Speaking of Jodie Foster, I found the bug guys as very compelling depictions of what scientists are really like. People who are very pasionate about what they do, often VERY dorky, and who have the same needs and desire as someone else including the desire to get into Jodie Foster's pants.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. Look at it this way, if it's something someone in a small town would know, it's probably public knowledge.
WHO ARE YOU??? This is the question addressed by a secure identification method.
Please don't confuse the issue with police states. The lack of a "unique number" has neve stopped dictators before now. They're not goint to help would be tyrants much today.
I believe the existing "system" is far more dangerous as it is controlled by corporations as opposed to the government which at least partially belongs to the people. Right now, Equifax and Citibank could care less if your identity is stolen. They don't care if someone data mines personal information about yourself and sells it.
What is required is a framework and some solid laws about what is privte and what is public. A "proof positive" private ID (one that can be authenticated but not recorded) goes a long way towards providing IDs without encroaching on privacy.
However, they cannot put things like RFIDs in them. If they do that, the jig is up.
Our "master id" should be private. Corporarations should be able to generate a unique ID from my government issues smartcard by pushing their public key through my card.
In this way, it would be impossible for corporations to do data mining on my information. There would be no absolute unique keys from one company to another. The only entity that could traverse these databases is the governemnt.
Mind you, I don't completly trust the government, but I don't trust corporations one bit.
Indexing databases by social security numbers should be a federal offense.
I don't base this assertion on horror movies, I base it on physics. If you have an open wound and you apply a vaccum to it, it will suck out your blood with no chance of coagulation since the blood will not pool but rather will keep on pouring.
The rate of blood flow would be scrictly a function of your blood pressure vs the pressure of the outside air plus the effective presure applied to the rest of your body. Since you will be constricting every other part of the body with a pressure suit, but will squirt out of a laceration that is exposed to a vaccuum.
You can test this with a knife and a vaccum cleaner. Alternatively it is demonstrated tens of thousands of times a day with needles and a syringes at hospitals and medical clinics all across the country. They call this "drawing blood" and it is done by applying negative pressure (vacuum) to an intentionally afflicted puncture wound (hollow needle).
You probably don't need the storage... But others have serious backup needs. And a lot of these people really don't like backing up hard drives to other hard drives. Ther is still a need for removeable storage out there. Zip still manages to sell it's latest backup solutions.
Don't you worry yourself, computer users will find plenty to do with a 27GB-60GB optical disc.
Blu ray's ships with java. I think to do the interactive stuff (maybe some light games as well.). MS hates it (java).
OK, so it ships with Java. And why is that a reason why MS would want to ship on a media that: a) Is not required given the capacity of the installation. b) Is incompatible with 99% of the computers in the marketplace.
a) You'll never see a good thief or gang of thieves. They dress incognito for obvious reasons. Dressing in fake uniforms (no Best Buy logo) made these people immediately conspicuous and hence the subject of scrutiny by the door checker.
b) The bit in the Thomas Crown Affair was about RETURNING a stolen item.
c) If you were going to steal something in faux uniform, you'd show up dressed like a cop.
d) If you want to steal, you need to cause a diversion like a fight (just like in Ocean's Eleven) that will draw the security people away from their posts. That or a really attractive person of the opposite sex (or perhaps same?!?!?!?) to divert the attention of the door checker.
e) An alternative strategy would be to get some item tags that are still activated and have lots of people go through the security checker with these things on. After so many "false alarms" they'll turn the thing off for the sake of keeping the business open.
So you see the manager was a dufus and got played by reacting to the prank. If he had ignored the pranksters as people with too much time on their hands, he would have spoiled their fun.
Most of my time at Best Buy is spent trying to avoid the blue shirts. That is... except the cute ones.
I estimate that 95% of the people working at Best Buy/Circuit City/CompUSA haven't the foggiest clue of what they're talking about. They are just parroting something some sales rep told them.
What is absoluetly the worst is when someone asks me to go with them to the store and I end up getting into an argument with the sales reps. The stuff that comes out of their mouth is absoluetly amazingly, collosally ignorant.
I think you need to put on a layer of longjohns, then squeeze a skinsuit one size too small over it as an experiment. The practical aspect is you have to mow your lawn in this getup and collect "samples".
After you've peeled (or cut) yourself free of this arrangment, you should know the error of your thinkin.
Darn right they're trying to solve the wrong problems...
They're trying to make suits for men that will make them more like robots. We don't need men for planetary exploration. All we need is robots. They're cheaper.
$100,000 is a waste of money pursuant to a 2 trillion dollar project that should never happen until we can figure out a way to make earth to orbit transport cheaper. A Mars mission is nothing more than an expensive joyride.
NASA's core mission of space exploration is perfectly suited to robots and it should stay that way until humans have some actual purpose in space besides visiting.
And yet their upon the Giza plateua stands the great monuments. This is where the modern arrogance comes in. The existence of the pyramids is proof that the Egyptians were capable of doing these things. You don't need a modern Gantt chart to prove it. And you certainly do not need to invent aliens either. Because I'm sure that if aliens were involved, they probably would have chosen a more flexible material than stone.
Why would Microsoft ship Windows on HD-DVD when there are so few players available. They don't put Windows of Office on DVD right now. About the only think you're likely to see this with is MSDN.
When you make money selling upgrades, you have to sell whatever matches equipment. I remember dealing with stacks of 16 floppy drives when CDs were available in the marketplace.
Regarding X-Box... why would game publishers ship on a format when most of the units out there do not have a player available for it???? This could only happen AFTER Microsoft ships a drive standard with every unit and even then adoption would be slow for the previously mentioned reason.
In a couple of years, we may finally see Microsoft shipping everything on DVDs. Don't expect them to ship on Hi-DVDs for another 10 years. By that time, I'm sure they will rather have you simply download all software from their servers directly.
There are massive volumes of rummage sale VHS collections available for sale. Those same people would have told you that their VHS tapes were good enough. Something tells me that the DVDs will find their way to the same place. I'm doubly convinced when you consider that DVDs are far less durable than VHS tapes (just like CDs aren't as durable as cassette tapes).
I'm deeply dissapointed with Sony's decision to scrap the encasements for Blu-Ray discs.;-(
As I recall, the access to high capacity media is what drove many adventure games with movie cuts onto Sony as opposed to Nintendo. Video games are highly driven by technology and the "gee-wizz" factor. More polygons, more resolution, faster frame rates... etc...
So if you asked me whether gamers care about the resolution of the videos inside their games... I'd have to say yes they do. The alternative is the Nintendo cartoons. That certainly has a niche, but it has cost Nintendo dearly in terms of market share.
Honestly, I think somebody is paying all these analysts to hype the "next generation" DVD format because for now, at least, BOTH formats are too expensive, require too much investment in new equipment, and offer too little benefit to be worthwhile for at least a few more years.
Duhh... what do you think analysts are for? You pay them, and then they write nice things about you in the guise of being an independent observer.
Folks, anyone else out there realize that $900 is extremely expensive for the average joe to spend on a TV? Let's see, the majority of TVs are bought by late teens and 20-somethings, heading out into the world, or college bound to fit in their tiny apartments or basement flats. As they have famillies, SOME will become wealthy enough to spend $500 on a 30" TV, most will be happy with a 20" (as my familly has been for years),
The question of affordability and purchasing are not the same. People spend all kinds of money on crazy $hit that they cannot afford to pay for, nor will they actually use.
I've personally seen some pretty large TVs in some pretty confined spaces. The constraint has always been the depth of the thing and newer tubes have shrunk in that respect. Plasma keeps dropping as well.
I'm quite happy with DVD for now - and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy either standard for the foreseeable future.
This is reason #1 why Sony has the edge. Their drives will be targeted towards the storage market immediately due to increased storage capacity.
However, if Microsoft announces that they will put Blu-Ray in XBox, you can stick a fork in HD-DVD. If both major console systems are using Blu-Ray than that will put them over the top. With widespread DVD contentment the consoles will lead the way and folks will be more likely to buy Hi-Def DVDs as an afterthought to a console sale rather than specifically buying a player.
The North Koreans are on the footsteps of China. The bottom line to the whole situation was if China was comfortable with a nuclear armed North Korea, there was nothing we could do about it. We were fought to a standstill in the Korean war and we would have been fought to a standstill in any new Korean conflict. At the same time, the North Koreans are boxed in by American troops to the south and Chinese to the north.
So you see, North Korea's nukes change NOTHING. We cannot invade North Korea, and the North Koreans cannot invade anyone else. North Korea cannot actually USE their nuke as we would evaportate them in retaliation.
Mutually assured destruction works just as well with micro-powers as it does with super-powers. Except that is... the micro-power typically cannot destroy the US. Typically, they cannot even deliver those weapons to the US, they would have to attack a US ally instead. The only thing that really changes is that invasion of that country (in some cases) becomes a non-option. If you're an asshole who thinks you have the right to tell everyone what to do, thats a big problem. If you're a decent person who believes you need to convince people of things, it's not really a problem.
The net of your 12%-15% is where the insurance comes in. If you do really well in life, you don't need social security. But if times hit you hard and things fall apart, then it is enough to survive in old age. It's not enough to thrive... it's enough to survive.
Well, if thats the case, than either Egypt controlled the greater portion of the Middle East, or they new some time saving tricks that our 5000 year post project evalutation are not aware of.
People are always crowing about so called "primitive" people being unable to build megolithic structures. Than some people credit it to aliens or other things. My personal guess is that this is simply the arrogance of modern people who have never bothered to build a pyramid.
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Speaking of Jodie Foster, I found the bug guys as very compelling depictions of what scientists are really like. People who are very pasionate about what they do, often VERY dorky, and who have the same needs and desire as someone else including the desire to get into Jodie Foster's pants.
Was Spock not the science officer who used logic and reason as a bludgeon amongst his emotional/irrational human crew-mates?
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. Look at it this way, if it's something someone in a small town would know, it's probably public knowledge.
WHO ARE YOU??? This is the question addressed by a secure identification method.
Please don't confuse the issue with police states. The lack of a "unique number" has neve stopped dictators before now. They're not goint to help would be tyrants much today.
I believe the existing "system" is far more dangerous as it is controlled by corporations as opposed to the government which at least partially belongs to the people. Right now, Equifax and Citibank could care less if your identity is stolen. They don't care if someone data mines personal information about yourself and sells it.
What is required is a framework and some solid laws about what is privte and what is public. A "proof positive" private ID (one that can be authenticated but not recorded) goes a long way towards providing IDs without encroaching on privacy.
However, they cannot put things like RFIDs in them. If they do that, the jig is up.
Our "master id" should be private. Corporarations should be able to generate a unique ID from my government issues smartcard by pushing their public key through my card.
In this way, it would be impossible for corporations to do data mining on my information. There would be no absolute unique keys from one company to another. The only entity that could traverse these databases is the governemnt.
Mind you, I don't completly trust the government, but I don't trust corporations one bit.
Indexing databases by social security numbers should be a federal offense.
I don't base this assertion on horror movies, I base it on physics. If you have an open wound and you apply a vaccum to it, it will suck out your blood with no chance of coagulation since the blood will not pool but rather will keep on pouring.
The rate of blood flow would be scrictly a function of your blood pressure vs the pressure of the outside air plus the effective presure applied to the rest of your body. Since you will be constricting every other part of the body with a pressure suit, but will squirt out of a laceration that is exposed to a vaccuum.
You can test this with a knife and a vaccum cleaner. Alternatively it is demonstrated tens of thousands of times a day with needles and a syringes at hospitals and medical clinics all across the country. They call this "drawing blood" and it is done by applying negative pressure (vacuum) to an intentionally afflicted puncture wound (hollow needle).
I'm thinking of the effect this will have on your skin. I'll take the pressurized suit any day over a overly tight scuba suit.
What is really needed in this cases are articulated joints so you're not trying to "bend" a balloon that you happen to be wearing.
You probably don't need the storage ... But others have serious backup needs. And a lot of these people really don't like backing up hard drives to other hard drives. Ther is still a need for removeable storage out there. Zip still manages to sell it's latest backup solutions.
Don't you worry yourself, computer users will find plenty to do with a 27GB-60GB optical disc.
You've obviously never seen a CD or DVD after a teenager has handled it. Scratched up to all hell!!!! Often unplayable.
You can break casette tapes in different ways, but you can't scratch them out of playing properly.
If the Durabis coating in Sony does what you say it will (resist steel wool) then that is great. But I seriously doubt it.
Blu ray's ships with java. I think to do the interactive stuff (maybe some light games as well.). MS hates it (java).
OK, so it ships with Java. And why is that a reason why MS would want to ship on a media that:
a) Is not required given the capacity of the installation.
b) Is incompatible with 99% of the computers in the marketplace.
??
a) You'll never see a good thief or gang of thieves. They dress incognito for obvious reasons. Dressing in fake uniforms (no Best Buy logo) made these people immediately conspicuous and hence the subject of scrutiny by the door checker.
b) The bit in the Thomas Crown Affair was about RETURNING a stolen item.
c) If you were going to steal something in faux uniform, you'd show up dressed like a cop.
d) If you want to steal, you need to cause a diversion like a fight (just like in Ocean's Eleven) that will draw the security people away from their posts. That or a really attractive person of the opposite sex (or perhaps same?!?!?!?) to divert the attention of the door checker.
e) An alternative strategy would be to get some item tags that are still activated and have lots of people go through the security checker with these things on. After so many "false alarms" they'll turn the thing off for the sake of keeping the business open.
So you see the manager was a dufus and got played by reacting to the prank. If he had ignored the pranksters as people with too much time on their hands, he would have spoiled their fun.
Most of my time at Best Buy is spent trying to avoid the blue shirts. That is
I estimate that 95% of the people working at Best Buy/Circuit City/CompUSA haven't the foggiest clue of what they're talking about. They are just parroting something some sales rep told them.
What is absoluetly the worst is when someone asks me to go with them to the store and I end up getting into an argument with the sales reps. The stuff that comes out of their mouth is absoluetly amazingly, collosally ignorant.
And no, you do NOT need the service plan.
I think you need to put on a layer of longjohns, then squeeze a skinsuit one size too small over it as an experiment. The practical aspect is you have to mow your lawn in this getup and collect "samples".
After you've peeled (or cut) yourself free of this arrangment, you should know the error of your thinkin.
...
And if the skin ruptured, than your blood would drain with no possibility of clotting and you would die.
Besides, after wearing knee braces, I'm not sure that astronauts would appreciate the amount of chafing that such a suit would cause.
Darn right they're trying to solve the wrong problems ...
They're trying to make suits for men that will make them more like robots. We don't need men for planetary exploration. All we need is robots. They're cheaper.
$100,000 is a waste of money pursuant to a 2 trillion dollar project that should never happen until we can figure out a way to make earth to orbit transport cheaper. A Mars mission is nothing more than an expensive joyride.
NASA's core mission of space exploration is perfectly suited to robots and it should stay that way until humans have some actual purpose in space besides visiting.
And yet their upon the Giza plateua stands the great monuments. This is where the modern arrogance comes in. The existence of the pyramids is proof that the Egyptians were capable of doing these things. You don't need a modern Gantt chart to prove it. And you certainly do not need to invent aliens either. Because I'm sure that if aliens were involved, they probably would have chosen a more flexible material than stone.
Why would Microsoft ship Windows on HD-DVD when there are so few players available. They don't put Windows of Office on DVD right now. About the only think you're likely to see this with is MSDN.
... why would game publishers ship on a format when most of the units out there do not have a player available for it???? This could only happen AFTER Microsoft ships a drive standard with every unit and even then adoption would be slow for the previously mentioned reason.
When you make money selling upgrades, you have to sell whatever matches equipment. I remember dealing with stacks of 16 floppy drives when CDs were available in the marketplace.
Regarding X-Box
In a couple of years, we may finally see Microsoft shipping everything on DVDs. Don't expect them to ship on Hi-DVDs for another 10 years. By that time, I'm sure they will rather have you simply download all software from their servers directly.
There are massive volumes of rummage sale VHS collections available for sale. Those same people would have told you that their VHS tapes were good enough. Something tells me that the DVDs will find their way to the same place. I'm doubly convinced when you consider that DVDs are far less durable than VHS tapes (just like CDs aren't as durable as cassette tapes).
I'm deeply dissapointed with Sony's decision to scrap the encasements for Blu-Ray discs.
As I recall, the access to high capacity media is what drove many adventure games with movie cuts onto Sony as opposed to Nintendo. Video games are highly driven by technology and the "gee-wizz" factor. More polygons, more resolution, faster frame rates
So if you asked me whether gamers care about the resolution of the videos inside their games
Honestly, I think somebody is paying all these analysts to hype the "next generation" DVD format because for now, at least, BOTH formats are too expensive, require too much investment in new equipment, and offer too little benefit to be worthwhile for at least a few more years.
Duhh
Folks, anyone else out there realize that $900 is extremely expensive for the average joe to spend on a TV? Let's see, the majority of TVs are bought by late teens and 20-somethings, heading out into the world, or college bound to fit in their tiny apartments or basement flats. As they have famillies, SOME will become wealthy enough to spend $500 on a 30" TV, most will be happy with a 20" (as my familly has been for years),
The question of affordability and purchasing are not the same. People spend all kinds of money on crazy $hit that they cannot afford to pay for, nor will they actually use.
I've personally seen some pretty large TVs in some pretty confined spaces. The constraint has always been the depth of the thing and newer tubes have shrunk in that respect. Plasma keeps dropping as well.
Backwards compatibility didn't help LS-120 make it over the hump. In the end it was the CD-R that did all of these devices in.
However, I do get the feeling that Blu-Ray players will be capable of playing HD-DVD discs but it's certain that HD-DVD players cannot read Blu-Ray.
I'm quite happy with DVD for now - and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy either standard for the foreseeable future.
This is reason #1 why Sony has the edge. Their drives will be targeted towards the storage market immediately due to increased storage capacity.
However, if Microsoft announces that they will put Blu-Ray in XBox, you can stick a fork in HD-DVD. If both major console systems are using Blu-Ray than that will put them over the top. With widespread DVD contentment the consoles will lead the way and folks will be more likely to buy Hi-Def DVDs as an afterthought to a console sale rather than specifically buying a player.
The North Koreans are on the footsteps of China. The bottom line to the whole situation was if China was comfortable with a nuclear armed North Korea, there was nothing we could do about it. We were fought to a standstill in the Korean war and we would have been fought to a standstill in any new Korean conflict. At the same time, the North Koreans are boxed in by American troops to the south and Chinese to the north.
... the micro-power typically cannot destroy the US. Typically, they cannot even deliver those weapons to the US, they would have to attack a US ally instead. The only thing that really changes is that invasion of that country (in some cases) becomes a non-option. If you're an asshole who thinks you have the right to tell everyone what to do, thats a big problem. If you're a decent person who believes you need to convince people of things, it's not really a problem.
So you see, North Korea's nukes change NOTHING. We cannot invade North Korea, and the North Koreans cannot invade anyone else. North Korea cannot actually USE their nuke as we would evaportate them in retaliation.
Mutually assured destruction works just as well with micro-powers as it does with super-powers. Except that is
The net of your 12%-15% is where the insurance comes in. If you do really well in life, you don't need social security. But if times hit you hard and things fall apart, then it is enough to survive in old age. It's not enough to thrive
Well, if thats the case, than either Egypt controlled the greater portion of the Middle East, or they new some time saving tricks that our 5000 year post project evalutation are not aware of.
People are always crowing about so called "primitive" people being unable to build megolithic structures. Than some people credit it to aliens or other things. My personal guess is that this is simply the arrogance of modern people who have never bothered to build a pyramid.