Instead of ragging on Apple FireWire, why not at least have a pointer to the Linux 1394 project at SourceForge?
http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/
If ya want more links, I got em at
IEEE 1394 links
The underlying problem is not the satellite, it's the limited launch options. For (various, political) reasons, they built the Space Shuttle - a space truck which turned out to be a space ferrari. Sure, it's "reusable", but at enormous cost. I started to figure this out when I used to read the USENET postings about Shuttle servicing - I don't know if they still do it, but they used to completely disassemble and then reassemble the engine after every launch.
It costs like $500 million to a billion per launch.
They already had a cool, huge space station, Skylab, but for (various, political) reasons, they let it fall out of the sky.
So having built this space ferrari, the problem was, there was no place for it to go. So eventually for (various, political) reasons they finally built the new space station (ISS).
Meanwhile, with all the eggs in the Space Shuttle basket, we have not achieved the goal of having a diverse range of launch systems with a range of prices and capabilities.
I still don't understand why they don't use the Russian Energia to get usefully large payloads into orbit.
Good news: the Space channel will be running Farscape finally starting this fall. "Stay tuned for FARSCAPE on SPACE. Coming up Fall 2001 - Saturdays @ 2pm ET with a repeat Sundays @ 1pm ET."
So when it is on again, it will qualify as the best SF on Canadian television.
I've tried to get into Lexx (which is filmed in Halifax after all) but it doesn't do much for me - Andromeda neither (besides which the purple girl used to be Busy's friend, what's she doing in outer space?).
Slightly off-topic, my votes for the best ever are Babylon 5 and Max Headroom.
It appears to be a balanced approach, they identify four questions in the particular area of legal provisions for prosecuting people who try to circumvent protection technology. We just have to make sure we Canadians submit enough statements so that they decide on the "right" answers to these questions.
1. Given the rapid evolution of technology and the limited information currently available regarding the impact of technological measures on control over and access to copyright protected material, what factors suggest legislative intervention at this time?
2. Technological devices can be used for both copyrighted and non-copyrighted material. Given this, what factors should be considered determinative in deciding whether circumvention and/or related activities (such as the manufacture or distribution of circumvention devices) ought to be dealt with in the context of the Copyright Act, as opposed to other legislation?
3. If the government were to adopt provisions relating to techological measures, in which respects should such provisions be subject to exceptions of other limitations?
4. Are there non-copyright issues, e.g. privacy, that need to be taken into account when addressing technological measures?
Just make sure you have mechanical back pain and not
ankylosing spondylitis.
One easy way to tell is if you wake up in the middle of the night with excruiciating lower back pain, it may be AS.
I forgot to mention two other Star Trek timeline stories, both the Generations and First Contact movies had time travel jiggery that was handled reasonably well. But in both of them it's clear that changes to the timeline propagate forward and back. One of the issues that's implied but never dealt with in Generations is that Picard could have travelled back to save his brother and nephew but he chose to save an entire planet instead.
Come to think of it with so many time travel stories maybe they should call it Time Trek.
I always find it bit odd that the small subgenre of written science fiction that is time travel seems to be so popular in scifi movies and TV. I guess it's the allure of changing mistakes you made in your past. The problem is, it's fiendishly difficult to do a good story without getting yourself tangled in paradox, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's easy for all viewers to follow the tangled timelines.
But it has been used often with entertaining effect in Star Trek: The Guardian of Forever where they go back and alter the course of the 2nd World War is a classic and I think the most popular Star Trek episode ever. But it had a real science fiction writer behind it, plus it was exploring the alternative history genre as well.
The one with Teri Garr where they stop the nuclear space platform is good too (now if they would just come back and stop the Bush missle defense and militarization of space plan).
And The Voyage Home is also a very entertaining movie that uses time travel to enable the classic "fish out of water" satirical societal outsider commentary.
But from all of these, it's fairly clear that they take care to avoid interfering with the timeline.
And the Star Trek universe law seems to be a single timeline one, where your changes propagate forward and back.
The Next Gen episode where Q gives Picard a chance to change the course of his life was good, as was the series finale, which redeemed Next Gen to some extent for me.
We also see the single timeline progation in the DS9 episode where Jake ends up as an old writer, with Sisko watching him as a kind of temporal ghost, until Jake repairs the timeline.
The DS9 one where they go back in time to the Tribbles episode is cool.
In Voyager, they had the one where they destroyed the poleric energy planet, but then it never happened because they undid the timeline change.
Then the one with the huge ship that went around destroying planets, whose effects were eliminated when it was removed from the timeline.
And Harry returns to Voyager when he re-enters the timestream and undoes the changes that had landed him on Earth.
Plus which the doctor's entire portable emitter exists because of technology from the Federation Time Cops of the future.
But here's where things start to break down.
Why don't the Time Cops show up all the time to prevent any timeline alterations?
Then in the Old Kes / Young Kes time travel one, they didn't follow the paradox through.
Old Kes goes back in time to rescue Young Kes, so YK knows what is going to happen, this should break the timeline, but YK inexplicably goes on to become OK *again*.
And then finally to the series finale.
Ok, this Klingon gizmo apparently lets Admiral Janeway travel quite freely through time and space. Why doesn't she just go to before Voyager got sucked into the Delta quadrant, and stop them ever going there? There must be a 1000 ways she knows of to sabotage the ship harmlessly to prevent it from ending up in the badlands where it got grabbed. Or for that matter, why doesn't she just jump back and stop the construction of the Caretaker facility, or destroy it before it has a chance to grab Voyager.
Then to make matters worse, the timeline is broken. 23-year-voyage Voyager makes Admiral Janeway. She goes back in time and interferes MASSIVELY with the timeline (future tech, killing the Borg Queen, destroying the transwarp dohicky, bringing Voyager back early). Ok fine that makes 7-year-voyage Voyager. But then, there's not going to be the same Admiral Janeway who went back in time, so as soon as Voyager arrives near Earth, that Admiral Janeway never went back in time, so 7-year-Voyager never arrives etc.
This leaves aside minor details like the crime against sentients biological warfare against the Borg. Ok the Borg aren't attacking you, they've been leaving your ship alone. You can't just go and wipe their entire Unimatrix out. That's a war crime atrocity.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought tattoos were human markup language.
Instead of ragging on Apple FireWire, why not at least have a pointer to the Linux 1394 project at SourceForge?
http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/
If ya want more links, I got em at IEEE 1394 links
Is it just me, or does the newly rendered Planet Vulcan look like something out of a level from Quake?
The underlying problem is not the satellite, it's the limited launch options. For (various, political) reasons, they built the Space Shuttle - a space truck which turned out to be a space ferrari. Sure, it's "reusable", but at enormous cost. I started to figure this out when I used to read the USENET postings about Shuttle servicing - I don't know if they still do it, but they used to completely disassemble and then reassemble the engine after every launch.
It costs like $500 million to a billion per launch.
They already had a cool, huge space station, Skylab, but for (various, political) reasons, they let it fall out of the sky.
So having built this space ferrari, the problem was, there was no place for it to go. So eventually for (various, political) reasons they finally built the new space station (ISS).
Meanwhile, with all the eggs in the Space Shuttle basket, we have not achieved the goal of having a diverse range of launch systems with a range of prices and capabilities.
I still don't understand why they don't use the Russian Energia to get usefully large payloads into orbit.
Good news: the Space channel will be running Farscape finally starting this fall. "Stay tuned for FARSCAPE on SPACE. Coming up Fall 2001 - Saturdays @ 2pm ET with a repeat Sundays @ 1pm ET."
So when it is on again, it will qualify as the best SF on Canadian television.
I've tried to get into Lexx (which is filmed in Halifax after all) but it doesn't do much for me - Andromeda neither (besides which the purple girl used to be Busy's friend, what's she doing in outer space?).
Slightly off-topic, my votes for the best ever are Babylon 5 and Max Headroom.
Actually Canada's secret weapon is the Canadian Arrow which is based on the design of the V2 rocket.
It appears to be a balanced approach, they identify four questions in the particular area of legal provisions for prosecuting people who try to circumvent protection technology. We just have to make sure we Canadians submit enough statements so that they decide on the "right" answers to these questions.
1. Given the rapid evolution of technology and the limited information currently available regarding the impact of technological measures on control over and access to copyright protected material, what factors suggest legislative intervention at this time?
2. Technological devices can be used for both copyrighted and non-copyrighted material. Given this, what factors should be considered determinative in deciding whether circumvention and/or related activities (such as the manufacture or distribution of circumvention devices) ought to be dealt with in the context of the Copyright Act, as opposed to other legislation?
3. If the government were to adopt provisions relating to techological measures, in which respects should such provisions be subject to exceptions of other limitations?
4. Are there non-copyright issues, e.g. privacy, that need to be taken into account when addressing technological measures?
Just make sure you have mechanical back pain and not ankylosing spondylitis. One easy way to tell is if you wake up in the middle of the night with excruiciating lower back pain, it may be AS.
I forgot to mention two other Star Trek timeline stories, both the Generations and First Contact movies had time travel jiggery that was handled reasonably well. But in both of them it's clear that changes to the timeline propagate forward and back. One of the issues that's implied but never dealt with in Generations is that Picard could have travelled back to save his brother and nephew but he chose to save an entire planet instead. Come to think of it with so many time travel stories maybe they should call it Time Trek.
I always find it bit odd that the small subgenre of written science fiction that is time travel seems to be so popular in scifi movies and TV. I guess it's the allure of changing mistakes you made in your past. The problem is, it's fiendishly difficult to do a good story without getting yourself tangled in paradox, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's easy for all viewers to follow the tangled timelines.
But it has been used often with entertaining effect in Star Trek: The Guardian of Forever where they go back and alter the course of the 2nd World War is a classic and I think the most popular Star Trek episode ever. But it had a real science fiction writer behind it, plus it was exploring the alternative history genre as well.
The one with Teri Garr where they stop the nuclear space platform is good too (now if they would just come back and stop the Bush missle defense and militarization of space plan).
And The Voyage Home is also a very entertaining movie that uses time travel to enable the classic "fish out of water" satirical societal outsider commentary.
But from all of these, it's fairly clear that they take care to avoid interfering with the timeline.
And the Star Trek universe law seems to be a single timeline one, where your changes propagate forward and back.
The Next Gen episode where Q gives Picard a chance to change the course of his life was good, as was the series finale, which redeemed Next Gen to some extent for me.
We also see the single timeline progation in the DS9 episode where Jake ends up as an old writer, with Sisko watching him as a kind of temporal ghost, until Jake repairs the timeline.
The DS9 one where they go back in time to the Tribbles episode is cool.
In Voyager, they had the one where they destroyed the poleric energy planet, but then it never happened because they undid the timeline change.
Then the one with the huge ship that went around destroying planets, whose effects were eliminated when it was removed from the timeline.
And Harry returns to Voyager when he re-enters the timestream and undoes the changes that had landed him on Earth.
Plus which the doctor's entire portable emitter exists because of technology from the Federation Time Cops of the future.
But here's where things start to break down.
Why don't the Time Cops show up all the time to prevent any timeline alterations?
Then in the Old Kes / Young Kes time travel one, they didn't follow the paradox through.
Old Kes goes back in time to rescue Young Kes, so YK knows what is going to happen, this should break the timeline, but YK inexplicably goes on to become OK *again*.
And then finally to the series finale.
Ok, this Klingon gizmo apparently lets Admiral Janeway travel quite freely through time and space. Why doesn't she just go to before Voyager got sucked into the Delta quadrant, and stop them ever going there? There must be a 1000 ways she knows of to sabotage the ship harmlessly to prevent it from ending up in the badlands where it got grabbed. Or for that matter, why doesn't she just jump back and stop the construction of the Caretaker facility, or destroy it before it has a chance to grab Voyager.
Then to make matters worse, the timeline is broken. 23-year-voyage Voyager makes Admiral Janeway. She goes back in time and interferes MASSIVELY with the timeline (future tech, killing the Borg Queen, destroying the transwarp dohicky, bringing Voyager back early). Ok fine that makes 7-year-voyage Voyager. But then, there's not going to be the same Admiral Janeway who went back in time, so as soon as Voyager arrives near Earth, that Admiral Janeway never went back in time, so 7-year-Voyager never arrives etc.
This leaves aside minor details like the crime against sentients biological warfare against the Borg. Ok the Borg aren't attacking you, they've been leaving your ship alone. You can't just go and wipe their entire Unimatrix out. That's a war crime atrocity.
MAE East. MAE West. kaboom