"I would contend that it is much simpler to avoid accidents in three dimensions than two: you have significantly more options should a collision be imminent."
That's assuming you have no gravity, right?
Otherwise if your engine cuts out, very quickly your number of dimensions drops to zero.
"Thank goodness most of the airframes are ash now,"
Math fail? 2 out of 6 isn't most.
Colombia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, Atlantis. Enterprise if you count the glide test airframe - I believe after Challenger there was talk about building it into a real replacement vehicle but they built Endeavour instead.
" It's hard to say why this domain name was the first registered back on March 15, 1985,"
I'd guess maybe because Symbolics was the original MIT spinoff Lisp machine company, and during the 80s Lisp was the Artificial Intelligence language poised to become THE lingua franca for computing, everywhere.
The GUI was invented on Lisp machines. Emacs was inspired by Lisp machines.
1985 was the heyday of the Strategic Computing Initiative which funnelled US $1 billion into the attempt to build, basically, a literal Skynet - the last great push for coordinated defense AI.
In 1985 Cisco was a year old and ARPANET had only been running this newfangled TCP/IP thing for two. If you were to pick one company to, ahem, symbolise the shiny face of tomorrow - well, other than maybe IBM or Bolt, Beranek and Newman - yeah, Symbolics would have been way up there.
Consume war responsibly. Do not feed war after midnight. War may explode if disposed of in fire. Objects at war may be deadlier than they appear. War is void where prohibited. War is not a complete dietary replacement and does not give legal or financial advice. Ask your doctor if war is right for you.
"On that alone, i think it warrants having someone go back and re-evaluate the underlying assumptions that were in play during the last edition."
I'm not convinced either. If the fundamental underlying assumptions of a field change completely in ten years, then surely they weren't fully understood to begin with and we shouldn't listen to what the new trendy ideas are either. Come back when you've got something to say which won't be invalidated in the next patch release.
Trends and fashions and demographics change. Mathematical principles don't.
My impression of modern computer security, having watched the Internet develop over the last fifteen years or so, is that it's an insanely fashion-conscious, short-term, trend-driven thing - and that's not a compliment. Patches are not a solution, and neither is 'keeping up with the arms race'. If you even have to think like it's an arms race, you're doing it wrong to begin with.
"They don't want nifty commands. They don't to fiddle with things. They just want it to work with the least effort on their part."
And that's not a bug in the user, it's a feature. If we're not using computers to *decrease* our cognitive load, but to increase it, then both we and the software designers are doing it wrong.
A nifty command that doesn't do what you want is not actually as nifty as it thinks it is.
There's a whole interesting comparison here between weapons systems built for export and media DRM. In both cases, you're putting potentially secret technology in the hands of not entirely trusted users.
John Ralson Saul in "Voltaire's Bastards" makes the argument that this reliance by the US military on funding advanced arms by export sales (which he blames on Robert McNamara) is fundamentally unsustainable. It certainly looks pretty weird to me.
If you don't want a foreign country learning your military secrets... how about you don't sell them to them?
For that matter, whatever happened to Ronald Reagan's Orient Express?
Why has NASA spent most of the last 30 years building advanced hypersonic test vehicles which never quite seem to make it into civilian production? Are they doing test work for USAF black planes? I mean well of course they are, but might there be some kind of underlying plan they're not talking about? It's interesting to me how hypersonics seems to be one of those research topics which has been around since WW2 and never quite breaks the surface.
Do not attribute to stupidity what can be explained by paranoia, I guess I'm saying.
"The most well-known example of technology overkill is Windows XP and its successors. Think about it for a minute. How many of the functions in these operating systems do you actually use? "
And yet a simple thing like managing.ISO files - which, you know, comes under the "disk operating" part of "system" - is apparently still far beyond Windows XP's capabilities.
"The government doesn't hold a monopoly on violence or means of violence, and nor should it, in a civilized society."
So, we should have completely privatized police and military, then, with multiple competing providers of each per nation?
I know we're heading there, what with Blackwater (sorry, Xe now) and how McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing own a lot of the actual hardware and software which is run by the nominal "US government"... but wasn't sure we completely wanted to cross that Rubicon this century.
Seems like it would do interesting things to the whole idea of borders and treaties. If you have multiple equal providers of military services inhabiting a contiguous landmass... jurisdiction would be a pain to sort out.
In the old days, they'd call that situation "secession" or "treason", but I guess things have changed?
If you live in a situation where there isn't at least a temporary monopoly on violence -- or a disagreement as to who currently holds that monopoly -- it's generally called a "war zone"... the process of renegotiating the contract for supply of violence can get pretty hairy.
Most people don't like living there. Maybe you're a mercenary or a war reporter, though?
"This idea that "business" wants to kill everybody for money is an idea that has a ridiculous amount of traction."
Let's make it more clear then, and say that *money* wants to kill everyone for money. Because it does, in exactly the same way that a virus or cancer wants to kill everyone by replicating.
Money is just a big dumb number, it doesn't know or care what the side effects maximising itself is - all money 'knows' is that $2 is bigger than $1 and it 'wants' to get bigger at all costs. That's fine, that's the behaviour of numbers, but when people try to pretend that counting and maximising money somehow magically confers *wisdom*, then everything goes down the toilet.
When business becomes about maximising money rather than thinking clearly about the true (non-measurable in financial terms) effects of its actions, then business can become a very destructive thing.
That's why we have regulations: to remind business operators that they are NOT trying to simply maximise that one dodgy score value called 'money', that money is in fact a very crude and fallible measure of value and we have these other more important things called health, safety, social cohesion, the environment, and yes, percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
"unlike the Al Gore mentality, it does not have to be all-or-nothing."
I thought Al Gore was suggesting exactly what you are: multiple complementary small approaches. At least that's the message I walked out of Inconvenient Truth with: 'don't worry, just buy a few fluorescent lightbulbs and this will all blow over'.
But *the environment*, on the other hand, doesn't care at all about what's easy or cheap or convenient or 'economically rational' for us humans to do, it just cares about what's alive and what's dead.
And the environment's the one with the ten-ton hammer, not Al Gore.
Speaking for myself, as a New Zealander, when I see African-looking people as the carefully-selected diverse-skin-tone group for a posed ad -- as opposed to Pacific Island or Asian, which are the faces we really see here -- it automatically makes me think "American". It's roughly the same effect as having people wearing cowboy hats and speaking in a twang.
And that's generally an instant negative effect. It means you're saying "1. We're not a local company. 2. We're owned by some big American corporation you've never heard of who's never heard of you. 3. We're either too out of touch or too lazy to produce localised ad cop. 4. We're probably not going to localise any other resources for you, just design a one-size-fits-all media set in Texas and print 'em in China. 5. We're not going to listen to anything you have to say or care what your market segment thinks. 7. But we did run our media buy past our New York-based sensitivity screening group, so yay diversity!"
Slashdot Mirror
"except Trek Transporters won't happen either."
And imagine if they did.
Zomg! Im in ur transporter grid pwnz0ring ur atoms!
"I would contend that it is much simpler to avoid accidents in three dimensions than two: you have significantly more options should a collision be imminent."
That's assuming you have no gravity, right?
Otherwise if your engine cuts out, very quickly your number of dimensions drops to zero.
Squish!
"Thank goodness most of the airframes are ash now,"
Math fail? 2 out of 6 isn't most.
Colombia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, Atlantis. Enterprise if you count the glide test airframe - I believe after Challenger there was talk about building it into a real replacement vehicle but they built Endeavour instead.
"how do you expect to enforce Patent Laws in warzones, 3rd world countries, embassies?"
With bombs, duh! That's what McDonnell-Douglas is for!
Though it should be easy enough for Microsoft, RIAA, Google and SpaceX to get together and give them some competition...
" It's hard to say why this domain name was the first registered back on March 15, 1985,"
I'd guess maybe because Symbolics was the original MIT spinoff Lisp machine company, and during the 80s Lisp was the Artificial Intelligence language poised to become THE lingua franca for computing, everywhere.
The GUI was invented on Lisp machines. Emacs was inspired by Lisp machines.
1985 was the heyday of the Strategic Computing Initiative which funnelled US $1 billion into the attempt to build, basically, a literal Skynet - the last great push for coordinated defense AI.
In 1985 Cisco was a year old and ARPANET had only been running this newfangled TCP/IP thing for two. If you were to pick one company to, ahem, symbolise the shiny face of tomorrow - well, other than maybe IBM or Bolt, Beranek and Newman - yeah, Symbolics would have been way up there.
I still miss that future we didn't get to see.
Consume war responsibly. Do not feed war after midnight. War may explode if disposed of in fire. Objects at war may be deadlier than they appear. War is void where prohibited. War is not a complete dietary replacement and does not give legal or financial advice. Ask your doctor if war is right for you.
Do not taunt happy fun war.
"On that alone, i think it warrants having someone go back and re-evaluate the underlying assumptions that were in play during the last edition."
I'm not convinced either. If the fundamental underlying assumptions of a field change completely in ten years, then surely they weren't fully understood to begin with and we shouldn't listen to what the new trendy ideas are either. Come back when you've got something to say which won't be invalidated in the next patch release.
Trends and fashions and demographics change. Mathematical principles don't.
My impression of modern computer security, having watched the Internet develop over the last fifteen years or so, is that it's an insanely fashion-conscious, short-term, trend-driven thing - and that's not a compliment. Patches are not a solution, and neither is 'keeping up with the arms race'. If you even have to think like it's an arms race, you're doing it wrong to begin with.
"They don't want nifty commands. They don't to fiddle with things. They just want it to work with the least effort on their part."
And that's not a bug in the user, it's a feature. If we're not using computers to *decrease* our cognitive load, but to increase it, then both we and the software designers are doing it wrong.
A nifty command that doesn't do what you want is not actually as nifty as it thinks it is.
"This is the worst news ever because now Wolverine will be like Mickey Mouse. "
Or the other way around.
Now that Disney has adamantium skeleton and healing-factor technology... Bugs Bunny is going to be toast.
There's a whole interesting comparison here between weapons systems built for export and media DRM. In both cases, you're putting potentially secret technology in the hands of not entirely trusted users.
John Ralson Saul in "Voltaire's Bastards" makes the argument that this reliance by the US military on funding advanced arms by export sales (which he blames on Robert McNamara) is fundamentally unsustainable. It certainly looks pretty weird to me.
If you don't want a foreign country learning your military secrets... how about you don't sell them to them?
Let's just say that it wasn't a crash with an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
"toppling every perceived ivory tower with their Tonka Trucks of Truth"
Best. Band name. Ever.
How does one fail at living?
Oh... right. That.
Humanity: 100% fail rate. Guaranteed.
"He was also responsible for the X-33;"
Yes, whatever did happen to that critter?
For that matter, whatever happened to Ronald Reagan's Orient Express?
Why has NASA spent most of the last 30 years building advanced hypersonic test vehicles which never quite seem to make it into civilian production? Are they doing test work for USAF black planes? I mean well of course they are, but might there be some kind of underlying plan they're not talking about? It's interesting to me how hypersonics seems to be one of those research topics which has been around since WW2 and never quite breaks the surface.
Do not attribute to stupidity what can be explained by paranoia, I guess I'm saying.
A series of yo-yos linked together by Twitter.
"The most well-known example of technology overkill is Windows XP and its successors. Think about it for a minute. How many of the functions in these operating systems do you actually use? "
And yet a simple thing like managing .ISO files - which, you know, comes under the "disk operating" part of "system" - is apparently still far beyond Windows XP's capabilities.
"because "Teacher Kills Student During Class" is just such a terrific headline."
*Blows smoke off barrel*
"... Anyone ELSE have some chewing gum they don't want to share with the class?"
"The government doesn't hold a monopoly on violence or means of violence, and nor should it, in a civilized society."
So, we should have completely privatized police and military, then, with multiple competing providers of each per nation?
I know we're heading there, what with Blackwater (sorry, Xe now) and how McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing own a lot of the actual hardware and software which is run by the nominal "US government"... but wasn't sure we completely wanted to cross that Rubicon this century.
Seems like it would do interesting things to the whole idea of borders and treaties. If you have multiple equal providers of military services inhabiting a contiguous landmass... jurisdiction would be a pain to sort out.
In the old days, they'd call that situation "secession" or "treason", but I guess things have changed?
" "things like handguns and rifles are ineffective against things like warships and long-range missiles,"
But they are very effective against the people that run them."
Funny, I thought it was improvised explosive devices which did the most damage to the occupation troops.
Not sure that those are legal in the US currently under any part of the Constitution, even by the NRO's standards.
"Guess I live outside of "civilization.""
If you live in a situation where there isn't at least a temporary monopoly on violence -- or a disagreement as to who currently holds that monopoly -- it's generally called a "war zone"... the process of renegotiating the contract for supply of violence can get pretty hairy.
Most people don't like living there. Maybe you're a mercenary or a war reporter, though?
This is where we're stuck having to simulate time travel with sequential physics. But when Google buys the LHC...
"capitulance"
What is that, the combination of capitalism + flatulance?
"This idea that "business" wants to kill everybody for money is an idea that has a ridiculous amount of traction."
Let's make it more clear then, and say that *money* wants to kill everyone for money. Because it does, in exactly the same way that a virus or cancer wants to kill everyone by replicating.
Money is just a big dumb number, it doesn't know or care what the side effects maximising itself is - all money 'knows' is that $2 is bigger than $1 and it 'wants' to get bigger at all costs. That's fine, that's the behaviour of numbers, but when people try to pretend that counting and maximising money somehow magically confers *wisdom*, then everything goes down the toilet.
When business becomes about maximising money rather than thinking clearly about the true (non-measurable in financial terms) effects of its actions, then business can become a very destructive thing.
That's why we have regulations: to remind business operators that they are NOT trying to simply maximise that one dodgy score value called 'money', that money is in fact a very crude and fallible measure of value and we have these other more important things called health, safety, social cohesion, the environment, and yes, percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
"unlike the Al Gore mentality, it does not have to be all-or-nothing."
I thought Al Gore was suggesting exactly what you are: multiple complementary small approaches. At least that's the message I walked out of Inconvenient Truth with: 'don't worry, just buy a few fluorescent lightbulbs and this will all blow over'.
But *the environment*, on the other hand, doesn't care at all about what's easy or cheap or convenient or 'economically rational' for us humans to do, it just cares about what's alive and what's dead.
And the environment's the one with the ten-ton hammer, not Al Gore.
Speaking for myself, as a New Zealander, when I see African-looking people as the carefully-selected diverse-skin-tone group for a posed ad -- as opposed to Pacific Island or Asian, which are the faces we really see here -- it automatically makes me think "American". It's roughly the same effect as having people wearing cowboy hats and speaking in a twang.
And that's generally an instant negative effect. It means you're saying "1. We're not a local company. 2. We're owned by some big American corporation you've never heard of who's never heard of you. 3. We're either too out of touch or too lazy to produce localised ad cop. 4. We're probably not going to localise any other resources for you, just design a one-size-fits-all media set in Texas and print 'em in China. 5. We're not going to listen to anything you have to say or care what your market segment thinks. 7. But we did run our media buy past our New York-based sensitivity screening group, so yay diversity!"