Sorry, but I don't think "Do Not SPAM" lists could ever work as well as the "Do Not Call" registries we have now. It probably won't stop politicians from passing similar law though, so they can appear to be "doing something" about it.
Do Not Call lists work because telemarketing is more expensive and more accountable than the cheap fly-by-night nature of spamhouses. It's in the telemarketers best interests to save money by not bothering people who don't want to be bothered, or else. It's in the spammers best interests to use a Do-Not-Spam list as a free source of victims to spam(!) because their cost is next to zero anyway and they can change their outgoing "phone number" whenever they like.
Besides filters and whitelists, the best technological way to stop spam is to either increase the cost to send (not necessarily in dollar terms), or require each new sender to pass a test that only a human could pass, before you accept their mail and add them to your friends list.
I figured the effect would be insignificant, but thanks for the lesson in scale anyway.:)
I once calculated that if every man, woman and child on Earth (6.2B) wanted to own their own spacecraft with a mass equivalent of a modern aircraft carrier (100,000 tons vs. the Shuttle's 100 tons), it would amount to around 1/100,000th of 1 percent of the Earth's total mass. Seems like it would be a big deal, but isn't.
More like 300 billion I think (or 300 thousand million for those using the Wrong number system)
That's a pet peeve of mine too.
I was watching The Blue Planet series last night, and it peeved to hear David Attenbouro say: "...the largest migration on Earth happens every night. One Thousand Million tons of biomass rises from the depths..."
Why phrase it like that? A "thousand million" isn't any more comprehensible than just saying "a billion"
I don't think a couple more meters of water will do much.
And how much will our future space elevators slow the Earth over time? These equatorial spokes won't be very massive but they'll extend thousands of kilometers like giant arms, and additionally, Earth'll lose momentum for every unit of mass that never returns to the surface.
I'm sure it'd still be a miniscule but measurable effect.
But hey! We could always attach giant solar sails to the ends of these spokes such the sun's solar energy would "spin" the Earth back up to equilibrium.:-)
Sure, legged maneuverability is great, but you'll have to trade off speed and ruggedness for something the size of a tank ('AMIE' from the movie Red Planet is a cool beast though).
A conventional tank's armor protects its means of locomotion pretty well (like a tortoise), but legged creatures have it all hanging out there.
Just concentrate your attack on the weak joints and it's game over.
A dragonfly wouldn't make a very good indoor spy though. You'd want a small moth, or a common housefly, or ladybug, or even a mosquito, depending on the locale.
These tiny spies probably wouldn't have enough juice to fly home alone though, so they could sneak their way outside and hitch a ride on its dragonfly buddy, which in turn could hitch a ride on their pigeon comrade, which would then have enough juice to fly back to base and/or transmit when in range...
Guess military complexes and government buildings will have to be hermetically sealed and have hunter-killer insects to guard the weakpoints. That cockroach in The Fifth Element didn't seem to have much of a problem getting past security though.:)
it's very easy to get a small model into a spin or spiral from which it is difficult to recover.
Then the solution is auto stabilization, like the previous poster mentioned.
Another solution (for human pilots) is to immerse the virtual pilot better by using two cameras instead of one -- for stereo separation -- and gimble it to match head movement.
Human pilots shouldn't be flying these things anyway; they should be guiding them, just like how the rest of non-recreational aviation is going to end up in the next few decades.
You really can't blame people for only having the patience for soundbites though. Without this brevity, information overload would actually be a real problem, so attention spans necessarily shorten unless you disconnect from the world and the increasing number of unique people/ideas in it.
You're right about the difficultly in accurately compressing complex ideas down to page length, to abstract, to paragraph, to sentence, to one word... not easy. I have this fantasy where I can hover my mouse's scrollwheel over any given piece of information (like a book review) and increase/decrease it's verbosity.
Here's a soundbite that makes me sound like a nutcase: "one day memes will completely take the place of genes."
Whether it's communism or terrorism, it's still the shameless exploitation of patriotism.
It's just like those FUCKS who wrap themselves in the US flag or use 9-11 references like "let's roll" in order to create sheep-like patriotic demand for their bullshit warez.
If course, these ultra-capitalists will tell you that exploiting patriotism for profit is the very definition of a god-fear'n capitalist-worship'n American...... even if the product being sold was manufactured by communists(!).
Well then, we'd have to make sure that for every east-west traveler there was also a west-east traveler on the other side of planet counter-balancing your every move. If NASA wanted to put an aircraft carrier in orbit by "falling upwards" towards a tempoary supermass, there'd have to be a dual launch on the other side of the planet (whatever's opposite Flordia?--ocean I'd guess).
Taken further, you'd also need to balance that momentary supermass at half a year ahead of Earth's orbit around the sun, otherwise the orbit would get more eccentric over time, and the seasons more severe.
Of course there are differences, but simply because our expansion is less obvious and more politically correct, doesn't make it any less of an insult to those being occupied. Being the worlds' cops and oil protectors breeds more resentment/terrorism than stability (IMO)...
A far fetched scenario: How would you have felt if another country's military intervened in the american civil war in order to "keep our country stable" (and to secure their vital tobacco crops)?
No one will ever end U.S. military and cultural "imperialism."
Oh? Roman and British Imperialism came to end, and so will the United States. Don't be so short-sighted to think that our empire is so righteous that it will last forever - it won't.
Also, what's with putting the word imperialism in quotes? Look it up then look in a mirror.
Most people don't need their egos fed 24/7 and are able to take a dose of humility just fine thanks. Those who can't... well... they're the stuff assholes are made of.
Several people have pointed to pckeyboards.com for the durable IBM-style keyboards. It's just too bad that they don't sell an updated ergonomic version of it. Does anyone?
I *need* the split keyboard layout - there's no way I can go back to the wrist-twisting rectangle layout.
Everyone knows you're supposed to incorporate before you're allowed to legally hack.
--
Re:Private missions to the moon
on
Back to the Moon?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
IMO, you're vastly overestimating the value of "moon dirt". You'd need to ask a few interested people what they'd be willing to pay...
Personally, I wouldn't want to own an encapsulated speck of moon dust, but I would want a good sized moon rock that I could hold in my grubby hands. *I* would value an average density 1cm moonrock at no more than $1,000, which is still a profit over the insane $/kg of chemical-rocket transportation costs.
The reason I wouldn't pay any more than that is because its novelty value will drop to zero over time, just as if Columbus had brought back "American Soil!"...
I don't find it disturbing so much as I find it completely braindead. There's stupid patents, and then there's ASTOUNDINGLY STUPID patents.
You can't patent the idea of putting new stuff in retro boxes, so what could they possibly be asking the government for monopoly on? Their special mounting bracket process? Heh.
I've got $100 that says that these people were probably suckered by some stupid/greedy lawyer, and that the patent has no... er... little chance in hell of being granted.
Automating yourself out of the job is great for overall productivity, but its the rare person (too honest, or too stupid - you pick) who will work to make himself unecessary.
Also, you should have learned by now that "looking busy" and "furrowed brows" are valuable job skills.:-)
...physical objects cannot usually be cloned. So data backups are really the special case.
For the time being.
But in a few decades it will be possible to clone physical objects for very little cost. And again, just like software, it'll be the WORK that goes into the product that is the real cost, not the media itself.
So yeah, you'll eventually be able to make a perfect "backup" of your car or your TV (via non-destructive molecular scanning). Just as with software though, you can either pay your fair/unfair share for the WORK that went into the design of the products, or you can "steal" its blueprint, or you can choose open-source hardware designs, (or you can wait for non-IP-owning, non-rent-paying, non-food-consuming, non-social-climbing slave AI to do the grunt work of development).
Slashdot Mirror
--
Do Not Call lists work because telemarketing is more expensive and more accountable than the cheap fly-by-night nature of spamhouses. It's in the telemarketers best interests to save money by not bothering people who don't want to be bothered, or else. It's in the spammers best interests to use a Do-Not-Spam list as a free source of victims to spam(!) because their cost is next to zero anyway and they can change their outgoing "phone number" whenever they like.
Besides filters and whitelists, the best technological way to stop spam is to either increase the cost to send (not necessarily in dollar terms), or require each new sender to pass a test that only a human could pass, before you accept their mail and add them to your friends list.
--
I once calculated that if every man, woman and child on Earth (6.2B) wanted to own their own spacecraft with a mass equivalent of a modern aircraft carrier (100,000 tons vs. the Shuttle's 100 tons), it would amount to around 1/100,000th of 1 percent of the Earth's total mass. Seems like it would be a big deal, but isn't.
--
That's a pet peeve of mine too.
I was watching The Blue Planet series last night, and it peeved to hear David Attenbouro say: "...the largest migration on Earth happens every night. One Thousand Million tons of biomass rises from the depths..."
Why phrase it like that? A "thousand million" isn't any more comprehensible than just saying "a billion"
--
And how much will our future space elevators slow the Earth over time? These equatorial spokes won't be very massive but they'll extend thousands of kilometers like giant arms, and additionally, Earth'll lose momentum for every unit of mass that never returns to the surface.
I'm sure it'd still be a miniscule but measurable effect.
But hey! We could always attach giant solar sails to the ends of these spokes such the sun's solar energy would "spin" the Earth back up to equilibrium. :-)
--
--
A conventional tank's armor protects its means of locomotion pretty well (like a tortoise), but legged creatures have it all hanging out there.
Just concentrate your attack on the weak joints and it's game over.
--
These tiny spies probably wouldn't have enough juice to fly home alone though, so they could sneak their way outside and hitch a ride on its dragonfly buddy, which in turn could hitch a ride on their pigeon comrade, which would then have enough juice to fly back to base and/or transmit when in range...
Guess military complexes and government buildings will have to be hermetically sealed and have hunter-killer insects to guard the weakpoints. That cockroach in The Fifth Element didn't seem to have much of a problem getting past security though. :)
--
Conformity is a powerful magnet, even if you're aware of it and actively trying to be different (which itself can be a kind of conformity).
--
Then the solution is auto stabilization, like the previous poster mentioned.
Another solution (for human pilots) is to immerse the virtual pilot better by using two cameras instead of one -- for stereo separation -- and gimble it to match head movement.
Human pilots shouldn't be flying these things anyway; they should be guiding them, just like how the rest of non-recreational aviation is going to end up in the next few decades.
--
You're right about the difficultly in accurately compressing complex ideas down to page length, to abstract, to paragraph, to sentence, to one word... not easy. I have this fantasy where I can hover my mouse's scrollwheel over any given piece of information (like a book review) and increase/decrease it's verbosity.
Here's a soundbite that makes me sound like a nutcase: "one day memes will completely take the place of genes."
--
It's just like those FUCKS who wrap themselves in the US flag or use 9-11 references like "let's roll" in order to create sheep-like patriotic demand for their bullshit warez.
If course, these ultra-capitalists will tell you that exploiting patriotism for profit is the very definition of a god-fear'n capitalist-worship'n American...... even if the product being sold was manufactured by communists(!).
--
Taken further, you'd also need to balance that momentary supermass at half a year ahead of Earth's orbit around the sun, otherwise the orbit would get more eccentric over time, and the seasons more severe.
Fun stuff to think about. :)
--
--
Yay! Globalization! Completely free trade! It's good for everyone! :-)
--
A far fetched scenario: How would you have felt if another country's military intervened in the american civil war in order to "keep our country stable" (and to secure their vital tobacco crops)?
--
--
Oh? Roman and British Imperialism came to end, and so will the United States. Don't be so short-sighted to think that our empire is so righteous that it will last forever - it won't.
Also, what's with putting the word imperialism in quotes? Look it up then look in a mirror.
--
Most people don't need their egos fed 24/7 and are able to take a dose of humility just fine thanks. Those who can't... well... they're the stuff assholes are made of.
--
I *need* the split keyboard layout - there's no way I can go back to the wrist-twisting rectangle layout.
--
--
Personally, I wouldn't want to own an encapsulated speck of moon dust, but I would want a good sized moon rock that I could hold in my grubby hands. *I* would value an average density 1cm moonrock at no more than $1,000, which is still a profit over the insane $/kg of chemical-rocket transportation costs.
The reason I wouldn't pay any more than that is because its novelty value will drop to zero over time, just as if Columbus had brought back "American Soil!"...
--
You can't patent the idea of putting new stuff in retro boxes, so what could they possibly be asking the government for monopoly on? Their special mounting bracket process? Heh.
I've got $100 that says that these people were probably suckered by some stupid/greedy lawyer, and that the patent has no... er... little chance in hell of being granted.
--
Also, you should have learned by now that "looking busy" and "furrowed brows" are valuable job skills. :-)
--
For the time being.
But in a few decades it will be possible to clone physical objects for very little cost. And again, just like software, it'll be the WORK that goes into the product that is the real cost, not the media itself.
So yeah, you'll eventually be able to make a perfect "backup" of your car or your TV (via non-destructive molecular scanning). Just as with software though, you can either pay your fair/unfair share for the WORK that went into the design of the products, or you can "steal" its blueprint, or you can choose open-source hardware designs, (or you can wait for non-IP-owning, non-rent-paying, non-food-consuming, non-social-climbing slave AI to do the grunt work of development).
--