The OP said worthwhile accounts. While a poetic statement about "beautiful desolation" or looking down on the Earth might sound nice, it doesn't advance our knowledge of space much.
Some people's definition of "worthwhile" expand beyond raw knowledge of what that person experienced. Is it not worthwhile to encourage people to be interested in what is out there? After all, without such interest even your robots wouldn't get any funding. Is it not worthwhile to provide roll models for kids and inspiration to all? But perhaps some of the most worthwhile things I've seen come out of the accounts of astronauts are even less tangible, their descriptions of the planet as seen from space go a long way to help causes such as environmental protection and world peace.
Human space travel has a lot of intangible benefits, and while it isn't the right answer for everything, stating that it has no merit at all is rather naive.
There's nothing wrong with asking the guy in charge if he'll let you skip in line... There is something wrong if he changes the rules to put you first in line because you paid him.
"I want a pony!"... but is it reasonable to expect I'll get one?
Who is really at fault, the person who asks for the moon? or the person who gives it to them at the expense of all others? I see nothing wrong in the asking, but the giving should have criminal repercussions
Religions are the origin of "have it and we like it. It has to be bad and evil and must be banned"! They trade on guilt, if you aren't feeling guilty, they haven't done their work right...
Actually the introduction of smart phones has caused a slight increase in phone size. (you need a larger phone to type on than you do to simply dial, and a larger screen to play games/watch movies than to dial a number)
Unfortunately humanity as a whole is incredibly poor at predicting the future accurately enough to know where it will go from here, I expect thinner, though likely not much smaller in the short term, but without knowing what new user interface we will come up with farther in the future, I can't say what size or shape will be required to interact with it.
The use mobile phones while driving does multiply the accident rate, which can still kill people.
So why is it then that no jurisdiction in the world who have introduced a ban on using a cell phone while driving have seen a reduction in accidents?
Every study I've ever seen linking accidents to cell phone use fail to correct for percentage of drivers using a cell phone in the first place. If 10% of your drivers are using a cell phone, and 10% of accidents occur while a cell phone is in use, that does NOT mean that 10% of your accidents were caused by a cell phone, in fact it means that in all likelihood the cell phones had zero effect.
Now I think it's naive to believe that no accidents have been caused by a person due to their cell phone use, I also believe that it isn't nearly as significant a number as the alarmists want to believe.
So you give the politicians a pass on all the bad laws they wrote? it's not their fault, someone lobbied for it! Anyone should be allowed to present their ideas to the politicians. The whole point to having an elected government though is for those people to represent society's wishes, not those of a few lobbyists. Don't blame the lobbyists for the problem, they haven't passed a single bad law. Blame the politicians who did the actual damage.
Why do we need copyright to provide incentive? through most of the history of humanity copyright did not exist, and people still created. Many creations today are made using previous works that were not copyrighted or whose copyright has expired. Many people create for the love of the art, or make their money on live shows, or the initial sale, or other methods.
If the only way you can make any money is through the government creating an artificial scarcity of your product, maybe your business model is a bit flawed?
Difficulty in enforcement is not a good reason, however what is the point to a law in the first place (any law). The point is to provide a benefit to society as a whole. We shouldn't pass any law that we don't think will make society a better place in general. Now it quickly becomes apparent why we don't want people running around killing people, it harms society by removing portion of it completely, it causes everyone to live in perpetual fear that they may be next. On the flip side let's look at copyright, this is a very modern invention that didn't even exist a few centuries ago, and yet society flourished. People invented and created a lot of stuff before any form of copyright existed. And what happens when someone copies something? The original creator is not deprived of it. The new person now has a copy, if anything you have INCREASED the wealth of society by spreading around the creation to allow more people to enjoy it.
So while all of society benefits from a ban on random murder. Only an elite few have any potential to gain anything from copyright, and those few have shown throughout the centuries that they do just fine without such protection.
One might also look at what society as a whole wants. If something becomes the societal norm, is it still a good idea to prohibit it? If one were to believe the copyright infringement figures thrown around by the entertainment industry it quickly becomes obvious that an extremely large percentage of people must, to some extent, engage in unauthorized copying. This speaks to the idea that this is something that society approves of, and thinks is beneficial. Surely their own numbers prove that more people are in favour of being permitted to copy whatever they want than are in favour of protecting those same works. Should not the government take that in to account when writing laws? Something that society as a whole wants to happen is probably something that governments should be considering implementing!
For that vast majority of human history there was no such thing as copyright, or trademark, or patent, and the world did just fine.
When Shakespeare wrote his plays you were free to watch a play, and then get your troupe of actors together and reproduce it exactly in another theatre with no legal ramifications. When Beethoven wrote his symphonies you could copy the sheet music and have your own orchestra play it. Think of all the art in any form that existed back then. Think of the inventions that happened despite a lack of any protections.
Why shouldn't we dispute the whole concept of protection for imaginary property? Nobody has ever provided any proof that it provides a net societal benefit, but much damage to society is obvious in it's enforcement.
And yet Ferrari and Lamborghini are NOT in a large legal battle accusing the other of stealing all their ideas. Both have similar styles of vehicles (probably more similar than most android phones are to iphones) and they co-exist quite happily.
Android phones may look somewhat like iphones, but iphones look a lot like many things that pre-dated them. (and maybe someday iphone will catch up to android in functionality and features)
If they follow the rules of society while doing so, why should we blame them? If the rules are written wrong, shouldn't we blame those who write the rules?
I want all sorts of things, and if I do nothing illegal in obtaining them, that shouldn't be a problem. It should also be perfectly legal for me to demand that laws be written to satisfy my own personal whims. What shouldn't happen however is those who write the laws shouldn't be listening to my demands unless it is truly beneficial to society as a whole. And that's where the problem lies, if politicians did what was right for society, and passed laws with the best interests of the citizens in mind, then it wouldn't matter what leaders of corporations did (as long as they stayed within those laws). It is much easier to establish one proper and coherent set of laws then it is to assume that every single person on the planet will always "do the right thing" without them.
By absolving politicians of any responsibility in the creation of bad laws, you are trying to push the responsibility instead on to the entire population of the planet, in the hopes that not one of those people would be willing to do something "evil"(tm)
I use vlingo on my android, you just have to say "hey vlingo" to wake it up, and then state what you want. it's pretty natural, I'd use it a whole lot more if my car's bluetooth interface was smart enough to let me talk to the phone without already being in the middle of a call... (If I have to pick up the phone to use it, then I might as well use the keyboard!)
I just hope you aren't related to the idots I found the other day when sending email...
I have RDNS records set up, they match A records for the host. That wasn't enough for this particular mail server (at a large american ISP), my message got bounced because the RDNS record didn't include the words "mail", "smtp", or "mx"... since when was THAT a requirement??? (I was also blacklisted by another large american ISP who refused to say why, and I suspect it was the same broken reason, luckilly that one was willing to remove me from the blacklist with a simple request, unlike the first one who refused to do anything unless I renamed my mail server!)
according to that map the entire territory of Nunavut is completely reliant on satellite, that's 33,000 people right there. looks like about half the Northwest Territories too, so that's another few thousand.
The territory of Nunavut has no roads connecting out of the territory to the rest of Canada, and very few (if any) roads between communities in the territory.
The Northwest Territories have very few roads, you can pretty much drive from the south to their capital (Yellowknife) and not much else (it should be noted that travel to Yellowknife involves a ferry trip in the summer, an ice road in the winter, and no connection at all in the between seasons)
There is also the famous Demster highway to Inuvik Northwest Territories via the Yukon, I have driven this road, it is nearly 800km long, and is made of very rough gravel. It has one gas station about half way. there are 2 ferry crossings (ice roads in the winter, no connection in the between seasons), and no other sign of human life. The road can not be paved due to the permafrost (try paving on top of ice and see how well it lasts). The village of Tuktoyuktuk lies slightly further north and is inaccessible by road except in the winter when an ice road is in place on the river. Tuk is on the arctic ocean.
The town of Inuvik is a very interesting place in fact, with all utilities above ground because of the permafrost (this includes water and sewer which run in above ground "utilidor" banks which are kept heated to prevent freezing) houses are built on stilts as sitting directly on the ground is a recipe for disaster.
I have never been anywhere more isolated than those 2 communities, and they are actually among the best connected settlements in the "north". According to wikipedia the territory of Nunavut has a population of 33,000 people in 1.9 million square kilometres. that's pretty spread out! (in fact their largest "city" is only 6,000 people (Iqaluit))
I work for a telecom company that has been providing tv service to parts of canada for the past 7 years. One of the options we give our customers is the ability to use an xbox as a digital set top box, this saves them the rental fee for a normal stb, and makes for one less device on the shelf by the tv. The system generally works well, however there are some drawbacks, the first is boot time, stbs are somewhat "always on" and wake up near instantaneously. The xbox takes a moment to boot, and then another moment to launch our tv application. The second issue is the remote, xbox remote controls just arent as easy to use as our dedicated ones.
For those that were asking about bandwidth, our iptv service uses its own vlan seperate from the internet service, so although both go through the same modem, the iptv doesnt count toward bandwidth caps, nor does it interfere with your download speeds on the computer
No, Android doesn't have voice recognition, it support's Google's Voice Recognition API. It's all done via an API call to Google's services.
Siri's entirely on the phone on the other hand.
I've been using vlingo on my android for about a year now (and it was available before that as well) Near as I can tell it does everything Siri does. And it works completely on the phone (though I think it can also improve itself somewhat if you allow an internet connection)
Slashdot Mirror
The OP said worthwhile accounts. While a poetic statement about "beautiful desolation" or looking down on the Earth might sound nice, it doesn't advance our knowledge of space much.
Some people's definition of "worthwhile" expand beyond raw knowledge of what that person experienced. Is it not worthwhile to encourage people to be interested in what is out there? After all, without such interest even your robots wouldn't get any funding. Is it not worthwhile to provide roll models for kids and inspiration to all? But perhaps some of the most worthwhile things I've seen come out of the accounts of astronauts are even less tangible, their descriptions of the planet as seen from space go a long way to help causes such as environmental protection and world peace.
Human space travel has a lot of intangible benefits, and while it isn't the right answer for everything, stating that it has no merit at all is rather naive.
I can see why that's a bad thing for a specific artist... but I don't see how that's a bad thing for society in general.
There's nothing wrong with asking the guy in charge if he'll let you skip in line... There is something wrong if he changes the rules to put you first in line because you paid him.
"I want a pony!"... but is it reasonable to expect I'll get one?
Who is really at fault, the person who asks for the moon? or the person who gives it to them at the expense of all others? I see nothing wrong in the asking, but the giving should have criminal repercussions
Religions are the origin of "have it and we like it. It has to be bad and evil and must be banned"! They trade on guilt, if you aren't feeling guilty, they haven't done their work right...
Actually the introduction of smart phones has caused a slight increase in phone size. (you need a larger phone to type on than you do to simply dial, and a larger screen to play games/watch movies than to dial a number)
Unfortunately humanity as a whole is incredibly poor at predicting the future accurately enough to know where it will go from here, I expect thinner, though likely not much smaller in the short term, but without knowing what new user interface we will come up with farther in the future, I can't say what size or shape will be required to interact with it.
The use mobile phones while driving does multiply the accident rate, which can still kill people.
So why is it then that no jurisdiction in the world who have introduced a ban on using a cell phone while driving have seen a reduction in accidents?
Every study I've ever seen linking accidents to cell phone use fail to correct for percentage of drivers using a cell phone in the first place. If 10% of your drivers are using a cell phone, and 10% of accidents occur while a cell phone is in use, that does NOT mean that 10% of your accidents were caused by a cell phone, in fact it means that in all likelihood the cell phones had zero effect.
Now I think it's naive to believe that no accidents have been caused by a person due to their cell phone use, I also believe that it isn't nearly as significant a number as the alarmists want to believe.
Seems to be working for the Swiss...
So you give the politicians a pass on all the bad laws they wrote? it's not their fault, someone lobbied for it!
Anyone should be allowed to present their ideas to the politicians. The whole point to having an elected government though is for those people to represent society's wishes, not those of a few lobbyists. Don't blame the lobbyists for the problem, they haven't passed a single bad law. Blame the politicians who did the actual damage.
Why do we need copyright to provide incentive? through most of the history of humanity copyright did not exist, and people still created.
Many creations today are made using previous works that were not copyrighted or whose copyright has expired.
Many people create for the love of the art, or make their money on live shows, or the initial sale, or other methods.
If the only way you can make any money is through the government creating an artificial scarcity of your product, maybe your business model is a bit flawed?
Difficulty in enforcement is not a good reason, however what is the point to a law in the first place (any law). The point is to provide a benefit to society as a whole.
We shouldn't pass any law that we don't think will make society a better place in general.
Now it quickly becomes apparent why we don't want people running around killing people, it harms society by removing portion of it completely, it causes everyone to live in perpetual fear that they may be next.
On the flip side let's look at copyright, this is a very modern invention that didn't even exist a few centuries ago, and yet society flourished. People invented and created a lot of stuff before any form of copyright existed. And what happens when someone copies something? The original creator is not deprived of it. The new person now has a copy, if anything you have INCREASED the wealth of society by spreading around the creation to allow more people to enjoy it.
So while all of society benefits from a ban on random murder. Only an elite few have any potential to gain anything from copyright, and those few have shown throughout the centuries that they do just fine without such protection.
One might also look at what society as a whole wants. If something becomes the societal norm, is it still a good idea to prohibit it? If one were to believe the copyright infringement figures thrown around by the entertainment industry it quickly becomes obvious that an extremely large percentage of people must, to some extent, engage in unauthorized copying. This speaks to the idea that this is something that society approves of, and thinks is beneficial. Surely their own numbers prove that more people are in favour of being permitted to copy whatever they want than are in favour of protecting those same works. Should not the government take that in to account when writing laws? Something that society as a whole wants to happen is probably something that governments should be considering implementing!
Why doesn't anyone dispute short term protection?
For that vast majority of human history there was no such thing as copyright, or trademark, or patent, and the world did just fine.
When Shakespeare wrote his plays you were free to watch a play, and then get your troupe of actors together and reproduce it exactly in another theatre with no legal ramifications.
When Beethoven wrote his symphonies you could copy the sheet music and have your own orchestra play it.
Think of all the art in any form that existed back then. Think of the inventions that happened despite a lack of any protections.
Why shouldn't we dispute the whole concept of protection for imaginary property? Nobody has ever provided any proof that it provides a net societal benefit, but much damage to society is obvious in it's enforcement.
And yet Ferrari and Lamborghini are NOT in a large legal battle accusing the other of stealing all their ideas. Both have similar styles of vehicles (probably more similar than most android phones are to iphones) and they co-exist quite happily.
Android phones may look somewhat like iphones, but iphones look a lot like many things that pre-dated them. (and maybe someday iphone will catch up to android in functionality and features)
If they follow the rules of society while doing so, why should we blame them? If the rules are written wrong, shouldn't we blame those who write the rules?
I want all sorts of things, and if I do nothing illegal in obtaining them, that shouldn't be a problem. It should also be perfectly legal for me to demand that laws be written to satisfy my own personal whims. What shouldn't happen however is those who write the laws shouldn't be listening to my demands unless it is truly beneficial to society as a whole. And that's where the problem lies, if politicians did what was right for society, and passed laws with the best interests of the citizens in mind, then it wouldn't matter what leaders of corporations did (as long as they stayed within those laws). It is much easier to establish one proper and coherent set of laws then it is to assume that every single person on the planet will always "do the right thing" without them.
By absolving politicians of any responsibility in the creation of bad laws, you are trying to push the responsibility instead on to the entire population of the planet, in the hopes that not one of those people would be willing to do something "evil"(tm)
and worse yet, it's rectangular with rounded corners, someone tell apple to sue them!
I use vlingo on my android, you just have to say "hey vlingo" to wake it up, and then state what you want. it's pretty natural, I'd use it a whole lot more if my car's bluetooth interface was smart enough to let me talk to the phone without already being in the middle of a call... (If I have to pick up the phone to use it, then I might as well use the keyboard!)
I just hope you aren't related to the idots I found the other day when sending email...
I have RDNS records set up, they match A records for the host. That wasn't enough for this particular mail server (at a large american ISP), my message got bounced because the RDNS record didn't include the words "mail", "smtp", or "mx"... since when was THAT a requirement??? (I was also blacklisted by another large american ISP who refused to say why, and I suspect it was the same broken reason, luckilly that one was willing to remove me from the blacklist with a simple request, unlike the first one who refused to do anything unless I renamed my mail server!)
according to that map the entire territory of Nunavut is completely reliant on satellite, that's 33,000 people right there. looks like about half the Northwest Territories too, so that's another few thousand.
The territory of Nunavut has no roads connecting out of the territory to the rest of Canada, and very few (if any) roads between communities in the territory.
The Northwest Territories have very few roads, you can pretty much drive from the south to their capital (Yellowknife) and not much else (it should be noted that travel to Yellowknife involves a ferry trip in the summer, an ice road in the winter, and no connection at all in the between seasons)
There is also the famous Demster highway to Inuvik Northwest Territories via the Yukon, I have driven this road, it is nearly 800km long, and is made of very rough gravel. It has one gas station about half way. there are 2 ferry crossings (ice roads in the winter, no connection in the between seasons), and no other sign of human life. The road can not be paved due to the permafrost (try paving on top of ice and see how well it lasts). The village of Tuktoyuktuk lies slightly further north and is inaccessible by road except in the winter when an ice road is in place on the river. Tuk is on the arctic ocean.
The town of Inuvik is a very interesting place in fact, with all utilities above ground because of the permafrost (this includes water and sewer which run in above ground "utilidor" banks which are kept heated to prevent freezing) houses are built on stilts as sitting directly on the ground is a recipe for disaster.
I have never been anywhere more isolated than those 2 communities, and they are actually among the best connected settlements in the "north".
According to wikipedia the territory of Nunavut has a population of 33,000 people in 1.9 million square kilometres. that's pretty spread out! (in fact their largest "city" is only 6,000 people (Iqaluit))
I work for a telecom company that has been providing tv service to parts of canada for the past 7 years. One of the options we give our customers is the ability to use an xbox as a digital set top box, this saves them the rental fee for a normal stb, and makes for one less device on the shelf by the tv.
The system generally works well, however there are some drawbacks, the first is boot time, stbs are somewhat "always on" and wake up near instantaneously. The xbox takes a moment to boot, and then another moment to launch our tv application. The second issue is the remote, xbox remote controls just arent as easy to use as our dedicated ones.
For those that were asking about bandwidth, our iptv service uses its own vlan seperate from the internet service, so although both go through the same modem, the iptv doesnt count toward bandwidth caps, nor does it interfere with your download speeds on the computer
better yet, the "magical" part of the 4S is a feature I've been using on my Android device for over a year...
No, Android doesn't have voice recognition, it support's Google's Voice Recognition API. It's all done via an API call to Google's services.
Siri's entirely on the phone on the other hand.
I've been using vlingo on my android for about a year now (and it was available before that as well) Near as I can tell it does everything Siri does. And it works completely on the phone (though I think it can also improve itself somewhat if you allow an internet connection)
Vlingo
Take a look at vlingo
The competition has the same thing. (You can't see my face, but it's straight)