Does anyone have any idea how traffic control would be handled with these things, if everyone were using them at some point in the future?
Hows about this: Make sure all the aircraft are run fully by computers.(this is far in the future;) Give each aircraft some local communication system, like a future version of bluetooth, with longer range. Equip the aircraft with an extremely accurate GPS unit, that works in three dimensions. This way, you don't need a centralised ATC system, you can just consider the aircraft as a distributed network that evolves it's weaving flightpaths as it goes along, sort of like a large, chaotic flock of birds. The advantage of this would be greatly increased robustness, and probably efficiency.
You can actually get some books on the internet, just not very many. I've personally, em, 'noticed' copies of dune & neuromancer & also some C/C++ textbooks on Gnutella. This is rare, though.
Personal flight will never be widespread. Falling to your death is just too high a risk for a normal person. And personal ground transportation is OK (not great, but good enough).
I think personal flight will become widespread, but not for a long time. I think just now there are some factors holding back personal flight, viz.:
1)Expense - way more expensive than cars. But, in 50 or 100 years I would expect people to be much wealthier and personal planes much cheaper. Plus, for personal flight you really need a VTOL capable aircraft, which adds to the cost greatly.
2)Becoming qualified enough to fly one. You can't just let any fool fly an aircraft - they're dangerous! But, in the future I would expect the job to be done by computers, which negates this little awkwardness.
3)Air Traffic Control. We have got enough problems as it is controlling our skys, but this would also be taken care of by computers and also improved GPS systems in the future.
4)The inherent absurdity of using an aircraft to pop down to your local newsagent. But then, we probably once thought this of cars. All it takes is for personal aircraft to become an attainable status symbol and - whoosh! - they'll take off all right, no matter the absurdity. It's happened with lots of other things, right?
I expect that the age of the plane will eventually arrive, allright. Until they are replaced by matter transporters.
Yeah, I saw that. It's been plastered all over the news (in my country anyway) for ages, which makes it even more scary for writers that he could not make a go of it.
I agree with you that authors are safe for a few years yet, it's just inevitable that one day this will happen, that's all.
What would be really cool is some sort of 'open source' writing effort. Everybody being free to collaberate on large writing efforts, and modify each others ideas. I'd love that! Id like to start some huge Space Opera, colaberated on by hundreds of writers. It'd be lush.
You may be right, but thats not the point. The point is that piracy is a perfectly natural thing, and that the RIAA's actions are merely exacerbating it. They can ban Napster, but then you just get Gnutella to deal with. They have to accept that this type of music distribution is here to stay, and work with the public's needs, not against.
I think we are looking at a future when all music is totally free, and artists will make there money through other channels (live performance, for example). Even better, the recording industry itself might die a death. Just imagine - no more intense promotion of artists, hype etc. Artists would have to start from the grass roots.
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
I just searched the net and could not find the damndest thing. No sites specifically about stupid British laws - the Americans seem to have a monopoly in this area;)
You'll still need logs. Hundreds of bloody logs, each of which will get pulped and used to print out your log files. You can't escape from logs. Give it up.
The porn-viewing public - which forms just 2.5 per cent of the database - cannot keep up: the number of sites is growing exponentially but the number of visitors to them only linearly, says Whitelaw.
Does this mean that the entire internet will soon be pr0n? That porn sites will outnumber the users hugely? Sounds like my kind of hell.
Thats true - and very interesting:-) You're probably right that people didn't have much of an idea what personal computers were supposed to be like back then, and that this helped fuel creativity.
IMHO, the innovation was due to there simply being no "establishment" around yet, no preconceptions of what personal computers were for.
This is sort of similar to what I was saying with regards to people on the Linux platform being at adversity with Microsoft - or the 'establishment'. Back in the eighties, there was no establishment, &so this helped innovation is where I agree with you:-)
Back then, I didn't think of my computers as being limited. (They were limited, but I didn't know it, because I have not lived in 2000 yet.;-)
This is the only thing I quibble with. Probably my memories are different from yours, but I do remember being frustrated by the limitations of the machine. I think that users have always wanted to do the same sort of things with their machines, no matter what time we are talking about. The problem with early eighties machines was that the simplest things (by todays standards) were bloody difficult. This also helped innovation.
It's interesting that an advert of this type should appear in Germany first. Is SuSE proportionately more popular there than, say, Red Hat in America? Or are they using Germany as some sort of test bed? Or is their German Marketing department 'off message'?
I love bizarre laws like this. Such as that in The Isle of Man, if you find a Scotsman on your land on a Sunday, it's legal to shoot him. I won't be going there!
Also, the town of Berwick upon Tweed was legally at a state of war with Russia from 1855 to about 1982. This is because at the time of the Crimean war, nobody was sure if Berwick was in Scotland or England, so the Declaration of War said " The nations of England, Scotland, Wales and the Town of Berwick upon Tweed hereby declare war on Russia " or something like that. But when they signed the peace treaty, they forgot about Berwick.
But, years later, in the 80's, the Mayor of Berwick took a trip to Russia and signed a peace treaty with the leader (Kruschev?). He gave a speech, saying "The citizens of Russia can now rest easy in there beds, safe in the knowledge that they are not under imminent threat of attack from Berwick upon Tweed." Really funny, considering Berwick has a population of about 15000 or something.
I would say that there is a difference between the 8 bit eighties innovators and there modern descendants. On the eighties platforms, innovation was fueled by adversity - the adversity of trying to use an extremely limited machine for something useful. Now, modern hackers are also driven by adversity - the adversity of microsoft. But this seems to lead (not all the time, of course) to emulation, rather than innovation, or even invention. These days, people are constantly trying to emulate Microsoft, but do it better, by bringing out office platforms, free OS's etc. I just think that the prior type of adversity led to a more freewheeling type of creativity, and people didn't care so much what everybody else thought.
Good job the simulation is in Britain then, eh? That means they don't have guns, they have truncheons and fists and stuff. It seems obvious that the Cambridge team should have used the Tekken 3 engine, or some such.
Yes, obviously you are correct - all humour is a reference to some degree or another. But, too clarify my point (or wriggle out of this hole;-), I would say that the difference is that modern comedy shows do the following:
1) Their references are necessary - if you don't get the reference, you don't get the joke
2) The references of older shows are to a wider, or common pool of knowledge among everyone. If not, they are subtle, and not necessary
3) Modern shows make references about other Modern shows and 'fads', which older shows just didn't
4)In modern shows these references are rammed down you're throat all the time. They seem to be the entire point of the show at times (cf The Simpsons)
Anyway, I definately think there is a qualitative difference between the two. Modern shows seem to be all pop culture and making inside jokes that will make the guy who gets it feel pleased with himself for having got it. It just gets a bit tiresome, after a while.
To be honest, I've never much liked the Simpsons. Why? Because it's humour is far too referential - every joke in it seems to be a reference to some film/book/famous person/song/whatever, which really gets on my tits. Unfortunately, this type of humour seems to be a cancer of the modern age; all films and sit coms released these days suffer from the same malaise. Remember the days when humour used to be original, and stand alone? Classics like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder (excuse the British slant). Those days seem to have disappeared.
I have a theory that the reason for this is the feminisation of modern entertainment. Everything now has to be comfortable, known and within safe boundaries. Another example of this would be Star Trek (not humour, I know). It used to have people of real character - Kirk, Spock, Bones etc - and almost every episode involved travelling to new planets and having new experiences. But, in TNG, they hardly ever visit new planets! They are always getting trapped in their damned holodeck, stuck in their own minds. Everything is directed inwards, rather than outwards, towards the frontier. This inward directed cancer of self reference seems to be spreading throughout our entertainment industry, and it's really pissing me off!
I ordered about £100 (British pounds) worth of books from Amazon about 6 months ago, and have not recieved one bit of spam from them since. Do they have one policy for America and another for the rest of the world? That would just be so typical!
Why were the old 8-bit computers such a hive of creativity? The things people did with them back then seem to be much more way-out than the thing people do today - it must be the challenge of owning such a limited machine.
My favourite 8-bit memory was when I was 8 years old. I had an old Sinclair Speccy, with a rubber keyboard, and an insane surfing game that I now can't remember the name of.
The game came with a small surf board that you affixed to the keyboard of the speccy. You then stood on the board, and leaned in various directions. On the bottom of the board were a number of protrusions that pressed the appropriate keys. You could stand and surf away all night long, against your friends, controlling the stick insect guy on the telly, with a tape of the beach boys in the background. It was truly hilarious.
I also remember getting a CD-Rom for the Speccy in about 1990 - ages before I ever saw one on anything else. You plugged your music cd player into the speccy (or more correctly, into the expansion port that plugged into the speccy) & would then choose from about 20 (I think) games. The games loaded in an amazing 20 seconds! I was flabbergasted. I love stuff like this.
If anything is discovered in space these days it seems that someone has to close with "and that means there is a chance of finding life there". I guess that must be the way to get funding these days - starting with Nasa's life bearing asteroid hoax a few years back.
I know what you mean - they do bang on about it a tad overmuch. Still, Titan does appear to be an interesting candidate for life; it has organics, water, nitrogen - all the right ingredients. The only problem is the temperature - way too cold! Interestingly, it may have liquid water at depth under it's crust. As biologists estimate that ~90% of the Earths biomass is under the Earths surface - bacteria have been found many miles below the surface - this bodes well for the possibility of life on Titan. Conditions 50 miles below the surface of Titan shouldn't be to dissimilar to 50 miles below the surface of Earth.
Beyond that, there is always the (small) possibilty of some exotic form of life on the surface of Titan. It does appear to have a chemically interesting environment, after all, with it's nitrogen seas and simple organics, but the temperature would impose limitations on life there. Perhaps the low energy would mean that life there would proceed at a much slower pace, compared to fiery hot Earth. But this part is much more unlikely.
Regarding NASA embellishing the chances of life being there, I agree - they probably are. But who cares? If it gets them more money I support them fully;-) You just have to take what they say in this area with a pinch of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, they're thrill seeking maniacs!
Hows about this: Make sure all the aircraft are run fully by computers.(this is far in the future;) Give each aircraft some local communication system, like a future version of bluetooth, with longer range. Equip the aircraft with an extremely accurate GPS unit, that works in three dimensions. This way, you don't need a centralised ATC system, you can just consider the aircraft as a distributed network that evolves it's weaving flightpaths as it goes along, sort of like a large, chaotic flock of birds. The advantage of this would be greatly increased robustness, and probably efficiency.
You can actually get some books on the internet, just not very many. I've personally, em, 'noticed' copies of dune & neuromancer & also some C/C++ textbooks on Gnutella. This is rare, though.
I think personal flight will become widespread, but not for a long time. I think just now there are some factors holding back personal flight, viz.:
1)Expense - way more expensive than cars. But, in 50 or 100 years I would expect people to be much wealthier and personal planes much cheaper. Plus, for personal flight you really need a VTOL capable aircraft, which adds to the cost greatly.
2)Becoming qualified enough to fly one. You can't just let any fool fly an aircraft - they're dangerous! But, in the future I would expect the job to be done by computers, which negates this little awkwardness.
3)Air Traffic Control. We have got enough problems as it is controlling our skys, but this would also be taken care of by computers and also improved GPS systems in the future.
4)The inherent absurdity of using an aircraft to pop down to your local newsagent. But then, we probably once thought this of cars. All it takes is for personal aircraft to become an attainable status symbol and - whoosh! - they'll take off all right, no matter the absurdity. It's happened with lots of other things, right?
I expect that the age of the plane will eventually arrive, allright. Until they are replaced by matter transporters.
I agree with you that authors are safe for a few years yet, it's just inevitable that one day this will happen, that's all.
What would be really cool is some sort of 'open source' writing effort. Everybody being free to collaberate on large writing efforts, and modify each others ideas. I'd love that! Id like to start some huge Space Opera, colaberated on by hundreds of writers. It'd be lush.
I think we are looking at a future when all music is totally free, and artists will make there money through other channels (live performance, for example). Even better, the recording industry itself might die a death. Just imagine - no more intense promotion of artists, hype etc. Artists would have to start from the grass roots.
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
It is now. How can they put two identical stories up inside a few days?
However, I'm sure it is a rich field...
Only problem is that you'll need to bring along lots of liquid oxygen - so it's a no-win situation.
The porn-viewing public - which forms just 2.5 per cent of the database - cannot keep up: the number of sites is growing exponentially but the number of visitors to them only linearly, says Whitelaw.
Does this mean that the entire internet will soon be pr0n? That porn sites will outnumber the users hugely? Sounds like my kind of hell.
IMHO, the innovation was due to there simply being no "establishment" around yet, no preconceptions of what personal computers were for.
This is sort of similar to what I was saying with regards to people on the Linux platform being at adversity with Microsoft - or the 'establishment'. Back in the eighties, there was no establishment, &so this helped innovation is where I agree with you :-)
Back then, I didn't think of my computers as being limited. (They were limited, but I didn't know it, because I have not lived in 2000 yet. ;-)
This is the only thing I quibble with. Probably my memories are different from yours, but I do remember being frustrated by the limitations of the machine. I think that users have always wanted to do the same sort of things with their machines, no matter what time we are talking about. The problem with early eighties machines was that the simplest things (by todays standards) were bloody difficult. This also helped innovation.
'buzzword' is a buzzword. OOPS!
It's interesting that an advert of this type should appear in Germany first. Is SuSE proportionately more popular there than, say, Red Hat in America? Or are they using Germany as some sort of test bed? Or is their German Marketing department 'off message'?
Also, the town of Berwick upon Tweed was legally at a state of war with Russia from 1855 to about 1982. This is because at the time of the Crimean war, nobody was sure if Berwick was in Scotland or England, so the Declaration of War said " The nations of England, Scotland, Wales and the Town of Berwick upon Tweed hereby declare war on Russia " or something like that. But when they signed the peace treaty, they forgot about Berwick.
But, years later, in the 80's, the Mayor of Berwick took a trip to Russia and signed a peace treaty with the leader (Kruschev?). He gave a speech, saying "The citizens of Russia can now rest easy in there beds, safe in the knowledge that they are not under imminent threat of attack from Berwick upon Tweed." Really funny, considering Berwick has a population of about 15000 or something.
Only problem is, you only get one life. And you'll get sacked. Still, it'd be worth it if you get to kill your boss.
1) Their references are necessary - if you don't get the reference, you don't get the joke
2) The references of older shows are to a wider, or common pool of knowledge among everyone. If not, they are subtle, and not necessary
3) Modern shows make references about other Modern shows and 'fads', which older shows just didn't
4)In modern shows these references are rammed down you're throat all the time. They seem to be the entire point of the show at times (cf The Simpsons)
Anyway, I definately think there is a qualitative difference between the two. Modern shows seem to be all pop culture and making inside jokes that will make the guy who gets it feel pleased with himself for having got it. It just gets a bit tiresome, after a while.
I have a theory that the reason for this is the feminisation of modern entertainment. Everything now has to be comfortable, known and within safe boundaries. Another example of this would be Star Trek (not humour, I know). It used to have people of real character - Kirk, Spock, Bones etc - and almost every episode involved travelling to new planets and having new experiences. But, in TNG, they hardly ever visit new planets! They are always getting trapped in their damned holodeck, stuck in their own minds. Everything is directed inwards, rather than outwards, towards the frontier. This inward directed cancer of self reference seems to be spreading throughout our entertainment industry, and it's really pissing me off!
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
What about the right to bear legs?
I ordered about £100 (British pounds) worth of books from Amazon about 6 months ago, and have not recieved one bit of spam from them since. Do they have one policy for America and another for the rest of the world? That would just be so typical!
My favourite 8-bit memory was when I was 8 years old. I had an old Sinclair Speccy, with a rubber keyboard, and an insane surfing game that I now can't remember the name of.
The game came with a small surf board that you affixed to the keyboard of the speccy. You then stood on the board, and leaned in various directions. On the bottom of the board were a number of protrusions that pressed the appropriate keys. You could stand and surf away all night long, against your friends, controlling the stick insect guy on the telly, with a tape of the beach boys in the background. It was truly hilarious.
I also remember getting a CD-Rom for the Speccy in about 1990 - ages before I ever saw one on anything else. You plugged your music cd player into the speccy (or more correctly, into the expansion port that plugged into the speccy) & would then choose from about 20 (I think) games. The games loaded in an amazing 20 seconds! I was flabbergasted. I love stuff like this.
I know what you mean - they do bang on about it a tad overmuch. Still, Titan does appear to be an interesting candidate for life; it has organics, water, nitrogen - all the right ingredients. The only problem is the temperature - way too cold! Interestingly, it may have liquid water at depth under it's crust. As biologists estimate that ~90% of the Earths biomass is under the Earths surface - bacteria have been found many miles below the surface - this bodes well for the possibility of life on Titan. Conditions 50 miles below the surface of Titan shouldn't be to dissimilar to 50 miles below the surface of Earth.
Beyond that, there is always the (small) possibilty of some exotic form of life on the surface of Titan. It does appear to have a chemically interesting environment, after all, with it's nitrogen seas and simple organics, but the temperature would impose limitations on life there. Perhaps the low energy would mean that life there would proceed at a much slower pace, compared to fiery hot Earth. But this part is much more unlikely.
Regarding NASA embellishing the chances of life being there, I agree - they probably are. But who cares? If it gets them more money I support them fully ;-) You just have to take what they say in this area with a pinch of salt.
Nice One! You're argument is totally irrefutable, and full of sound common sense. Enough of this philosophising and sticking our heads up our arses!
We need people like you in office.