I doubt that this will really be used for feature films. This is going to show up first as technology to replace the ads they show before the movie starts - you know the junk that's up there now that looks like it comes from an old slide carousel? Now you local realtor, carpet salesmen can create a low budget commercial (or rather the theatre's marketing people will contract it) and loop it in a paid loop to the theatres.
It could even be a Good Thing. At least, I'm slightly more interested in a 2 minute infomercial from a local realtor showing the properties they have for sale right now than I am in seeing their smiling faces and some "we're number 1" slogan go by on the slideshow 3 or 4 times while I wait for the movie to start.
It also makes sense for the endless "coming attractions" shorts. I suspect it will be years before this gets used regularly for feature films outside of the indie community.
And for the price of 5 tickets you can get the Miyazaki three pack with Spirited Away, Laputa and Kiki - each with an extra DVD of extras. I'm just waiting for the 1st to preorder since the current discount coupons for amazon expire on the 31st:-}
Yes, not that anyone will ever read this. Why not make the ISS out of rock that contains a trace of minerals? Just because it's not shiny and high tech? If you wanted to do that, just send a vessle out to grab a rocky asteroid and tow it into earth orbit. Hollow out some living spaces and voila! You would probably get some radiation shielding for free as well.
Dragging stuff up from Luna's fairly small gravity well is somewhat less silly that dragging it up out of Earth's much larger one. Aside from rare things like H3 I don't see the point of either one.
"When did we start thinking about the future so much?"
The Industrial Revolution, because...
"Did people in the middle ages, for example, ever think much past the end of their own lives?"... then started to have this thing called "free time," time that wasn't devoted to the task of living, and also... ==================
Close, but no cigar. In the mediaeval era, it was thought (by everyone who had time to think about it) that there was no reason to consider it. God controlled everything. The law of gravity worked the way God wanted it to towards his own ends. Since the seond coming was expected "any time now" God would likely change those laws anyway. Progress and creating a better world for those who come after us were somewhat foreign ideas. This world was considered just a trial and a test to see who would end up in heaven/hell - it's supposed to be unpleasant. Making it less unpleasant is like cheating on the test - better you should spend that free time praying....
So, as others have asked - why bring it to earth? A ton of low grade iron is not very valuable here, but given the costs to launch material into orbit for things like the space station - it's incredibly valuable up there.
"We have enough to support us here, we just are lazy, greedy, short-sighted creatures."
Yes - we are. It's a fact. You can't change that and I can't change that. "people" in the small sense can choose to be otherwise, "People" in the larger sense have always been that way. Given the reality of our aquissitive, growth fueled narture our best bet is to expand the size of our playground so we don't have to shit where we sleep/eat. The only way we are going to be able to keep the Earth as a nice place over the next thousand years is make it possible to do the dirty work somewhere else.
Environmentalists typically take such a short term view. If over a 100 year period there are 50 bills introduced to clear cut and strip mine the entire Amazon - and you defeat 49 of them - guess what happens? The "need" side of the equation needs to be addresses somewhere.
Good points, particularly regarding the moon. Maybe you could use the surface ore to make some sort of building material, but nothing worth exporting (with the possible exception of the H3). For asteroids though - aren't a fair number of them fairly pure metal already? Maybe good enough as is for some purposes? If nothing else you could start by grabbing a comet with a good mix of volatiles. Piggyback a rocket onto it that uses its own volatiles as fuel and reaction mass and bring it into a lagrange point. Now you go get a high metal content asteriod and bring it in. Form the metal into a really big cylinder, push cometary material inside and seal the lid. Bingo - you've get the beginnings of a functional O'Neill colony and a platform for more elaborate refining of materials you are bringing in.
Ah... OK. That's the first thing I've heard on this that makes any sense. The moon is most certainly *not* a "minerological treasure trove". It seems to be mostly uninteresting slicates of no particular value. More valuable as real estate. Even the H3 (if it pans out) would be more useful as a power source for a colony than transporting it back to Earth.
Certainly for more traditional mining NEOs seem much more promising. You've got asteriods for metals, comets for volatiles. Everything you need.
funny maybe, but the answer is probably yes. I know that If you have 2 mutithreading processors you have to have a versino of Windows that supports 4 processors - and that's a big additional chunk of change.
"Surely you are not questioning the historicity of Clement of Rome or Gregory of Nyssa here? "
Why not? Or if not questioning that they existed at least questioning that they wrote the tracts attributed to them by church histories. Outside the church supported schools there is wide consensus that much of the christian dogma attributed to the early church was actually later forgeries and inserts. There was a huge movement around 400 CE to alter the past to support the new Roman adoption of christianity. Winston Smith would have felt right at home. That "jesus' brother's ossuary" that was in the news a while back seems to be an example of the effort. Taht is, that someone around 400 CE took an ossuary of someone from the 0 CE period and worked it over (poorly) to include support that a religion that would be recognised as christianity and the persons associated with it existed at a time when they probably didn't.
I'll leave the Elvis to others, but I can imagine doing really great things with remixes and resamples using the old Maria Calls, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk as freely available source material.
"if you insist on viewing all of the bounds on george w bush the man to be insufficient to filter out his point of view from the actions of the united states, pray tell, what glorious form of government have you thought up that is superior to democracy that satisfies your paranoid schizophrenia? "
Democracy? I'm no expert on Switzerland (the only democracy I can think of off the top of my head) but they seem to do OK. You aren't one of those that thinks the US is one, are you? Ideally the US is a republic - which can work pretty well too. Nah, you use too many big words to be that uneducated. "glorius form of government"? hellifiknow. If I get only one bullet I'd reverse the circa 1886 court decision that granted corporations "personhood" and the rights of an individual under the constitution.
"george w. bush is the elected leader of a pluralistic democratic country. if he has private religious views that inform his opinions, those views are bound by his advisors,"
Fundamentalist idealoges.
"the judicial "
A court stacked with conservatives and about to be loaded with more fundamentalist Bush appointees.
"and legislative branches of government"
Which took as the message of the 2002 elections that being Bush's rubber stamp is a vote getter
"After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said."
In this case the jury instructions are probably more important than the actual verdict. This establishes a key point that a product that has both legal and ilegal potential uses is not in and of itself ilegal.
Well, veering off topic, but since two people asked: His work usually has science or technology *in* it, but it takes more than just that before I'd call him a science fiction writer. It hard to write contemporary fiction that doesn't after all.
Jurrasic Park is a good example. It's related to science fiction but I dont' think it really is. It's King Kong updated with a some technospeak wrapped around to make it seem plausible. The fact that the technospeak is fairly good makes it a better giant monster movie, but not science fiction. The science/technology is there to support the giant monster story. A science fiction story would start the other way around. With a "suppose that you could harvest DNA from extinct species - what would happen?". There are lots of good science fiction stories that could come from that "what if", but none of them are Jurrasic Park. Going from zero to a giant dino amusement park in one go just doesn't make sense. By the time the tech was advanced enough for that it would have crept out and shown up in a million subtle and non-subtle ways through the society. A science fiction writer would have tried to deal with all those things. JP doesn't, because the author isn't interested - he's just trying to make a monster book/movie.
The science/tech is like Batman's utility belt on the old TV series - it just has whatever is needed to get out of the current plothole. I don't consider Batman to be science fiction either, or King Kong, or James Bond. Star Wars gets in, I guess becaue "everyone" considers it science fiction - even though it is devoid of science or the socal effects of science.
Further I don't think Crichton considers himself a science fiction writer. He writes mainstream fiction that tends to use current or very near future technology. If nothing else, he makes *far* too much money to be a science fiction writer:-)
Science fiction????
on
Electronic Life
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"Crichton writes science fiction"
He does? I've never seen any. He writes technological thrillers. From Andromeda Strain (a good one) to ER (a mediocre one).
Maybe that's what they are really with the doublespeak about "terra-ists", "homeland", "evil-doers", "enemy combatants", etc. By making new definition for older words they can make is t=so that when you read the constitution and look up the definition of the words in the Newspeak Dictionary - it will mean what they wan't it to mean.
Let's see... what do we know about Mark from publicly available sources. He's 37. He has an unlisted phone number (no surprise). He has another business phone of 408-979-7900. He knows a little about sqlserver, but is hardly a guru. Used to be CEO of the now defunct valuserve ISP in the bay area. May or may not have taken glider lessons a few years ago.
Yes, he certainly is and certainly was played as Maori in the film. I'm reminded of the uproar in jewish circles about the "shylock character" of the junk dealer in TFM. He's not supposed to be jewish - he's supposed to be italian. Not only is he supposed to be italian, he is obviously a deliberate parody of Dino Delaurentis...
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Yeah, rub it in.... meanie. At least we don't pay $85 for a melon ;-}
I doubt that this will really be used for feature films. This is going to show up first as technology to replace the ads they show before the movie starts - you know the junk that's up there now that looks like it comes from an old slide carousel? Now you local realtor, carpet salesmen can create a low budget commercial (or rather the theatre's marketing people will contract it) and loop it in a paid loop to the theatres.
It could even be a Good Thing. At least, I'm slightly more interested in a 2 minute infomercial from a local realtor showing the properties they have for sale right now than I am in seeing their smiling faces and some "we're number 1" slogan go by on the slideshow 3 or 4 times while I wait for the movie to start.
It also makes sense for the endless "coming attractions" shorts. I suspect it will be years before this gets used regularly for feature films outside of the indie community.
And for the price of 5 tickets you can get the Miyazaki three pack with Spirited Away, Laputa and Kiki - each with an extra DVD of extras. I'm just waiting for the 1st to preorder since the current discount coupons for amazon expire on the 31st :-}
Yes, not that anyone will ever read this. Why not make the ISS out of rock that contains a trace of minerals? Just because it's not shiny and high tech? If you wanted to do that, just send a vessle out to grab a rocky asteroid and tow it into earth orbit. Hollow out some living spaces and voila! You would probably get some radiation shielding for free as well.
Dragging stuff up from Luna's fairly small gravity well is somewhat less silly that dragging it up out of Earth's much larger one. Aside from rare things like H3 I don't see the point of either one.
"When did we start thinking about the future so much?"
... then started to have this thing called "free time," time that wasn't devoted to the task of living, and also...
The Industrial Revolution, because...
"Did people in the middle ages, for example, ever think much past the end of their own lives?"
==================
Close, but no cigar. In the mediaeval era, it was thought (by everyone who had time to think about it) that there was no reason to consider it. God controlled everything. The law of gravity worked the way God wanted it to towards his own ends. Since the seond coming was expected "any time now" God would likely change those laws anyway. Progress and creating a better world for those who come after us were somewhat foreign ideas. This world was considered just a trial and a test to see who would end up in heaven/hell - it's supposed to be unpleasant. Making it less unpleasant is like cheating on the test - better you should spend that free time praying....
So, as others have asked - why bring it to earth? A ton of low grade iron is not very valuable here, but given the costs to launch material into orbit for things like the space station - it's incredibly valuable up there.
"We have enough to support us here, we just are lazy, greedy, short-sighted creatures."
Yes - we are. It's a fact. You can't change that and I can't change that. "people" in the small sense can choose to be otherwise, "People" in the larger sense have always been that way. Given the reality of our aquissitive, growth fueled narture our best bet is to expand the size of our playground so we don't have to shit where we sleep/eat. The only way we are going to be able to keep the Earth as a nice place over the next thousand years is make it possible to do the dirty work somewhere else.
Environmentalists typically take such a short term view. If over a 100 year period there are 50 bills introduced to clear cut and strip mine the entire Amazon - and you defeat 49 of them - guess what happens? The "need" side of the equation needs to be addresses somewhere.
Good points, particularly regarding the moon. Maybe you could use the surface ore to make some sort of building material, but nothing worth exporting (with the possible exception of the H3). For asteroids though - aren't a fair number of them fairly pure metal already? Maybe good enough as is for some purposes? If nothing else you could start by grabbing a comet with a good mix of volatiles. Piggyback a rocket onto it that uses its own volatiles as fuel and reaction mass and bring it into a lagrange point. Now you go get a high metal content asteriod and bring it in. Form the metal into a really big cylinder, push cometary material inside and seal the lid. Bingo - you've get the beginnings of a functional O'Neill colony and a platform for more elaborate refining of materials you are bringing in.
According to the documentary "Cat-Women of the Moon"
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0045609
the percentage is even higher than that! And they wear black tights!
Ah... OK. That's the first thing I've heard on this that makes any sense. The moon is most certainly *not* a "minerological treasure trove". It seems to be mostly uninteresting slicates of no particular value. More valuable as real estate. Even the H3 (if it pans out) would be more useful as a power source for a colony than transporting it back to Earth.
Certainly for more traditional mining NEOs seem much more promising. You've got asteriods for metals, comets for volatiles. Everything you need.
funny maybe, but the answer is probably yes. I know that If you have 2 mutithreading processors you have to have a versino of Windows that supports 4 processors - and that's a big additional chunk of change.
"Surely you are not questioning the historicity of Clement of Rome or Gregory of Nyssa here? "
Why not? Or if not questioning that they existed at least questioning that they wrote the tracts attributed to them by church histories. Outside the church supported schools there is wide consensus that much of the christian dogma attributed to the early church was actually later forgeries and inserts. There was a huge movement around 400 CE to alter the past to support the new Roman adoption of christianity. Winston Smith would have felt right at home. That "jesus' brother's ossuary" that was in the news a while back seems to be an example of the effort. Taht is, that someone around 400 CE took an ossuary of someone from the 0 CE period and worked it over (poorly) to include support that a religion that would be recognised as christianity and the persons associated with it existed at a time when they probably didn't.
I'll leave the Elvis to others, but I can imagine doing really great things with remixes and resamples using the old Maria Calls, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk as freely available source material.
"if you insist on viewing all of the bounds on george w bush the man to be insufficient to filter out his point of view from the actions of the united states, pray tell, what glorious form of government have you thought up that is superior to democracy that satisfies your paranoid schizophrenia? "
Democracy? I'm no expert on Switzerland (the only democracy I can think of off the top of my head) but they seem to do OK. You aren't one of those that thinks the US is one, are you? Ideally the US is a republic - which can work pretty well too. Nah, you use too many big words to be that uneducated. "glorius form of government"? hellifiknow. If I get only one bullet I'd reverse the circa 1886 court decision that granted corporations "personhood" and the rights of an individual under the constitution.
"george w. bush is the elected leader of a pluralistic democratic country. if he has private religious views that inform his opinions, those views are bound by his advisors,"
Fundamentalist idealoges.
"the judicial "
A court stacked with conservatives and about to be loaded with more fundamentalist Bush appointees.
"and legislative branches of government"
Which took as the message of the 2002 elections that being Bush's rubber stamp is a vote getter
"and the opinion of the american people."
We are doomed.......
"After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said."
In this case the jury instructions are probably more important than the actual verdict. This establishes a key point that a product that has both legal and ilegal potential uses is not in and of itself ilegal.
Well, veering off topic, but since two people asked:
:-)
His work usually has science or technology *in* it, but it takes more than just that before I'd call him a science fiction writer. It hard to write contemporary fiction that doesn't after all.
Jurrasic Park is a good example. It's related to science fiction but I dont' think it really is. It's King Kong updated with a some technospeak wrapped around to make it seem plausible. The fact that the technospeak is fairly good makes it a better giant monster movie, but not science fiction. The science/technology is there to support the giant monster story. A science fiction story would start the other way around. With a "suppose that you could harvest DNA from extinct species - what would happen?". There are lots of good science fiction stories that could come from that "what if", but none of them are Jurrasic Park. Going from zero to a giant dino amusement park in one go just doesn't make sense. By the time the tech was advanced enough for that it would have crept out and shown up in a million subtle and non-subtle ways through the society. A science fiction writer would have tried to deal with all those things. JP doesn't, because the author isn't interested - he's just trying to make a monster book/movie.
The science/tech is like Batman's utility belt on the old TV series - it just has whatever is needed to get out of the current plothole. I don't consider Batman to be science fiction either, or King Kong, or James Bond. Star Wars gets in, I guess becaue "everyone" considers it science fiction - even though it is devoid of science or the socal effects of science.
Further I don't think Crichton considers himself a science fiction writer. He writes mainstream fiction that tends to use current or very near future technology. If nothing else, he makes *far* too much money to be a science fiction writer
"Crichton writes science fiction"
He does? I've never seen any. He writes technological thrillers. From Andromeda Strain (a good one) to ER (a mediocre one).
Maybe that's what they are really with the doublespeak about "terra-ists", "homeland", "evil-doers", "enemy combatants", etc. By making new definition for older words they can make is t=so that when you read the constitution and look up the definition of the words in the Newspeak Dictionary - it will mean what they wan't it to mean.
Let's see ... what do we know about Mark from publicly available sources. He's 37. He has an unlisted phone number (no surprise). He has another business phone of 408-979-7900. He knows a little about sqlserver, but is hardly a guru. Used to be CEO of the now defunct valuserve ISP in the bay area. May or may not have taken glider lessons a few years ago.
anyone else?
Yes, he certainly is and certainly was played as Maori in the film. I'm reminded of the uproar in jewish circles about the "shylock character" of the junk dealer in TFM. He's not supposed to be jewish - he's supposed to be italian. Not only is he supposed to be italian, he is obviously a deliberate parody of Dino Delaurentis...
I kinda like the Antec case he chose. Now the mobo - a SIS chipset?
I thought Carly and the honchos from Compaq were killing all hardware level design work. This may be the last hurrah from HP Labs.
I just threw out the old Fairchild system a few years ago. It had some good games for its day, I know I spent many hours playing Red Baron on it.
You have the right to make a backup - if you can. They have no obligation to make it possible for you to.