools.
Oddly enough, though, a 13-month year would be perfect in this respect, since 364 = 13 x 28, and 28 = 7 x 4. In a 13-month year, each month would be just four weeks long and, of course, twenty-eight days long.
According to the publishing date, this was originally printed in 1972 by Mercury Press. A very good book with some interesting theories...
It's interesting that this article goes on about open sourced codecs - there's a company here in Ottawa called Lumic which is doing stuff in this field:
Lumic's low-power, reconfigurable solution makes it possible for 2.5G/3G wireless handset OEMs and PDA vendors to offer real-time, interactive mobile multimedia applications, using MPEG-4 and other open industry standards.
I just thought it interesting as I recently had a job offer from them, and here is an article about MPEG-4.
But MPEG4 on wireless? I'd like to see that happen - true two-way video conversations.
Nortel is running these ads showing off this type of technology too. We're into some fun toys in the next year or two for sure.
Utter coolness...
Yes, it appears that we are moving forward to accelerated healing though light-emitting devices. I doubt that we'd see immediate healing, but a 40-50% speedup in recovery would certainly reduce hospital stays, and allow people to get back to their lives faster. If it's as inobtrusive as just holding the device up to the healing area, then this would allow for home use as well...
But one thing I'd be interested in is whether the speedup has some future side-effect issue such as cells not lining up properly because they're normal process is accelerated.
Other than that, oh yeah!
And so State funded censorship is a good idea? I just personally couldn't trust the buggers - especially if I were living in the USA. As I said before, it wouldn't be long before something new became "questionable material."
If I wanted 'Giant Jugs' and 'Bomb Making for Dummies' at my public library for whatever purposes, then I would normally go through regular channels to acquire them through the library. It's just nicer now that the internet can bring this information to me far faster. And having that public is great! More information, more education!
More information, more education is much better - gives the general citizenry a better stand to make decisions for themselves instead of relying on Government or Religion. It gives them the freedom to do so.
Your biggest threat isn't blocking porn in the libraries or schools, it's blocking questionable material.
What constitutes questionable material?
That would depend on who defines the filter and the laws - right now it might be porn, and information on making bombs or drugs. Tomorrow it could even be deemed that reading about world events that become censored. Future people might not be able to read contrary (contrary to the state's views) opinions on open bulletin-boards.
Although you might have control within your own house, why should people who do not have that in-house access be subjected to different laws. These are public sites and should be left free.
I lost my disks for that game - used to play it on my XT for years. I always loved the RPG side of it, and man, it wasted some of the best hours of my life. Oh - what a trip!
I used to have a tactic of throwing the rules of the game out, visiting Las Vegas on repeated trips, building up one or two characters, allowing the rest to die, and then sacking the Monks and Nuns up in their crazy stronghold. After that, I'd have powered armour, proton axes, and just nuke everything that moved...
Wow - now I want to get my hands on that game...
This smells like a hoax - imagine these people putting so much effort into converting the PS2s into viable development stations and networking them? It doesn't seem likely. I get visions of Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader working into the wee hours of the night, building new kernel loads...
On the other hand, if this article isn't a spoof, then it could be an elaborate plot to deprive American children of their decadent and infidel Christmas celebrations. Once again, I get visions of Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader wringing their hands in glee knowing that they have disrupted life in Frostbite Falls...
Moose and Squirrel, where are you when we need you?
Trinity was quite fun - I never quite finished the game, and lost the disk while moving from apartment to apartment. It was such an odd game, and I loved it. Whenever I talk to people about text adventure games, I mention Trinity, and they think I'm talking about the babe in The Matrix.
Although I thought it was too bad that the Iridium venture didn't work out, I was glad to hear that the sattelites could be salvaged to do some usefull work. At first I had heard that the military had purchased them, and I was afraid that they would be squandered into some useless project.
But now, we can get a nice big map of upper atmosphere electromagnetic interactions! Wooo! What would be nice though is to see some dynamic graphics of the atmosphere EM data. If somebody has a link to this data or the results, I think it would be usefull to post it here. I'd like to know how much the data changes, and what it looks like.
Once again - good save in the name of science...
Although this may help a few of the disabled, quite a few people do not have the fine motor control over the motion of their head. I think this technology will be nice for some, and that is good, but there are still people out of reach.
There are a lot of people who do not have eyes to be able to make use of this technology. This is similar to the proposals of having retina scanners for ATM access.
It's a nice idea, and I think that the eye-scanning technology is cool, but I still think that the ultimate solution will be the brain/machine interface. Although waaaaay off in the future, it would truly allow all people access to computers and the future.
As an aside - coupling this with the enforced ads replacing pop-ups on webpages, marketers could truly tell whether or not people were really looking at their ads.
my first wordprocessor that really had oomph! I had used Paperclip on the C64, but Wordstar was great. I only stopped using Wordstar after I discovered a copy of Chi-writer on a pile of diskettes loaned to me ages ago.
Chi-writer by far was awesome - great WYSIWYG mathematics/symbols all on a diskette or two!
Sniff, sniff...