Maybe I'm being naive, but what is the purpose of having unmanned aircraft? For non-combat flights, the weight of the crew+support (500-1000 lbs perhaps) doesn't seem significant in comparison to that of the craft+fuel+systems (10,000 lbs from the example in the article). In combat flights, the latency in ground based fly-by-wire must be significant enough to warrent having in-craft crew surely.
The registering and selling-on of domain names in the mid-to-late 90's made some serious money for a few brave entrepreneurs. sex.com is the classic case, although early domain-name squatting on big business names brought in easy bucks for some.
I can certainly testify to the popularity of these codes. I'm in a hotel in Shibuya just now (for the pilgrimage to Akihabara) and there are QR codes on posters in the elevator here.
What I'd really like to see coming in my lifetime is a fully immersive cyberspace-like interface, but done via direct neural stimulaton/reception through some kind of cranium socket.
I've seen on a TV programme a while back very simple versions of this implemented already, enabling a blind man to 'see' numbers via electrodes surgically implanted in his visual cortex. It would be amazing to scale it up to the full simstim thing as in Neuromancer though.
I'm _meant_ to be on vacation just now. The fact I'm reading this on my laptop in the Hong Kong Central Library, with a trip to Seoul tomorow, is probably some kind of sign. More time in the Big Blue Room required!
Using a snail-mail analogy, I can understand this. If I send a postcard out (plain email), I don't expect the message on the card to remain private, as anyone in the delivery chain can read it without any tampering. When I do want privacy, I can put my message in a sealed envelope instead (PGP encryption for email) to ensure only the recipient can read it. Seems fair to me. The general populous need to be more aware that plain email is more like a postcard than a message in a sealed envelope though.
I cant help but notice that the Magic-1 looks a lot like the original Altair 8800, star of the Homebrew Computer Club in the 70's. At least this can have a console hooked up to it, from the look of it, the Altair originally had to have all the programming done via the switches on the front alone!
As a bit of a greenie I'd like to live off-grid and low-tech at some point in the future, and for this reason vinyl wins the race for me. This is a music storage technology where playback can be achieved with no electricity and the player is fairly robust/fixable. This is unlike a CD player, which is completely electricity-dependent, delicate and potentially brickable. Plus there's something beautiful and timeless about the amplified crackling sound of a needle in a groove that appeals.
The fact that the XO-1 was specifically designed to run on only 2-3 watts (using Geode at 0.8 watts and LCD-backlit / reflective display at 0.1 to 1 watts), compared to the 15-20 watts on a normal laptop or 100-200 watts on a desktop makes this sort of thing quite feasible.
The thread would not be complete without a nod to the British astronomer Patrick Moore. Here in the UK, he has been presenting The Sky at Night for oer 50 years now, which is an oasis of geekdom in an increasingly dumbed-down BBC schedule.
A massive reduction of human population would reduce the stress on: - fresh water reserves - dwindling oil supplies - food crops already threatened by global warming - natural resources such as forests
Given that it's looking more and more likely that we'll be well past the peak of global oil production by then, is it really a good idea to be planning seriously resource-intensive missions like these in this timeframe? I dont want to come over as a downer, but it's a good idea to be realistic. I suspect there will be more pressing issues than space exploration in this window.
Just a thought - in regular elevators, the work required by the motor is minimized using a counterweight, so that the motor, rather than having to lift the full weight of the cabin, instead is just moving an (almost) balanced cable - the cabin at one end, the counterweight at the other.
Obviously you couldn't do a similar setup with a space elevator since gravity at the top is much differennt from at the bottom, but if you had many (hundreds/thousands) of short counterbalanced cabins set along the length of the cable with automated transfers between cabins, would that make a workable system requiring much less energy to climb to the top?
As a Brit, I'm curious as to how your RIAA (which comes over as a pretty damn scary organization) regulate copyright protection on non-US labels/media, and in particular this case where the songs are effectively being given away. Do they bother with non-US stuff at all?
The XO-1laptop, which also uses the Geode processor and draws 2-3W when running apparently - this system makes a nice desktop equivalent. Since often the screen on a laptop is the biggest power drain of the system, it would be nice to see a low-power screen available to go with it.
As a Scotsman, I'm somewhat miffed that an Englishman is playing the role... This is almost as bad as Mel Gibson (an Ozzie) playing William Wallace for goodness sake!
This is why I think the OLPC project shouldn't be limited to third world countries. These laptops run on only a couple of watts! If more first-world computer users used them for basic surfing instead of 200 watt gaming rigs, much energy/CO2/fossil fuel could be saved I think.
I'd say that it was the the extremely high population density of Japan has made it easy for the mobile market there to be successful early on. The ratio of phone users to masts is going to be high in most of the country, so the providers could be sure of good early returns on investment, leading to the tech developing much faster than elsewhere.
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Maybe I'm being naive, but what is the purpose of having unmanned aircraft? For non-combat flights, the weight of the crew+support (500-1000 lbs perhaps) doesn't seem significant in comparison to that of the craft+fuel+systems (10,000 lbs from the example in the article). In combat flights, the latency in ground based fly-by-wire must be significant enough to warrent having in-craft crew surely.
The registering and selling-on of domain names in the mid-to-late 90's made some serious money for a few brave entrepreneurs. sex.com is the classic case, although early domain-name squatting on big business names brought in easy bucks for some.
I can certainly testify to the popularity of these codes. I'm in a hotel in Shibuya just now (for the pilgrimage to Akihabara) and there are QR codes on posters in the elevator here.
What I'd really like to see coming in my lifetime is a fully immersive cyberspace-like interface, but done via direct neural stimulaton/reception through some kind of cranium socket.
I've seen on a TV programme a while back very simple versions of this implemented already, enabling a blind man to 'see' numbers via electrodes surgically implanted in his visual cortex. It would be amazing to scale it up to the full simstim thing as in Neuromancer though.
I'm _meant_ to be on vacation just now. The fact I'm reading this on my laptop in the Hong Kong Central Library, with a trip to Seoul tomorow, is probably some kind of sign. More time in the Big Blue Room required!
that the earth is going to get demolished any minute now.
is Lego. (or Lego Bricks to be _really_ picky)
Using a snail-mail analogy, I can understand this. If I send a postcard out (plain email), I don't expect the message on the card to remain private, as anyone in the delivery chain can read it without any tampering. When I do want privacy, I can put my message in a sealed envelope instead (PGP encryption for email) to ensure only the recipient can read it. Seems fair to me. The general populous need to be more aware that plain email is more like a postcard than a message in a sealed envelope though.
I cant help but notice that the Magic-1 looks a lot like the original Altair 8800, star of the Homebrew Computer Club in the 70's. At least this can have a console hooked up to it, from the look of it, the Altair originally had to have all the programming done via the switches on the front alone!
As a bit of a greenie I'd like to live off-grid and low-tech at some point in the future, and for this reason vinyl wins the race for me. This is a music storage technology where playback can be achieved with no electricity and the player is fairly robust/fixable. This is unlike a CD player, which is completely electricity-dependent, delicate and potentially brickable. Plus there's something beautiful and timeless about the amplified crackling sound of a needle in a groove that appeals.
The fact that the XO-1 was specifically designed to run on only 2-3 watts (using Geode at 0.8 watts and LCD-backlit / reflective display at 0.1 to 1 watts), compared to the 15-20 watts on a normal laptop or 100-200 watts on a desktop makes this sort of thing quite feasible.
The thread would not be complete without a nod to the British astronomer Patrick Moore. Here in the UK, he has been presenting The Sky at Night for oer 50 years now, which is an oasis of geekdom in an increasingly dumbed-down BBC schedule.
Not yet, enjoying the party too much for now. Will stick to childfree and sympathetic-euthanasia advocacy for now.
A massive reduction of human population would reduce the stress on:
- fresh water reserves
- dwindling oil supplies
- food crops already threatened by global warming
- natural resources such as forests
so it's not all bad.
Given that it's looking more and more likely that we'll be well past the peak of global oil production by then, is it really a good idea to be planning seriously resource-intensive missions like these in this timeframe? I dont want to come over as a downer, but it's a good idea to be realistic. I suspect there will be more pressing issues than space exploration in this window.
Just a thought - in regular elevators, the work required by the motor is minimized using a counterweight, so that the motor, rather than having to lift the full weight of the cabin, instead is just moving an (almost) balanced cable - the cabin at one end, the counterweight at the other.
Obviously you couldn't do a similar setup with a space elevator since gravity at the top is much differennt from at the bottom, but if you had many (hundreds/thousands) of short counterbalanced cabins set along the length of the cable with automated transfers between cabins, would that make a workable system requiring much less energy to climb to the top?
Heh, sorry for that, a scifi brain burp :) Mod's are going to murder me for that one....
For a blue-sky vision of a future with a functional space elevator, I'd recommend reading Arthur C Clarke's Foundations of Paradise novel.
As a Brit, I'm curious as to how your RIAA (which comes over as a pretty damn scary organization) regulate copyright protection on non-US labels/media, and in particular this case where the songs are effectively being given away. Do they bother with non-US stuff at all?
The XO-1laptop, which also uses the Geode processor and draws 2-3W when running apparently - this system makes a nice desktop equivalent. Since often the screen on a laptop is the biggest power drain of the system, it would be nice to see a low-power screen available to go with it.
As a Scotsman, I'm somewhat miffed that an Englishman is playing the role... This is almost as bad as Mel Gibson (an Ozzie) playing William Wallace for goodness sake!
When the hardware detects anxiety, an animated paperclip pops up and says "I see you are feeling stressed".
Yup, that'll calm the user right down...
This is why I think the OLPC project shouldn't be limited to third world countries. These laptops run on only a couple of watts! If more first-world computer users used them for basic surfing instead of 200 watt gaming rigs, much energy/CO2/fossil fuel could be saved I think.
This short essay by Orson Scott Card (of Ender's Game fame) I think describes the development of the Microsoft Vista disaster pretty well.
I'd say that it was the the extremely high population density of Japan has made it easy for the mobile market there to be successful early on. The ratio of phone users to masts is going to be high in most of the country, so the providers could be sure of good early returns on investment, leading to the tech developing much faster than elsewhere.