Well for one thing, you will be dead by the time it even matters, so unless you achieve some kind of cybernetic immortality at some point in your life, don't sweat it!
On the other hand, maybe a closed universe isn't such a bad thing. What do you think will happen when it crunches back up again? It could eventually start another big bang and start the process over again. If it expands forever, it will eventually get colder and colder until the universe if full of the dead hulks of stars and background radiation. I for one think a big crunch is far more exciting.
I just hope they drive better than they manage their company! According to Yahoo Finance, their management effectiveness rating is -381.36 percent. Thats based on losses over earnings. Ouch!
That and I can't believe they sold it to M$, why didn't they take it to Sony, Nintendo or even Sega instead?
Of course, that's why the experiments they are doing with those AI controlled satellites is so important.
Just as interesting is a report I saw some time back about using a swarm of robotic "bugs" to basically shotgun a wide area on a planet or sprinkle throughout asteroid field. These would then work together with either a ground based or orbiting base station (which could beam the results back to earth, the bugs would be too small to do more than talk to the base station) and greatly extend its area of study.
In this case rather than drop them directly from space, you carry them on a blimp and once it is over a nice looking area, you shoot them out in a spread. That would let you build cheaper bug bots which didn't have to survive a full re-entry from space. Then the blimp could just take pictures until it crashed and no one would really care because the orbiter or a base station also dropped from the blimp would continue its work on the ground.
Welcome to the world we Mac users know all too well... This happens to us all the time. But at least you guys still have a nice large geek community which can just replace this product with something which is most likely even better. I only hope OS X draws enough to the Mac side to help jumpstart developement there.
With luck someone will replace this product with an open source version which blows away the original. From what I read in the message body, doesn't look like that will be all too hard.
Re:Curiosity killed the cat
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
>Yes there is still accountability. There is no
>reckless desire in the persuit of science. Nobody
>is doing any experiments that could result in the
>obliteration of our civilization.
While I much agree with your other statements (especially the one about aiming the lasers at his head, that was classic!) I must point out that there have been experiments done which could have wiped us out and that is germ warfare experimentation. I saw a special on the History channel about how the Japanese experiments on it which involved Chinese test subjects still occasionally run amok in China causing epidemics of Bubonic Plague in some areas from time to time.
The US and the U.S.S.R. did a TON of research on super bugs to be used as "doomsday weapons", or more accuratly, just as a threat use being used. Even today you still have this going on in Korea, Iran, Iraq and any other number of small nations. While it may be military in nature, it is still scientific work, just being put to horrible misuse...
They already have his information so he might as well post it now. Also I think he wants to show others considering buying one what kind of information this thing collects on you and sends to TiVo. I for one certainly would like to see this because I had planned on getting one later this year, but not now, not after what they did with this disabling thing...
> (Just curious, isn't this something for a mailing list rather than an Ask Slashdot?)
I think it was a valid question. One reason they are posted here is not only to answer the question, but to discuss the issue around it, in this case, installers doing funny stuff to your computer without your knowledge. Its also nice to hear about other ways to do it as well.
BTW: I didn't know about chroot until I saw this, so it teaches some of us about it as well. I wonder if this works in Mac OS X...
If you read the patent it specifically mentions the use of MPEG as the recording format. VHS is definately not MPEG and thus would not fall under that. So I think as long as you did not use MPEG you would not be violating the patent. I still find this to be a rather broad patent which seems suspiciously aimed at stopping any competition to TiVo.
so can Linux developers! Apple has taken BSD Unix and NeXTSTEP and made it extremely accessible to the great unwashed (those who greatly fear command lines in this case). I have been using it since the beta and while the GUI could use some work in the area of speed and needs a few missing things put into place, it is quite usable for the vast majority of people, Mac or Windows users. I had some friends over this week who were windows/linux users and they had absolutely no trouble with OS X's GUI and in fact they quite liked it. So my point it, why can't Linux do the same? I say they can and will do it. Certainly eventually *someone* will manage to organize a project to make Linux as easy to use as the Mac OS or Windows. It is really only a matter of time and one thing about Linux is that it does seem to evolve a bit more slowly than commercial OS's. However it also doesn't suffer from the bloat and stupid mistakes which result from rushed developement.
In the meantime, it may even be benefitial to some people to have to fight with getting it set up. One friend who was a complete dolt at computers fought and fought with Linux and finally got it set up as he liked it and now uses is 90% of the time as his desktop OS. Because of his ordeal, he is no longer a computer dolt having learned so much in the process of getting Linux running.
Slashdot Mirror
Well for one thing, you will be dead by the time it even matters, so unless you achieve some kind of cybernetic immortality at some point in your life, don't sweat it! On the other hand, maybe a closed universe isn't such a bad thing. What do you think will happen when it crunches back up again? It could eventually start another big bang and start the process over again. If it expands forever, it will eventually get colder and colder until the universe if full of the dead hulks of stars and background radiation. I for one think a big crunch is far more exciting.
I just hope they drive better than they manage their company! According to Yahoo Finance, their management effectiveness rating is -381.36 percent. Thats based on losses over earnings. Ouch! That and I can't believe they sold it to M$, why didn't they take it to Sony, Nintendo or even Sega instead?
Of course, that's why the experiments they are doing with those AI controlled satellites is so important. Just as interesting is a report I saw some time back about using a swarm of robotic "bugs" to basically shotgun a wide area on a planet or sprinkle throughout asteroid field. These would then work together with either a ground based or orbiting base station (which could beam the results back to earth, the bugs would be too small to do more than talk to the base station) and greatly extend its area of study. In this case rather than drop them directly from space, you carry them on a blimp and once it is over a nice looking area, you shoot them out in a spread. That would let you build cheaper bug bots which didn't have to survive a full re-entry from space. Then the blimp could just take pictures until it crashed and no one would really care because the orbiter or a base station also dropped from the blimp would continue its work on the ground.
Welcome to the world we Mac users know all too well... This happens to us all the time. But at least you guys still have a nice large geek community which can just replace this product with something which is most likely even better. I only hope OS X draws enough to the Mac side to help jumpstart developement there. With luck someone will replace this product with an open source version which blows away the original. From what I read in the message body, doesn't look like that will be all too hard.
>Yes there is still accountability. There is no >reckless desire in the persuit of science. Nobody >is doing any experiments that could result in the >obliteration of our civilization. While I much agree with your other statements (especially the one about aiming the lasers at his head, that was classic!) I must point out that there have been experiments done which could have wiped us out and that is germ warfare experimentation. I saw a special on the History channel about how the Japanese experiments on it which involved Chinese test subjects still occasionally run amok in China causing epidemics of Bubonic Plague in some areas from time to time. The US and the U.S.S.R. did a TON of research on super bugs to be used as "doomsday weapons", or more accuratly, just as a threat use being used. Even today you still have this going on in Korea, Iran, Iraq and any other number of small nations. While it may be military in nature, it is still scientific work, just being put to horrible misuse...
They already have his information so he might as well post it now. Also I think he wants to show others considering buying one what kind of information this thing collects on you and sends to TiVo. I for one certainly would like to see this because I had planned on getting one later this year, but not now, not after what they did with this disabling thing...
> (Just curious, isn't this something for a mailing list rather than an Ask Slashdot?) I think it was a valid question. One reason they are posted here is not only to answer the question, but to discuss the issue around it, in this case, installers doing funny stuff to your computer without your knowledge. Its also nice to hear about other ways to do it as well. BTW: I didn't know about chroot until I saw this, so it teaches some of us about it as well. I wonder if this works in Mac OS X...
If you read the patent it specifically mentions the use of MPEG as the recording format. VHS is definately not MPEG and thus would not fall under that. So I think as long as you did not use MPEG you would not be violating the patent. I still find this to be a rather broad patent which seems suspiciously aimed at stopping any competition to TiVo.
so can Linux developers! Apple has taken BSD Unix and NeXTSTEP and made it extremely accessible to the great unwashed (those who greatly fear command lines in this case). I have been using it since the beta and while the GUI could use some work in the area of speed and needs a few missing things put into place, it is quite usable for the vast majority of people, Mac or Windows users. I had some friends over this week who were windows/linux users and they had absolutely no trouble with OS X's GUI and in fact they quite liked it. So my point it, why can't Linux do the same? I say they can and will do it. Certainly eventually *someone* will manage to organize a project to make Linux as easy to use as the Mac OS or Windows. It is really only a matter of time and one thing about Linux is that it does seem to evolve a bit more slowly than commercial OS's. However it also doesn't suffer from the bloat and stupid mistakes which result from rushed developement. In the meantime, it may even be benefitial to some people to have to fight with getting it set up. One friend who was a complete dolt at computers fought and fought with Linux and finally got it set up as he liked it and now uses is 90% of the time as his desktop OS. Because of his ordeal, he is no longer a computer dolt having learned so much in the process of getting Linux running.