Re:Problems probably mostly isolated to America
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 1
"I believe you just answered your own question there. Well with a "Maybe" at least,"
Which brings me back to "prove it." The US is the third most populated country in the world. It's very easy to confuse "most nut-cases" with "most nut-cases per capita" when you're talking about that many people.
And even then, we have other kinds of zealots in the US that seem to have more power here than in other Western countries. The religious zealots also have to compete with the free speech zealots, the pro-gun zealots, the civil liberties zealots...
If anything, it's the wide mix of zealots in the US that has put it where it is today. If human advancement is based on conflict (no, not just the people-shooting-each-other variety), is it any wonder the US is at the forefront of nanotech research to begin with?
"What would a self-replicating nano-machine do if it went out of control?"
You assume that there wouldn't be others around to eliminate it.
"It would eventually destroy the planet, as well as possibly the solar system and even the universe."
Two words: Fermi's Paradox.
Re:What really happened to Red Dwarf
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells."
Um... if you can do that, you can also program them to attack these malicious nanites. Stuff like that only works if you have a monopoly on the technology.
"I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides,"
So I'm going off-topic. Bah. I have karma to burn.
1.) incredible amounts of power output per unit mass of reactor. Even including radiation shielding.
2.) no need for an oxydizer. Great for submarines and spacecraft.
3.) Properly functioning reactors don't put out toxins (while just about everything else does). At worst you have "spent" fuel to get rid of, which doesn't accumulate anywhere near as fast as spent fuel in fossil fuel power sources (see point 1), and "spent" just means we don't yet have the technology to get more oomph out of it (if it's still releasing neutrons it's still useful). Why do you think we have so much focus on the "storage" of nuclear waste instead of "disposal?"
4.) The fuel itself may be more dangerous per unit mass, but go back to point 1 again.
All in all, nuclear power is probably less deadly than fossil fuel power. Even ignoring the way fossil fuel plants fund terrorism, you'd have no more black lung, no more exploding oil refineries, no more harsh chemicals put out by refineries, no more airborne carcinogens...
"Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals."
Let's see... bury nukes deep enough that the explosion (and any and all radioactive fallout) is kept underground. The explosion makes a crater, you connect the dots. Viola. What's so dangerous about that? Heck, if the Indians and Pakistanis can pull off underground nuclear tests with zero released fallout, what makes you think we can't?
"Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage."
Screw that, you can make a tank out of nanite paint. Remember the game Total Annihilation?
I'm reminded of "Can-O-Man" from The Tick.
Re:Problems probably mostly isolated to America
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 2
"where there seems to be an abundance of religious fundamentalists that more often than not misunderstand new scientific innovations, such as cloning."
I fail to see how you can claim the US has "an abundance of religious fundamentalists" when we have dozens dead in riots against (get this) the Miss World Pagent.
An abundance compared to other Western countries? Maybe, but I'd require proof demonstrating that we have more "fundamentalists" per capita. Throughout the entire world? Hell no.
At any rate, as someone else already pointed out, when the US "bans" some sort of research, they're really just banning federal funding of the research. The big decision of President Bush last year concerning stem cell research, for example, only applies to federal funding of stem cell research, not the research in general.
"If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage"
As has been repeated ad nauseum both here and on their website, AOL CDs (like almost all other mailed advertisements) are sent via Standard Mail (not First Class). There is no Return to Sender bit in Standard Mail (unlike First Class).
Besides, if they were sent First Class, the return postage has already been paid in the price of the stamp. It wouldn't hurt their wallet one way or the other.
"Look out for MS's righteous rage when the forged MAC addresses start colliding with existing, non-hacker users and it disrupts the Live service they've paid for!"
Has anybody anywhere seen two devices on the same network with the same MAC address? That wasn't done intentionally? I mean, we ain't exactly talking about a 4-digit PIN number here...
"or if there has been it was on the order of the transition from DOS to NT;"
The thing is, that break has been more than a decade in coming. NT is nothing more than Windows slapped on to Microsoft's fork of the OS/2 kernel (why do you think XP can run text-only OS/2 apps natively?), which was written way back when specifically to replace DOS on the desktop.
Really, all Microsoft did was get people good and used to the Windows UI from WFW all the way up to Me and, while everybody was distracted and writing Windows-only apps, they quick yanked out DOS from under the hood and threw in OS/2. This wasn't an overnight decision for Microsoft.
"On of the worst draw backs is that no signal if your not in open space.(meaning something isn't obstructing your signal such as going through a tunnel even tall buildings or a cloudy day can block the signal)"
As someone who's been through Baltimore's Harbor and Ft. McHenry Tunnels more times than I care to think about, I can tell you that those don't work in tunnels either. At least not until they build repeaters into the tunnel.
"or else customers would have to move their satellite dishs"
Geosynchronus satellites are 45,000 km over the equator and typically move in a figure-8 pattern relative to the surface of the earth (the ones in which the figure-8 is so small as to be non-existant are called "geostationary"). When the satellite is more than 45,000 km away, it can do quite a bit of moving without the need to adjust the dish (think "relative motion").
If dish-pointing needed pinpoint accuracy like you describe, nobody would ever be able to set up a DSS system without some really expensive equipment and a very steady hand.
"Down in Antarctica, the only internet access available is by satellite -- and it's so impossibly slow that"
A rocket scientist, I see...
IDIOT! They're in ANTARCTICA! As in "south of the Antarctic Circle!" As in "they're damned lucky the geostationary satellite was above the horizon to begin with!" You can't get much further away from the equator or try to transmit through more atmosphere than that!
Hell, most of Canada and Alaska need a bigger-than-average dish to get DSS TV service, and they're not even above the Arctic Circle. Hawaii is only about 60 degrees west of the satellites and they have the same problem. And you think that a bunch of people 90 degrees away from the satellite will get the same kind of service as those of us who live within 30?
I can't stress this enough: IDIOT! You and the morons that modded you up.
"SEGA also had a handheld system called Game Gear, which had an adapter to allow its games to be played on the Genesis/MegaDrive."
No, they had an adapter to let you play Master System games on the Game Gear. AFAIK, there is no Super Game Boy equivalent for the Genesis.
On the other hand, Nintendo released a "Super Game Boy 2" in Japan for the Super Famicom. Just like the original only with a game link port. It was released a little after Pokemon (go figure).
"media and tech companies should work together in the best interests of both industries."
I've got this silly idea: Why don't they team up and work together in the best interests of their customers instead? Or am I being too capitalistic again?
"Why buy a GBA, GC and GBA to GC adapter (AUS$600+ plus games @ AUS$70 each)when you can pick up a used SNES for AUS$30 and Classic Games for AUS$12 each? All the good games Nintendo have released for GBA are ports/remakes of the greatest games ever! Just plug a SNES into your TV... so easy!"
You mean Metroid Fusion is available for the SNES? And nobody told me!?!? I suppose next you'll tell me that the Zelda: Oracle games were available for the NES as well...
"The girls, you could argue, are just a distraction in James Bond films. The gadgets are the real stars, and time and time again, they save Bond's skin."
Yes, but it's the girls that make having skin all the more worthwhile...:)
" You mean you actually have to *gasp* buy the games to play them online? (...) Blizzard has been doing this forever"
Actually no, they haven't. A single Blizzard CD can be used to install up to 8 "spawn" installations that will let you play multiplayer games while only buying one copy of the game. Even on Battle.net. You can't play the one-player campaigns and (on the older games) you don't get CD sound, but other than that... You can even do this with Warcraft III.
Personally, I wish more game companies had this kind of attitude. It shows they're more concerned with gamers having fun than squeezing every cent out of games for the bottom line. Of course, with most Blizzard games, you don't really need that kind of incentive to want to go out and buy the game. Which brings me right back to "I wish more game companies were like this."
"They are not "using the Xbox, which they paid for", they are using modded Xbox. Makes the difference, does not it?"
Silly me. Here I thought they bought the Xbox before getting it modded. How was I to know that 100% of the modded Xboxes out there were stolen from the local Wal-Mart?
Slashdot Mirror
"I believe you just answered your own question there. Well with a "Maybe" at least,"
Which brings me back to "prove it." The US is the third most populated country in the world. It's very easy to confuse "most nut-cases" with "most nut-cases per capita" when you're talking about that many people.
And even then, we have other kinds of zealots in the US that seem to have more power here than in other Western countries. The religious zealots also have to compete with the free speech zealots, the pro-gun zealots, the civil liberties zealots...
If anything, it's the wide mix of zealots in the US that has put it where it is today. If human advancement is based on conflict (no, not just the people-shooting-each-other variety), is it any wonder the US is at the forefront of nanotech research to begin with?
"What would a self-replicating nano-machine do if it went out of control?"
You assume that there wouldn't be others around to eliminate it.
"It would eventually destroy the planet, as well as possibly the solar system and even the universe."
Two words: Fermi's Paradox.
"Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells."
Um... if you can do that, you can also program them to attack these malicious nanites. Stuff like that only works if you have a monopoly on the technology.
"I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides,"
So I'm going off-topic. Bah. I have karma to burn.
1.) incredible amounts of power output per unit mass of reactor. Even including radiation shielding.
2.) no need for an oxydizer. Great for submarines and spacecraft.
3.) Properly functioning reactors don't put out toxins (while just about everything else does). At worst you have "spent" fuel to get rid of, which doesn't accumulate anywhere near as fast as spent fuel in fossil fuel power sources (see point 1), and "spent" just means we don't yet have the technology to get more oomph out of it (if it's still releasing neutrons it's still useful). Why do you think we have so much focus on the "storage" of nuclear waste instead of "disposal?"
4.) The fuel itself may be more dangerous per unit mass, but go back to point 1 again.
All in all, nuclear power is probably less deadly than fossil fuel power. Even ignoring the way fossil fuel plants fund terrorism, you'd have no more black lung, no more exploding oil refineries, no more harsh chemicals put out by refineries, no more airborne carcinogens...
"Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals."
Let's see... bury nukes deep enough that the explosion (and any and all radioactive fallout) is kept underground. The explosion makes a crater, you connect the dots. Viola. What's so dangerous about that? Heck, if the Indians and Pakistanis can pull off underground nuclear tests with zero released fallout, what makes you think we can't?
"Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage."
Screw that, you can make a tank out of nanite paint. Remember the game Total Annihilation?
I'm reminded of "Can-O-Man" from The Tick.
"where there seems to be an abundance of religious fundamentalists that more often than not misunderstand new scientific innovations, such as cloning."
I fail to see how you can claim the US has "an abundance of religious fundamentalists" when we have dozens dead in riots against (get this) the Miss World Pagent.
An abundance compared to other Western countries? Maybe, but I'd require proof demonstrating that we have more "fundamentalists" per capita. Throughout the entire world? Hell no.
At any rate, as someone else already pointed out, when the US "bans" some sort of research, they're really just banning federal funding of the research. The big decision of President Bush last year concerning stem cell research, for example, only applies to federal funding of stem cell research, not the research in general.
Why not build a lifeboat for the ISS?
"If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage"
As has been repeated ad nauseum both here and on their website, AOL CDs (like almost all other mailed advertisements) are sent via Standard Mail (not First Class). There is no Return to Sender bit in Standard Mail (unlike First Class).
Besides, if they were sent First Class, the return postage has already been paid in the price of the stamp. It wouldn't hurt their wallet one way or the other.
"Look out for MS's righteous rage when the forged MAC addresses start colliding with existing, non-hacker users and it disrupts the Live service they've paid for!"
Has anybody anywhere seen two devices on the same network with the same MAC address? That wasn't done intentionally? I mean, we ain't exactly talking about a 4-digit PIN number here...
I wish. I already did that. I still got Windows Messaging spam. I had to go and disable the Messaging service entirely.
"or if there has been it was on the order of the transition from DOS to NT;"
The thing is, that break has been more than a decade in coming. NT is nothing more than Windows slapped on to Microsoft's fork of the OS/2 kernel (why do you think XP can run text-only OS/2 apps natively?), which was written way back when specifically to replace DOS on the desktop.
Really, all Microsoft did was get people good and used to the Windows UI from WFW all the way up to Me and, while everybody was distracted and writing Windows-only apps, they quick yanked out DOS from under the hood and threw in OS/2. This wasn't an overnight decision for Microsoft.
"i had to back up like 5 feet and even then the resemblence was only barely there"
Please please please don't mention the goatse.cx guy and "backing up" in the same post!
"On of the worst draw backs is that no signal if your not in open space.(meaning something isn't obstructing your signal such as going through a tunnel even tall buildings or a cloudy day can block the signal)"
As someone who's been through Baltimore's Harbor and Ft. McHenry Tunnels more times than I care to think about, I can tell you that those don't work in tunnels either. At least not until they build repeaters into the tunnel.
"or else customers would have to move their satellite dishs"
Geosynchronus satellites are 45,000 km over the equator and typically move in a figure-8 pattern relative to the surface of the earth (the ones in which the figure-8 is so small as to be non-existant are called "geostationary"). When the satellite is more than 45,000 km away, it can do quite a bit of moving without the need to adjust the dish (think "relative motion").
If dish-pointing needed pinpoint accuracy like you describe, nobody would ever be able to set up a DSS system without some really expensive equipment and a very steady hand.
"xcept the focalpoint isn't in the middle of most of the dishes so they look like they are pointed at the wrong angle."
It could be that, or it could be that the satellite is over a different line of longitude and the dish is pointed towards the east or west as well...
"Down in Antarctica, the only internet access available is by satellite -- and it's so impossibly slow that"
A rocket scientist, I see...
IDIOT! They're in ANTARCTICA! As in "south of the Antarctic Circle!" As in "they're damned lucky the geostationary satellite was above the horizon to begin with!" You can't get much further away from the equator or try to transmit through more atmosphere than that!
Hell, most of Canada and Alaska need a bigger-than-average dish to get DSS TV service, and they're not even above the Arctic Circle. Hawaii is only about 60 degrees west of the satellites and they have the same problem. And you think that a bunch of people 90 degrees away from the satellite will get the same kind of service as those of us who live within 30?
I can't stress this enough: IDIOT! You and the morons that modded you up.
"but think about it, how many times have you screwed up a math problem? now how many times has you TI83?"
First off, I don't have a TI-83. Real men have TI-92+s. Or a slide rule. Which I also have.
Secondly, what if the robot was running off, say, one of those famously screwy Pentium 90's or 100's with the floating point bug?
Third, what if it runs on Windows 95?
That being said, I'd still rather have the robot than some med school flunky that got his or her degree from some small Caribbean country.
"That nobody bought one also astounds me."
1.) The price tag.
2.) The fact that it went through batteries so fast that it made the Game Gear's battery life look like that of a GBA.
"SEGA also had a handheld system called Game Gear, which had an adapter to allow its games to be played on the Genesis/MegaDrive."
No, they had an adapter to let you play Master System games on the Game Gear. AFAIK, there is no Super Game Boy equivalent for the Genesis.
On the other hand, Nintendo released a "Super Game Boy 2" in Japan for the Super Famicom. Just like the original only with a game link port. It was released a little after Pokemon (go figure).
"media and tech companies should work together in the best interests of both industries."
I've got this silly idea: Why don't they team up and work together in the best interests of their customers instead? Or am I being too capitalistic again?
"Why buy a GBA, GC and GBA to GC adapter (AUS$600+ plus games @ AUS$70 each)when you can pick up a used SNES for AUS$30 and Classic Games for AUS$12 each? All the good games Nintendo have released for GBA are ports/remakes of the greatest games ever! Just plug a SNES into your TV... so easy!"
You mean Metroid Fusion is available for the SNES? And nobody told me!?!? I suppose next you'll tell me that the Zelda: Oracle games were available for the NES as well...
"Anyone tried it yet?"
:)
Why would you want to? You see, unlike Xbox, the GameCube is a console that has actual, you know, good games to play on it...
Ah, console flame wars. Just like the good ol' days on Prodigy and local BBSes.
"The girls, you could argue, are just a distraction in James Bond films. The gadgets are the real stars, and time and time again, they save Bond's skin."
:)
Yes, but it's the girls that make having skin all the more worthwhile...
" You mean you actually have to *gasp* buy the games to play them online? (...) Blizzard has been doing this forever"
Actually no, they haven't. A single Blizzard CD can be used to install up to 8 "spawn" installations that will let you play multiplayer games while only buying one copy of the game. Even on Battle.net. You can't play the one-player campaigns and (on the older games) you don't get CD sound, but other than that... You can even do this with Warcraft III.
Personally, I wish more game companies had this kind of attitude. It shows they're more concerned with gamers having fun than squeezing every cent out of games for the bottom line. Of course, with most Blizzard games, you don't really need that kind of incentive to want to go out and buy the game. Which brings me right back to "I wish more game companies were like this."
"Drop in a modchip on your cable converter to get HBO for free and see how fast your cable company splices YOUR wire when they find out."
Depends. Is it your cable converter or a rental?
"They are not "using the Xbox, which they paid for", they are using modded Xbox. Makes the difference, does not it?"
Silly me. Here I thought they bought the Xbox before getting it modded. How was I to know that 100% of the modded Xboxes out there were stolen from the local Wal-Mart?
Sadly, it looks as if Xbox has hit its target audience.