Teddy Roosevelt understood these very concerns when he created the first National Parks. Otherwise, he would have called them Preserves, or worse, Indian Land (this isn't a smear, just a political reference).
Teddy understood that getting city folk into the great wide open was the only way to create consituency dedicated to protecting it.
Ecological Zealots have to stop alienating EVERYBODY. They must prioritize. They have to realize that they have MUCH bigger concerns then hikers leaving isolated ziploc containers in discreet places.
The parks are currently threatened by onslaughts of motorized (recreational) vehicles. By alientating hikers, bikers, climbers and campers, they make it harder to fight the real enemies of the parks SNOWMOBILES, 4-WHEELERS and DIRT BIKES.
Maybe they'd best get the park Rangers OUT of their jeeps and ONTO mountain bikes.
It's kinda like the way that Ski-Patrol SKI-S virtually EVERYWHERE. You really respect them because you know that they are an enthusiast and would whoop your ass on any slope.
My buddy told me about a ski-patrol guy coming to pick up his injured companion on a black diamond course. The guy came down ALONE with a gurnee. He strapped his buddy into the ski-gurney and then dragged him down the course behind him. My buddy couldn't even keep up.
When THAT guy tells you not to do something you listen.
Re:These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bik
on
Geocaching Crackdown?
·
· Score: 1
Park rangers whould be very aggressive about re-routing trails when their is an excessive slope. Switchbacks do take up more space, but their erosive impact is MUCH, MUCH lower.
If you provide a better alternative (while blocking up the old trail(think concrete and steel)), most users will prefer the switchbacks. After a bit the old trail will grow over and no-one will know the difference.
Re:These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bik
on
Geocaching Crackdown?
·
· Score: 1
What a crock of SHIT!!!!!
The impact of Mountain bikes are fairly minimal provided that the trails are cut mostly parallell to hills as opposed to straight up and down. The most common impact of bikes is to cutting deep ruts into trail, that only occurs when the ground is fairly damp. The damage is easily repairable with some mulch or deadwood.
The soft rubber treads on moutain bikes do an excellent job of maintaing traction, a distribution pressure. I dare say that bikers are FAR LESS destructive than hikers. Bikers RARELY go off trail because they are interested in speed. Stopping and wandering around off trail is very uncharacteristic of mountain bikers.
HORSES on the other hand are VERY destructive. Their metal shoe hoofs cut DEEPLY into the ground. Any significant moisture combined with a horse will reduce an area to porridge VERY quickly.
I guess since the rich folks do the equestrian, they can't be penalized. This is similar to London parks banning roller-blades because the roller bladers "startled" the horses.
If humans aren't allowed on these lands, they will have no regard for them. It will simply be useless land that is unavailable because it doesn't have concrete boxes.
Trails are meaningful and relevant. They bring an appreciation for nature that is sorely missing in our society. A grass and sand covered park with monkeybars isn't REMOTELY the same thing.
The guys who jump all over Mountain Bikers (now Geo-Cachers) really get on my nerves. Cutting trails in these areas creates minimal impact and creates a mindshare that makes these areas relevant and WORTH conserving.
It is a tragedy that our population has increased to such a degree that we must destroy so many natural habitats. Wildlife preserves ARE necessecary to keep our natural ecosystems viable. BUT, fuzzy furry animals DON'T pay taxes and DON'T vote. They need their human friends that come visit to do that for them. If the humans don't visit, they won't remember their fuzzy, furry wildlife pals;-)
While I'm not a geo-cacher, I do enjoy walking on wilderness trail. So much so that I'll willingly cut out debris and make trails more passible to both pedestrian and bike traffic.
In order to save wildlife areas, you must make them meaningful and accessible. Cutting a single trail deep into a forest means that everyone doesn't cut their OWN paths. The little furry creatures will do just fine so long as their aren't trails criss-crossing the entire expanse.
Trails that make the entirety of the area accessible makes the park or area RELEVANT. Relevance creates a mindshare of users who come to those places to relax and enjoy themselves. Those users will react when the area is threatened. Relevance makes it more unlikely that it will be mowed down COMPLETELY by bull-dozers.
If their are no users, if people can't go into those areas, they are less likely to care one way or another.
I don't know about other people, but trails are more enjoyable when you CANNOT SEE the other portions of the trail. A little loop around the fringes of an area really aren't a viable trail system. They're BORING!!!!! Nobody will go their, and nobody will CARE!!!!
I too suspect that this story is a little blown out of proportion. When reading the Geo-Caching pages, I notice that most caches are located "slightly off the trail". Now that may raise an alarm bell for rangers but people will ALWAYS stray from the trail a bit whether they are Geo-Cachers or not.
It's right that rangers wish to protect trails. But they have to remember that trails protect the overall viability of a wilderness area and ultimately protect it from complete destruction. Sporadic side trails will NOT really affect the ecological viability of an area.
Most park visitors are inherently lazy, so It's really doubtful that they are going to start clearing patches of vegetation wholesale. An occasional A-Hole will tear things up for the sake of it. But I don't think you'll find this type doing something as intellectual as Geo-Caching.
They should just chill out a little and remember that though some vegetation WILL get trampled, it's really a small price to pay for the integrity of the remaining area.
- while the idea of playing games like Everquest and Diablo is interesting they don't work well 'cause using the pen for movement and pointing results in a disconnect between pen location and cursor location (hence, when I play Diablo on my Fujitsu pen slate I have to use a mouse)
Ummm...
Well, those things DO have USB ports. You could always just plug a mouse in. There are some very nice mini-targus mice that even "suck-up" their tails (cords) when you don't need them. You could also get one of those wireless models with the mini-trancievers.
Eventually, all wireless mice will be Bluetooth enabled and you'll just be able to bind your mouse to your device. No hookups required.
Compact Flash IS really good for compact devices. It is still the #1 format for flash storage and the undisputed king for mini-IO devices.
The reason, Compact Flash is basically a smaller PC-Card (which is a removeable ISA slot). A manufacturer need only miniatuize their PC-card devices and re-write drivers (for WinCE) to put out an equivalent I/O device in CompactFlash.
In fact, since TabletPC is the original topic, it's relevant to not that MOST TabletPCs have CF slots for I/O expansion. A popular format seems to be a single CardBus slot and a single CF slot.
Finally, CompactFlash is the ONLY memory format based on patents from industry standards groups. Everybody else (including SmartMedia) is proprietary IP.
My guess is that the standards group responsible for PCI will ultimately release the winners in mini/removeable PCIExpress bus devices. This provides the serial/low pin count that the other devices are touting. It also provides a compatibility at the bus level with notebooks which will create an instant market for such cards.
The PCI group will NEVER accept ANY of these other standards as an I/O format for future notebooks and tablets. With the exception of memory stick (which can unilaterally push it's format across ALL levels computing and Consumer electronics) all these formats will eventually fall by the wayside.
It's a shame that LS-120 didn't carry the day. The floppy still has a FEW uses. If had caught on seriously, we would all have relatively inexpensive LS-120 disks at our disposal (plus double capacity standard floppies).
The Newton was the first of it's kind and apparently did things rather well.
Palm and PocketPC have taken over and spawned a variety of different form factors based on newer technologies. The handheld computer is the first true PERSONAL COMPUTER. If you cant take it with, if it's bound to a desk, it's still not personal, it's just can fit on a desk.
Apple could swing into the market with a SlateBook style device about the style of their iBooks. Hell, knowing Apple, they could just replace the entire iBook series with this type of device.
The whole point is that it's personal and you can use it for a LOT of different tasks. Jobs was VERY right to significantly pair down Apple's offerings to 4 distinct lines. I think his reluctance to break new ground in other markets is really AGAINST the spirit of Apple altogether. That's what made Apple... Apple!!!
His reluctance to enter the Palm market may be justified from the standpoint that it's already VERY WELL populated. They have a sucessfull iPod handheld device and they are systematically adding PDA and other functionality for it. This is a reasonable form of evolution for a handheld device that keeps Apple from burning scarce cash on something that MAY flop.
However, creating a new breed of iBook that is more verstatile and will fill more roles in a persons life adds value to a portable and ultimately perhaps market share. If it's in the sub-notebook (mini-me) size, it can also be seen as a large sized PDA and effectively double for those functions for folks who would carry this around in a briefcase ANYWAY!!!!.
Pen intefaces (touch sensitive or magnetic interfaces) are typically physically disctinct tranparent layer placed on top of the LCD. It isn't necessary to manufacture an LCD WITH touch sensitivity. You can simply add the touch layer on top of a regularly fabbed LCD.
For instance, on most PocketPCs it is possible to replace the touch-screen (mildly costly) instead of the entire display (very expensive), see www.pocketpctechs.com for details.
BTW, what would REALLY make a TabletPC rock is inclusion of Sony's Transflective LCD screen technology. I'm excited to see what they release in their forthcoming TabletPC models.
Apparantly, their are some designs in the works for larger format xTabletPC (convertibles)(Maybe SlateBook is a better name): 14" and even a 17". That should cure the small keyboard issue. I too suffer from big hands and chuckle when people talking about using those micro-keyboards on their Handhelds. Sorry my thumbs aren't that small:-)
Additionally, Both Sony and Dell are supposed to be releasing SlateBook models soon. I would expect the Sony to have a camera (everything of Sony's has a camera now:-)
The killer home app for TabletPC is WEB-BROWSING and READING. You can kick back and relax on the couch the same way you would with a newspaper, magazine, or book.
Microsoft has deep pockets. When PalmPC (now PocketPC) first came out it wasn't REMOTELY a market success. Microsoft kept tweaking it and pushing the stuff till it took off.
The concept of the flat-panel PC is not odd or new. Yomen Rand was carrying one around the Enterprise bridge in 1968 (If you saw the pilot, her equivalent was carrying around a clipboard with some pretty messed up paper). Gene Roddenberry has a pretty spectacular record for designing writing GADGETS that WOULD become commonplace (The flip-phone, flash RAM, PDAs, Stun-guns, CT/3d body scans, etc...).
The slate-style computing device seems VERY convenient as the ultimate replacement for A LOT of paper (not ALL of it). I myself wouldn't mind kicking back and browsing the web from my with a slate as opposed to a notebook (A PocketPC is way too small to be effective in this niche). Let's not forget that the Web-Browsing was the killer app that transformed the computer from a "geek" tool to an "EVERYBODY" tool.
Nope, I predict that TabletPCs will become cheaper overall and eventually will become MORE popular than desktops the same way that notebooks are more popular (a tablet is more versatile, especially for drawing). I expect them to take off at universities in a BIG way. I also expect Apple to release their own "PowerPad" to compete.
Check out the Toshiba Protege convertible tablet. It's a VERY powerful laptop that can flex and twist into a tablet size device.
I believe the comment that this thing is excellent for school, etc... is very relevant. Beyond that I think it would make an EXCELLENT companion device to go to meetings with.
I think the KILLER APP for this device may be to make it an EXTERNAL MONITOR for your desktop. Basically, you plug it into a cradle on your desktop and it becomes monitor #2 (the cradle also contains a lock to dissuade "sticky hands"). When you go to a meeting you simply unlock the device and take it with you. At that point the device would have "syncronized" data and could indpendently run your environment.
The TabletPC is a new concept and it hasn't quite locked itself in. Apparantly, the Toshiba device is a HEAVY seller, indicating that they may have found the MAGIC form factor the same way that Compaq found the form-factor that catipulted PocketPC to market-wide relevance.
AND BTW, I love the concept of a TabletPC as all-in-one board game interface. Though, you have to pass around the stylus as the TabletPC screens are not pressure sensitive the way PocketPC screens are. You need the special stylus tip to interact with the device. (I wonder how long it will be for these magnetic tips to make their way into the 4-1 Stylii you can buy).
This is an excellent example why we need a constitutional right to privacy. The authors of the Bill of Rights could NEVER have forseen the advent of information technology and it's profound implications.
Companies are OUT OF CONTROL regarding what they do with are personal information. They should be made to keep it PRIVATE, and be held liable for damages if they release it without permission.
Because the human brain EVOLVED with these things and EXPECTS them. Even in the REAL world, when the brain is not properly simulated it doesn't work right.
In 10,000 years we will be EXACTLY the same unless.
1) We become MUCH less moral. 2) We self-induce changes via genetic engineering.
Evolution occurs because non-evolvers DIE, lot's of them. Our modern society contains VERY LITTLE evolutionary motivation. Our laws protect one another. On the whole everybody gets to pass their genes on to the next generation.
Without evolutionary pressure to SELECT a trait, their is NO EVOLUTION because there is no way to systematically kill off everyone WITHOUT that trait.
Well said, the human brain is a vastly superior system to anything that Intel has ever put out.
Our own realities our products of our own imaginations, those imaginations are guided by external input. When people become disconnected from external input (dreaming, crazy) they come up with some VERY fantastic stuff.
I believe that Hawking rationalizes this stuff by looking at time as a measure of entropy, not a dimension. Since entropy is a one-way process, it cannot be unraveled.
The method that we can consider previous states of entropy is basically by witnessing their artifacts. Some artifacts are preserved in rock. More immediate artifacts are preserved in nueral bundles and can be recalled by our biological information repositories (brains).
Until we can observe particals jumping backwards in time (pre-cognition) the notion of time travel is silly. ALL technology effectively replicates and focuses some natural phenomenon. Until we can observe the phenomenon of time travel, it's a waste of time to try to build a machine that DOES time travel.
The beauty of these ideas is that most of the people who espouse it don't seem to work very hard at all. Yeah, like schmoozing all day, power-lunches, being entertained by sales people, getting their asses kissed by underlings.
When they get home on weekend they take back their kids from their foreign au-pairs and look over their carefully manicured lawn maintained by Mexicans.
No really, the people who REALLY work their asses off (blue-collar) get tired and don't have time (away from their kids who they themselves care for) to tell other people that their too lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Go for it.
:-)
After disposing of a few caches, you might determine that it's actually fun.
After that you'll set up your own caches
Patrol cruisers don't go off the beaten path. Good luck trying to get most cops to go out there ;-) You'll be lucky to get the Ranger out of his Jeep.
Teddy Roosevelt understood these very concerns when he created the first National Parks. Otherwise, he would have called them Preserves, or worse, Indian Land (this isn't a smear, just a political reference).
Teddy understood that getting city folk into the great wide open was the only way to create consituency dedicated to protecting it.
Ecological Zealots have to stop alienating EVERYBODY. They must prioritize. They have to realize that they have MUCH bigger concerns then hikers leaving isolated ziploc containers in discreet places.
The parks are currently threatened by onslaughts of motorized (recreational) vehicles. By alientating hikers, bikers, climbers and campers, they make it harder to fight the real enemies of the parks SNOWMOBILES, 4-WHEELERS and DIRT BIKES.
HILARIOUS!!!!!
Maybe they'd best get the park Rangers OUT of their jeeps and ONTO mountain bikes.
It's kinda like the way that Ski-Patrol SKI-S virtually EVERYWHERE. You really respect them because you know that they are an enthusiast and would whoop your ass on any slope.
My buddy told me about a ski-patrol guy coming to pick up his injured companion on a black diamond course. The guy came down ALONE with a gurnee. He strapped his buddy into the ski-gurney and then dragged him down the course behind him. My buddy couldn't even keep up.
When THAT guy tells you not to do something you listen.
Park rangers whould be very aggressive about re-routing trails when their is an excessive slope. Switchbacks do take up more space, but their erosive impact is MUCH, MUCH lower.
If you provide a better alternative (while blocking up the old trail(think concrete and steel)), most users will prefer the switchbacks. After a bit the old trail will grow over and no-one will know the difference.
What a crock of SHIT!!!!!
The impact of Mountain bikes are fairly minimal provided that the trails are cut mostly parallell to hills as opposed to straight up and down. The most common impact of bikes is to cutting deep ruts into trail, that only occurs when the ground is fairly damp. The damage is easily repairable with some mulch or deadwood.
The soft rubber treads on moutain bikes do an excellent job of maintaing traction, a distribution pressure. I dare say that bikers are FAR LESS destructive than hikers. Bikers RARELY go off trail because they are interested in speed. Stopping and wandering around off trail is very uncharacteristic of mountain bikers.
HORSES on the other hand are VERY destructive. Their metal shoe hoofs cut DEEPLY into the ground. Any significant moisture combined with a horse will reduce an area to porridge VERY quickly.
I guess since the rich folks do the equestrian, they can't be penalized. This is similar to London parks banning roller-blades because the roller bladers "startled" the horses.
I agree.
;-)
If humans aren't allowed on these lands, they will have no regard for them. It will simply be useless land that is unavailable because it doesn't have concrete boxes.
Trails are meaningful and relevant. They bring an appreciation for nature that is sorely missing in our society. A grass and sand covered park with monkeybars isn't REMOTELY the same thing.
The guys who jump all over Mountain Bikers (now Geo-Cachers) really get on my nerves. Cutting trails in these areas creates minimal impact and creates a mindshare that makes these areas relevant and WORTH conserving.
It is a tragedy that our population has increased to such a degree that we must destroy so many natural habitats. Wildlife preserves ARE necessecary to keep our natural ecosystems viable. BUT, fuzzy furry animals DON'T pay taxes and DON'T vote. They need their human friends that come visit to do that for them. If the humans don't visit, they won't remember their fuzzy, furry wildlife pals
While I'm not a geo-cacher, I do enjoy walking on wilderness trail. So much so that I'll willingly cut out debris and make trails more passible to both pedestrian and bike traffic.
In order to save wildlife areas, you must make them meaningful and accessible. Cutting a single trail deep into a forest means that everyone doesn't cut their OWN paths. The little furry creatures will do just fine so long as their aren't trails criss-crossing the entire expanse.
Trails that make the entirety of the area accessible makes the park or area RELEVANT. Relevance creates a mindshare of users who come to those places to relax and enjoy themselves. Those users will react when the area is threatened. Relevance makes it more unlikely that it will be mowed down COMPLETELY by bull-dozers.
If their are no users, if people can't go into those areas, they are less likely to care one way or another.
I don't know about other people, but trails are more enjoyable when you CANNOT SEE the other portions of the trail. A little loop around the fringes of an area really aren't a viable trail system. They're BORING!!!!! Nobody will go their, and nobody will CARE!!!!
I too suspect that this story is a little blown out of proportion. When reading the Geo-Caching pages, I notice that most caches are located "slightly off the trail". Now that may raise an alarm bell for rangers but people will ALWAYS stray from the trail a bit whether they are Geo-Cachers or not.
It's right that rangers wish to protect trails. But they have to remember that trails protect the overall viability of a wilderness area and ultimately protect it from complete destruction. Sporadic side trails will NOT really affect the ecological viability of an area.
Most park visitors are inherently lazy, so It's really doubtful that they are going to start clearing patches of vegetation wholesale. An occasional A-Hole will tear things up for the sake of it. But I don't think you'll find this type doing something as intellectual as Geo-Caching.
They should just chill out a little and remember that though some vegetation WILL get trampled, it's really a small price to pay for the integrity of the remaining area.
- while the idea of playing games like Everquest and Diablo is interesting they don't work well 'cause using the pen for movement and pointing results in a disconnect between pen location and cursor location (hence, when I play Diablo on my Fujitsu pen slate I have to use a mouse)
Ummm...
Well, those things DO have USB ports. You could always just plug a mouse in. There are some very nice mini-targus mice that even "suck-up" their tails (cords) when you don't need them. You could also get one of those wireless models with the mini-trancievers.
Eventually, all wireless mice will be Bluetooth enabled and you'll just be able to bind your mouse to your device. No hookups required.
I beg to differ.
Compact Flash IS really good for compact devices. It is still the #1 format for flash storage and the undisputed king for mini-IO devices.
The reason, Compact Flash is basically a smaller PC-Card (which is a removeable ISA slot). A manufacturer need only miniatuize their PC-card devices and re-write drivers (for WinCE) to put out an equivalent I/O device in CompactFlash.
In fact, since TabletPC is the original topic, it's relevant to not that MOST TabletPCs have CF slots for I/O expansion. A popular format seems to be a single CardBus slot and a single CF slot.
Finally, CompactFlash is the ONLY memory format based on patents from industry standards groups. Everybody else (including SmartMedia) is proprietary IP.
My guess is that the standards group responsible for PCI will ultimately release the winners in mini/removeable PCIExpress bus devices. This provides the serial/low pin count that the other devices are touting. It also provides a compatibility at the bus level with notebooks which will create an instant market for such cards.
The PCI group will NEVER accept ANY of these other standards as an I/O format for future notebooks and tablets. With the exception of memory stick (which can unilaterally push it's format across ALL levels computing and Consumer electronics) all these formats will eventually fall by the wayside.
It's a shame that LS-120 didn't carry the day. The floppy still has a FEW uses. If had caught on seriously, we would all have relatively inexpensive LS-120 disks at our disposal (plus double capacity standard floppies).
The Newton was the first of it's kind and apparently did things rather well.
... Apple!!!
Palm and PocketPC have taken over and spawned a variety of different form factors based on newer technologies. The handheld computer is the first true PERSONAL COMPUTER. If you cant take it with, if it's bound to a desk, it's still not personal, it's just can fit on a desk.
Apple could swing into the market with a SlateBook style device about the style of their iBooks. Hell, knowing Apple, they could just replace the entire iBook series with this type of device.
The whole point is that it's personal and you can use it for a LOT of different tasks. Jobs was VERY right to significantly pair down Apple's offerings to 4 distinct lines. I think his reluctance to break new ground in other markets is really AGAINST the spirit of Apple altogether. That's what made Apple
His reluctance to enter the Palm market may be justified from the standpoint that it's already VERY WELL populated. They have a sucessfull iPod handheld device and they are systematically adding PDA and other functionality for it. This is a reasonable form of evolution for a handheld device that keeps Apple from burning scarce cash on something that MAY flop.
However, creating a new breed of iBook that is more verstatile and will fill more roles in a persons life adds value to a portable and ultimately perhaps market share. If it's in the sub-notebook (mini-me) size, it can also be seen as a large sized PDA and effectively double for those functions for folks who would carry this around in a briefcase ANYWAY!!!!.
Pen intefaces (touch sensitive or magnetic interfaces) are typically physically disctinct tranparent layer placed on top of the LCD. It isn't necessary to manufacture an LCD WITH touch sensitivity. You can simply add the touch layer on top of a regularly fabbed LCD.
For instance, on most PocketPCs it is possible to replace the touch-screen (mildly costly) instead of the entire display (very expensive), see www.pocketpctechs.com for details.
BTW, what would REALLY make a TabletPC rock is inclusion of Sony's Transflective LCD screen technology. I'm excited to see what they release in their forthcoming TabletPC models.
Apparantly, their are some designs in the works for larger format xTabletPC (convertibles)(Maybe SlateBook is a better name): 14" and even a 17". That should cure the small keyboard issue. I too suffer from big hands and chuckle when people talking about using those micro-keyboards on their Handhelds. Sorry my thumbs aren't that small :-)
:-)
Additionally, Both Sony and Dell are supposed to be releasing SlateBook models soon. I would expect the Sony to have a camera (everything of Sony's has a camera now
Actually NO!!!
The killer home app for TabletPC is WEB-BROWSING and READING. You can kick back and relax on the couch the same way you would with a newspaper, magazine, or book.
Microsoft has deep pockets. When PalmPC (now PocketPC) first came out it wasn't REMOTELY a market success. Microsoft kept tweaking it and pushing the stuff till it took off.
The concept of the flat-panel PC is not odd or new. Yomen Rand was carrying one around the Enterprise bridge in 1968 (If you saw the pilot, her equivalent was carrying around a clipboard with some pretty messed up paper). Gene Roddenberry has a pretty spectacular record for designing writing GADGETS that WOULD become commonplace (The flip-phone, flash RAM, PDAs, Stun-guns, CT/3d body scans, etc...).
The slate-style computing device seems VERY convenient as the ultimate replacement for A LOT of paper (not ALL of it). I myself wouldn't mind kicking back and browsing the web from my with a slate as opposed to a notebook (A PocketPC is way too small to be effective in this niche). Let's not forget that the Web-Browsing was the killer app that transformed the computer from a "geek" tool to an "EVERYBODY" tool.
Nope, I predict that TabletPCs will become cheaper overall and eventually will become MORE popular than desktops the same way that notebooks are more popular (a tablet is more versatile, especially for drawing). I expect them to take off at universities in a BIG way. I also expect Apple to release their own "PowerPad" to compete.
Check out the Toshiba Protege convertible tablet. It's a VERY powerful laptop that can flex and twist into a tablet size device.
I believe the comment that this thing is excellent for school, etc... is very relevant. Beyond that I think it would make an EXCELLENT companion device to go to meetings with.
I think the KILLER APP for this device may be to make it an EXTERNAL MONITOR for your desktop. Basically, you plug it into a cradle on your desktop and it becomes monitor #2 (the cradle also contains a lock to dissuade "sticky hands"). When you go to a meeting you simply unlock the device and take it with you. At that point the device would have "syncronized" data and could indpendently run your environment.
The TabletPC is a new concept and it hasn't quite locked itself in. Apparantly, the Toshiba device is a HEAVY seller, indicating that they may have found the MAGIC form factor the same way that Compaq found the form-factor that catipulted PocketPC to market-wide relevance.
AND BTW, I love the concept of a TabletPC as all-in-one board game interface. Though, you have to pass around the stylus as the TabletPC screens are not pressure sensitive the way PocketPC screens are. You need the special stylus tip to interact with the device. (I wonder how long it will be for these magnetic tips to make their way into the 4-1 Stylii you can buy).
Privacy !!!!
This is an excellent example why we need a constitutional right to privacy. The authors of the Bill of Rights could NEVER have forseen the advent of information technology and it's profound implications.
Companies are OUT OF CONTROL regarding what they do with are personal information. They should be made to keep it PRIVATE, and be held liable for damages if they release it without permission.
Because the human brain EVOLVED with these things and EXPECTS them. Even in the REAL world, when the brain is not properly simulated it doesn't work right.
SCO further pointed out that God has very little chance at avoiding royalties. Why, well all the good lawyers are in hell!!!!!! :-)
In 10,000 years we will be EXACTLY the same unless.
1) We become MUCH less moral.
2) We self-induce changes via genetic engineering.
Evolution occurs because non-evolvers DIE, lot's of them. Our modern society contains VERY LITTLE evolutionary motivation. Our laws protect one another. On the whole everybody gets to pass their genes on to the next generation.
Without evolutionary pressure to SELECT a trait, their is NO EVOLUTION because there is no way to systematically kill off everyone WITHOUT that trait.
Well said, the human brain is a vastly superior system to anything that Intel has ever put out.
Our own realities our products of our own imaginations, those imaginations are guided by external input. When people become disconnected from external input (dreaming, crazy) they come up with some VERY fantastic stuff.
This is hilarious!!!!!
;-)
Gene Ray is proof that David Koresh SURVIVED and is now a meta-physicist
I believe that Hawking rationalizes this stuff by looking at time as a measure of entropy, not a dimension. Since entropy is a one-way process, it cannot be unraveled.
The method that we can consider previous states of entropy is basically by witnessing their artifacts. Some artifacts are preserved in rock. More immediate artifacts are preserved in nueral bundles and can be recalled by our biological information repositories (brains).
Until we can observe particals jumping backwards in time (pre-cognition) the notion of time travel is silly. ALL technology effectively replicates and focuses some natural phenomenon. Until we can observe the phenomenon of time travel, it's a waste of time to try to build a machine that DOES time travel.
Has anyone ever considered that:
:-)
1) Time travelers having overcome the fundamental pricipals of one-way time could also just fashion themselves a good cloaking device.
2) Time travlers are just plain SMARTER then we are having done all that COOL stuff.
3) People in the future CAN time travel but have absoluetly NO desire to come here after watching CNN re-runs.
The beauty of these ideas is that most of the people who espouse it don't seem to work very hard at all. Yeah, like schmoozing all day, power-lunches, being entertained by sales people, getting their asses kissed by underlings.
When they get home on weekend they take back their kids from their foreign au-pairs and look over their carefully manicured lawn maintained by Mexicans.
No really, the people who REALLY work their asses off (blue-collar) get tired and don't have time (away from their kids who they themselves care for) to tell other people that their too lazy.