I'm too young to remember much about Skylab (born in '73) except for one particular thing. When Skylab was heading for its fiery ending, my mom made our family live in the basement for 2 or 3 days. Seems extremely excessive in retrospect, but it made perfect sense at the time (and age). Maybe we'll all look back on Y2K the same way in the 2010's.
I was wondering whether I was the only one who thought Wired has gone downhill. I started reading it a couple years ago (I'm referring mainly to the printed magazine) and got turned on by the good quality technical and philosphical content. But lately most of their articles seem to be about business and $$$. Thank goodness for Slashdot -- it's the most intellectually stimulating part of my daily routine.
Having a prefix like an area code wouldn't help much. When I lived near Detroit my area code was changed twice in three years as 313/810 were split into 313/810/248 and then into 313/810/248/734. Calling an old neighbor now requires trial-and-error to guess their new area code.
As for the spelling and punctuation, maybe he was using voice (non)recognition software
Anyway, the whole article smells strongly of a hoax -- making fun of overly-complicated programming specifications.
[Don't read this if you haven't seen The Matrix yet. I don't want to spoil it for you.]
If you believe what you saw in The Matrix, we humans are a great source of energy. We can't exactly go sticking everyone in energy-extraction pods permanently, though. (Well, maybe we already are in pods and/. is only a program to keep our minds occupied.) So instead we could just make sleep chambers that extract our energy at night. Hook your bed up to your electric car and voila, no more oil dependency. Turn homeless shelters into power plants. This is great!
Where are you going to get the antimatter from? Hard to find that stuff in my part of town. You could make antimatter if you had another energy source, but then you're really just making a battery. (Would be a great battery though; still very useful for spacecraft.) You have to remember that to make any fuel (electricity for your electric car, hydrogen for your fuel cell, or antimatter for your spaceship) you have to use energy from a primary source (solar, oil, deuterium).
As for zero state energy, I don't understand how you propose to perform useful work without an energy sink.
I think the first commercial use I saw was for Lexus, about how it keeps you safe from all the dangers on the road, long before the GAP swing dancing commercial. It was actually a decent use of the effect, unlike all the other "gee-whiz" abuses by GAP and a bike company. When I saw previews of The Matrix I was afraid the abuse was sinking to new depths, but since it fits in with the whole style of the film it works very well.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm too young to remember much about Skylab (born in '73) except for one particular thing. When Skylab was heading for its fiery ending, my mom made our family live in the basement for 2 or 3 days. Seems extremely excessive in retrospect, but it made perfect sense at the time (and age). Maybe we'll all look back on Y2K the same way in the 2010's.
I was wondering whether I was the only one who thought Wired has gone downhill. I started reading it a couple years ago (I'm referring mainly to the printed magazine) and got turned on by the good quality technical and philosphical content. But lately most of their articles seem to be about business and $$$. Thank goodness for Slashdot -- it's the most intellectually stimulating part of my daily routine.
Having a prefix like an area code wouldn't help much. When I lived near Detroit my area code was changed twice in three years as 313/810 were split into 313/810/248 and then into 313/810/248/734. Calling an old neighbor now requires trial-and-error to guess their new area code.
As for the spelling and punctuation, maybe he was using voice (non)recognition software
Anyway, the whole article smells strongly of a hoax -- making fun of overly-complicated programming specifications.
[Don't read this if you haven't seen The Matrix yet. I don't want to spoil it for you.]
/. is only a program to keep our minds occupied.) So instead we could just make sleep chambers that extract our energy at night. Hook your bed up to your electric car and voila, no more oil dependency. Turn homeless shelters into power plants. This is great!
If you believe what you saw in The Matrix, we humans are a great source of energy. We can't exactly go sticking everyone in energy-extraction pods permanently, though. (Well, maybe we already are in pods and
Where are you going to get the antimatter from? Hard to find that stuff in my part of town. You could make antimatter if you had another energy source, but then you're really just making a battery. (Would be a great battery though; still very useful for spacecraft.) You have to remember that to make any fuel (electricity for your electric car, hydrogen for your fuel cell, or antimatter for your spaceship) you have to use energy from a primary source (solar, oil, deuterium).
As for zero state energy, I don't understand how you propose to perform useful work without an energy sink.
I think the first commercial use I saw was for Lexus, about how it keeps you safe from all the dangers on the road, long before the GAP swing dancing commercial. It was actually a decent use of the effect, unlike all the other "gee-whiz" abuses by GAP and a bike company. When I saw previews of The Matrix I was afraid the abuse was sinking to new depths, but since it fits in with the whole style of the film it works very well.