Hi Michael,
Thanks for listening.
For some time now, I have had an idea floating around in my head for the proverbial "Great Sci-fi Story" and while I'd be the first to say that I don't have a snowball's chance on Mercury to ever have it published, it has occurred to me that it MAY make a reasonably decent treatment for either a comic or a TV series. MAY is the operative word here..
Now, assuming that I actually have something to offer the hard bleak world that is waiting for me, where do I start??
There are horror stories about folks submitting concepts that get stolen etc, but I'm sure that there are some valid and honorable ways to have your ideas at least glanced at by someone that knows what they are doing. I'm quite willing to sink or swim and have no delusions of grandeur, so rejection would not bother me, it would motivate me to improve my craft. But with no idea who to approach or how, it is inevitable that I will always remain a frustrated wordsmith.
To be clear, I'm not looking for you to help me directly, just asking if you can cover the basics of getting started.
You obviously started somewhere, can you tell us how it works?
Cheers.
That is my biggest problem with this issue. Not that the dolts that were responsible screwed up, but that it took MONTHS of internal "investigations" before some bright spark decided that it was time to share the facts with the people most affected.
Typical Ontario Liberal nanny state policies..
Bad Dalton. Down boy, stop humping granny's leg!
"There will of course always be some people that want control over their hardware. Some people."
My point exactly.
To the rest of your reply:
So You advocate completely abdicating control over your device because "most people" are too lazy or stoopid to maintain a simple PC?
This POV is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Like I said, we get what we deserve.
It's starting to become inevitable. Apple is the main culprit. We migrated away from Desktop's and Laptop PC's to "smart" phones and tablets that are all user limited for the sake of being cool. Now the very real threat that the PC revolution of the 70's and 80's will be overthrown by corporate inertia. They and Apple in particular, hate the idea that you may have control over your own hardware and/or software and are doing everything they can to curtail your choices. Don't blame MS, blame yourselves.
Try the Tom Swift series, have no idea if they are still available, but it was like the Hardy Boys in space.
Another good book, highly overlooked for years, but was taught in English Class back in the day, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, same guy that wrote Day of the Triffids and Midwich Cuckoos. Great book, light on the sci- heavy on the -fi, but totally original and refreshing. No idea why that one never made it to the big screen.
I use Opera and the Ghostery extension along with WOT.
Then I run CCleaner a few times a day.
I ALWAYS log out of any site once I'm done with what I logged in to do, and that goes double for Google. Then run CCleaner.
I take a small hit with some occasional unpredictable behavior on some sites with Ghostery running, but screw 'em. If they want my junk, I can find (95% of the time) what i want elsewhere.
Strategy seems to work pretty well, low spam incidence in gmail and my "real" email addresses are rarely spammed as well. Recently checked Google's data on me through the privacy page and all clear.
Everytime I work myself up to switch to Linux I run into that "One" problem that makes me hesitate. This time its RAID0.
I just purchased a new PC (very sweet hardware) and saw the Mint 12 distro announced here on slashdot right around the same time and took a look, downloaded the DVD and ran it on my new hardware from the disc. Very nice, it seemed to think the same way I do. And it ran faster from the DVD than win7 did from disk. Add in my total loathing for Win7 and it all sounds good right? Err... no.
When I went to actually install, I got an error that seemed to say that it didn't recognize my RAID0 array, and not being a total geek wizard, I hesitated. It ended up taking me a few days to find a relevant forum, post a question and then sort the snide remarks from the helpful answers. I found the soluton, but by then I had lost the desire to tread in waters that were potentially too deep.
So from my perspective, I really would like to switch, but every forum/site I found looking for help assumed that I had some level of basic understanding of Linux, it's file system, and how it's executables work. I don't. I'm a Windows Refugee and have been kept in the dark by big brother for many years. So for total newbies to the OS, there are not too many places to go where you can ask "stupid" questions, which is what all newbies need to do in order to learn.
Too bad too, that damn OS was sweet, saw all my hardware(except the RAID0) hooked up to the network/internet with no questions or prompts and ran fantastically on the Dell i7-2600/16GB ram.
Someday I'm gonna switch, promise.
IMHO, the more I learn about Particle Physics and Cosmology, the more I believe in Intelligent Design.
Read Martin Rees "Just Six Numbers", there is a credible Physicist presenting straight information.
I have no problem mixing Religion and Science.
Bio-ethics is my problem issue, but again IMHO, those come down to moral issues, informed by my faith, not hard science.
This, or something like it, is the only way that weâ(TM)ll ever have a chance of establishing a permanent presence in our Planetary vicinity. Itâ(TM)s not about getting the material back to Earth, itâ(TM)s about making it available on Orbit. And I get the point that you made about NASA being good at certain things with the logical next step of Private Industry picking up where they left off. As a long-range plan this has all the hallmarks of being do-able. Imagine. Larry Nivenâ(TM)s Belters for real.. Technical College degrees in Orbital Mechanics and Micro Gravity Mining Techniques. Very cool.
Now all they need to do is pool the cash and buy the ISS, boost it into high orbit and Orbital Base One is born.
Too bad Iâ(TM)ll be dead long before this all becomes reality, but at least it gives me hope for my Kids.
This should be a huge red flag for North America.
Forget the issue of unlawful conduct, that's a red herring and it's not the point. The larger issue of intrusive Government is the real story here.
I have had a sense of the pervasive surveillance that the UK performs on it's Citizens, but this confirms that impression and strengthens it dramatically.
People in the UK have for decades abrogated their rights to freedom with little or no thought to the effects of their poor choices. When I first saw V for Vengeance, I thought that it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Dystopian vision taking place in the UK, but now if anything the similarities are becoming all too real. In no way do I support Occupy, but maybe they can find a real issue if they decide to rally for Freedom.
I find forums and comments to be an invaluable resource for technical help for many things. I'm in Process Controls and use web forums all the time for obscure questions. And when migrating to Linux for the first time, I was very grateful for the help that I recieved from that Community.
The general trend toward ditching older, experienced tech support hands and throwing long existing tech libraries into dumpsters make forums the last bastion of searchable help.
Couldn't live without them.
Oh, and a couple of points on Teller.
He was freaking out for three years tring to get his Classical Super to pass muster in calculations but no matter what varioations and changes were made to the model, it was always a fizzle. Huge waste of time and brainpower went in to that failure. It wasn't until Stan Ulam had the breakthrough regarding using one bomb to set off another that anything started to happen.
And what Teller did was to come up with the fairly obvious additions of using the radiation from the primary as the implosion force and adding the Plutonium "Spark Plug" in the center of the Secondary, And Teller agressively shut out Ulam from any recognition for that initial, pivotal contribution. Teller was such a pain in the ass to work with at Los Alamos that Oppie would not give him a Group Leader role, hence the backstabbing that happened later, and during the engineering development phase of the "Super" they kicked him out of Los Alamos. He wasn't even allowed to attend the Ivy Mike test, and spent the time staring at a siesmograph in Berkley waiting to see if it twitched.
After that, OK, he played the Evangelist, but for the poster waayy up there, there was no huge boon to Nuclear Physics generated by the development of either bomb. All of the theoretical and experimental work was basically done by the time they broke ground at Los Alamos. Teller was no Einstein, or Bethe, or Bohr. Feynman had more impact on Physics than Teller.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Bomb but were afraid to ask.
It really helps if you have a little bit of knowledge of Physics, but there is stuff here that I thought had never been declassified. Like detailed information on Initiators and hydrodynamics.
Be prepared to spend a few hours reading it.
Bet Ahmawannajihad has it bookmarked.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html
A.C. Clarke "The City and the Stars" maybe..
great story about "a kid who escapes from a city closed off for millenia, believing that the world outside is dead, finds out different..
Heard over the tannoy at the Factory:
"ATTENTION ALL WORKERS!!
Until all Evil Inspectors leave plant you will ALL BE HAPPY, or your family will be billed for the bullet."
Love the big brass ones that these guys have.
I don't agree with much of their agenda, but really have to admire their tenacity in the face of serious opposition.
Impressive stunt.
I can see this being a problem for a mass-produced replica or knock-off toys, but the kind of buyer for this product does not have any other choice than to get one custom made. If I remember correctly the original was a one off by George Barris, and the Gotham Garage website hails a Munster Mobile, with apparently no issues there.
If someone wants to plunk down (presumably) big bucks to fulfill a childhood dream, they should be able to. This is copyright gone too far.
I gotta say, if you think that folks were storing their latest lab research or patent applications there, you are probably wrong.
More like xxx files and screeners.
Slashdot Mirror
If the detected Neutrino's actually do have PeV energies, doesn't that essentially give them Mass? And if so, Dark Matter Candidate # 1
Hi Michael, Thanks for listening. For some time now, I have had an idea floating around in my head for the proverbial "Great Sci-fi Story" and while I'd be the first to say that I don't have a snowball's chance on Mercury to ever have it published, it has occurred to me that it MAY make a reasonably decent treatment for either a comic or a TV series. MAY is the operative word here.. Now, assuming that I actually have something to offer the hard bleak world that is waiting for me, where do I start?? There are horror stories about folks submitting concepts that get stolen etc, but I'm sure that there are some valid and honorable ways to have your ideas at least glanced at by someone that knows what they are doing. I'm quite willing to sink or swim and have no delusions of grandeur, so rejection would not bother me, it would motivate me to improve my craft. But with no idea who to approach or how, it is inevitable that I will always remain a frustrated wordsmith. To be clear, I'm not looking for you to help me directly, just asking if you can cover the basics of getting started. You obviously started somewhere, can you tell us how it works? Cheers.
That is my biggest problem with this issue. Not that the dolts that were responsible screwed up, but that it took MONTHS of internal "investigations" before some bright spark decided that it was time to share the facts with the people most affected. Typical Ontario Liberal nanny state policies.. Bad Dalton. Down boy, stop humping granny's leg!
troll
"There will of course always be some people that want control over their hardware. Some people." My point exactly. To the rest of your reply: So You advocate completely abdicating control over your device because "most people" are too lazy or stoopid to maintain a simple PC? This POV is what got us into this mess in the first place. Like I said, we get what we deserve.
It's starting to become inevitable. Apple is the main culprit. We migrated away from Desktop's and Laptop PC's to "smart" phones and tablets that are all user limited for the sake of being cool. Now the very real threat that the PC revolution of the 70's and 80's will be overthrown by corporate inertia. They and Apple in particular, hate the idea that you may have control over your own hardware and/or software and are doing everything they can to curtail your choices. Don't blame MS, blame yourselves.
Try the Tom Swift series, have no idea if they are still available, but it was like the Hardy Boys in space. Another good book, highly overlooked for years, but was taught in English Class back in the day, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, same guy that wrote Day of the Triffids and Midwich Cuckoos. Great book, light on the sci- heavy on the -fi, but totally original and refreshing. No idea why that one never made it to the big screen.
I use Opera and the Ghostery extension along with WOT. Then I run CCleaner a few times a day. I ALWAYS log out of any site once I'm done with what I logged in to do, and that goes double for Google. Then run CCleaner. I take a small hit with some occasional unpredictable behavior on some sites with Ghostery running, but screw 'em. If they want my junk, I can find (95% of the time) what i want elsewhere. Strategy seems to work pretty well, low spam incidence in gmail and my "real" email addresses are rarely spammed as well. Recently checked Google's data on me through the privacy page and all clear.
Everytime I work myself up to switch to Linux I run into that "One" problem that makes me hesitate. This time its RAID0. I just purchased a new PC (very sweet hardware) and saw the Mint 12 distro announced here on slashdot right around the same time and took a look, downloaded the DVD and ran it on my new hardware from the disc. Very nice, it seemed to think the same way I do. And it ran faster from the DVD than win7 did from disk. Add in my total loathing for Win7 and it all sounds good right? Err... no. When I went to actually install, I got an error that seemed to say that it didn't recognize my RAID0 array, and not being a total geek wizard, I hesitated. It ended up taking me a few days to find a relevant forum, post a question and then sort the snide remarks from the helpful answers. I found the soluton, but by then I had lost the desire to tread in waters that were potentially too deep. So from my perspective, I really would like to switch, but every forum/site I found looking for help assumed that I had some level of basic understanding of Linux, it's file system, and how it's executables work. I don't. I'm a Windows Refugee and have been kept in the dark by big brother for many years. So for total newbies to the OS, there are not too many places to go where you can ask "stupid" questions, which is what all newbies need to do in order to learn. Too bad too, that damn OS was sweet, saw all my hardware(except the RAID0) hooked up to the network/internet with no questions or prompts and ran fantastically on the Dell i7-2600/16GB ram. Someday I'm gonna switch, promise.
Anonymous Coward Post. Nuff said.
IMHO, the more I learn about Particle Physics and Cosmology, the more I believe in Intelligent Design. Read Martin Rees "Just Six Numbers", there is a credible Physicist presenting straight information. I have no problem mixing Religion and Science. Bio-ethics is my problem issue, but again IMHO, those come down to moral issues, informed by my faith, not hard science.
Keystone Kops
This, or something like it, is the only way that weâ(TM)ll ever have a chance of establishing a permanent presence in our Planetary vicinity. Itâ(TM)s not about getting the material back to Earth, itâ(TM)s about making it available on Orbit. And I get the point that you made about NASA being good at certain things with the logical next step of Private Industry picking up where they left off. As a long-range plan this has all the hallmarks of being do-able. Imagine. Larry Nivenâ(TM)s Belters for real.. Technical College degrees in Orbital Mechanics and Micro Gravity Mining Techniques. Very cool. Now all they need to do is pool the cash and buy the ISS, boost it into high orbit and Orbital Base One is born. Too bad Iâ(TM)ll be dead long before this all becomes reality, but at least it gives me hope for my Kids.
I wish I had a nickel for ever time I heard about the costs of a penny...
This should be a huge red flag for North America. Forget the issue of unlawful conduct, that's a red herring and it's not the point. The larger issue of intrusive Government is the real story here. I have had a sense of the pervasive surveillance that the UK performs on it's Citizens, but this confirms that impression and strengthens it dramatically. People in the UK have for decades abrogated their rights to freedom with little or no thought to the effects of their poor choices. When I first saw V for Vengeance, I thought that it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Dystopian vision taking place in the UK, but now if anything the similarities are becoming all too real. In no way do I support Occupy, but maybe they can find a real issue if they decide to rally for Freedom.
I find forums and comments to be an invaluable resource for technical help for many things. I'm in Process Controls and use web forums all the time for obscure questions. And when migrating to Linux for the first time, I was very grateful for the help that I recieved from that Community. The general trend toward ditching older, experienced tech support hands and throwing long existing tech libraries into dumpsters make forums the last bastion of searchable help. Couldn't live without them.
Yeah, I know, but Rummy used it as well as part of Rumsfeld's Rules, and I like Rummy way better than some freaky new age guy. Rummy rocked.
Oh, and a couple of points on Teller. He was freaking out for three years tring to get his Classical Super to pass muster in calculations but no matter what varioations and changes were made to the model, it was always a fizzle. Huge waste of time and brainpower went in to that failure. It wasn't until Stan Ulam had the breakthrough regarding using one bomb to set off another that anything started to happen. And what Teller did was to come up with the fairly obvious additions of using the radiation from the primary as the implosion force and adding the Plutonium "Spark Plug" in the center of the Secondary, And Teller agressively shut out Ulam from any recognition for that initial, pivotal contribution. Teller was such a pain in the ass to work with at Los Alamos that Oppie would not give him a Group Leader role, hence the backstabbing that happened later, and during the engineering development phase of the "Super" they kicked him out of Los Alamos. He wasn't even allowed to attend the Ivy Mike test, and spent the time staring at a siesmograph in Berkley waiting to see if it twitched. After that, OK, he played the Evangelist, but for the poster waayy up there, there was no huge boon to Nuclear Physics generated by the development of either bomb. All of the theoretical and experimental work was basically done by the time they broke ground at Los Alamos. Teller was no Einstein, or Bethe, or Bohr. Feynman had more impact on Physics than Teller.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Bomb but were afraid to ask. It really helps if you have a little bit of knowledge of Physics, but there is stuff here that I thought had never been declassified. Like detailed information on Initiators and hydrodynamics. Be prepared to spend a few hours reading it. Bet Ahmawannajihad has it bookmarked. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html
A.C. Clarke "The City and the Stars" maybe.. great story about "a kid who escapes from a city closed off for millenia, believing that the world outside is dead, finds out different..
Lord of Light Amazing book
Heard over the tannoy at the Factory: "ATTENTION ALL WORKERS!! Until all Evil Inspectors leave plant you will ALL BE HAPPY, or your family will be billed for the bullet."
Love the big brass ones that these guys have. I don't agree with much of their agenda, but really have to admire their tenacity in the face of serious opposition. Impressive stunt.
I can see this being a problem for a mass-produced replica or knock-off toys, but the kind of buyer for this product does not have any other choice than to get one custom made. If I remember correctly the original was a one off by George Barris, and the Gotham Garage website hails a Munster Mobile, with apparently no issues there. If someone wants to plunk down (presumably) big bucks to fulfill a childhood dream, they should be able to. This is copyright gone too far.
I gotta say, if you think that folks were storing their latest lab research or patent applications there, you are probably wrong. More like xxx files and screeners.