Since the USA is recognized around the globe as the biggest energy pig, perhaps the rest of the globe should address that problem by subsidizing solar installations on US houses and offices. Then, with the extra oil freed up, they can expand their own economies.
For example, for every 10 cars assembled overseas, a US house has to be insulated and converted to solar power, on the importer's nickle.
And here am I, in the third world, stuck with a 300k ADSL while paying a fortune for it.
Sometimes it's quite depressing to read Slashdot, you guys have high definition TVs, next-gen consoles, fast broadband services and free Wifi, while in this part of the world it's either not avaliable or too expensive. The Wii, for example, costs more than the equivalent of 1000 USD here.
Dude, you third-worlders are getting our jobs (we can't export them fast enough!), so very soon after you may have all the tech goodies that go with those jobs.
On a day when terabyte hard drives are announced, it's sad that you are saddled with tape. Your boss doesn't see the false economy of tape.
Back up to disk in the office, and for offsite storage, us an internet service. Or, put up a system in your home and back up through the network to that device. You could have your company pay your bandwidth and a portion of your electric bill.
Here's what they learned from the Northridge quake: No matter how important your data is, if your building is condemned you cannot get inside to get your tapes.
So, you have a month to gather and present ancient computer junk that no one cares about. Oh, joy.
Can I make a suggestion?
Offer to recycle any vintage hardware that comes through the door, and spend the $600 to haul it to the recycling center.
And, as that crap comes in the front door, dust some of it off and put it on display. Have some old-timers handy to identify the items (or just a browser and wireless link--we don't need old-timers any more. Sorry.) Put the best on display. In no time you'll have collected more worthless items than you could imagine.
All kidding aside folks, isn't it possible that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and this type of thing has happened hundreds of times over?
Yes, it is indeed a natural phenomenon and has happened countless times before. That means there is no way for you to stop it or alter it.
Of course, all those times before, there was no modern human civilization to suffer the impact of the sudden rise of sea levels and loss of arable land.
Consider that cold snaps lasting a decade or so have been enough to topple ancient civilizations, then multiply that by the immense magnitude of what we face by the super-dependence of a huge population on increasingly smaller amounts of land for food production and you might get a grasp of what lies ahead.
Soylent Green will be workable only for a few decades, then it will all go to hell in an handbasket!
You know what annoys me? That people can't accept that something being on the web is just fine. That it's only legitimate if it gets turned into a book or goes to TV.
Why does it annoy you that the web-successful are seeking an audience through a bigger screen size? Say, you don't suffer screen envy, do you?
I think it's a generational thing.
It's a money thing. A revenue thing. The profit motive gets diluted on the internet, so if you want to add some digits to your paycheck, you must seek the delivery channel that focuses the audience.
This means that your rooftop can now be rented out as advertising space.
This is made possible by Google Earth and the other satellite mapping services.
I wonder how long it will be before the local high school seniors rearrange the Colonel into something a little more, shall we say, anti-establishment?
Serious question: how do you know when the satellite will take the next snapshot? It's been a few years around my neck of the woods.
The new Dr. Who is nicely done and quite entertaining, though. Thanks for pointing out yet another good use of green-screen video tech in current Sci-Fi TV.
Yeah, but a lot of the stories have gone left untold. *sigh*
What?!? How can this be? There are a lot of fans here who said that B5 is the greatest show because the stories were told to completion!!! It can't be both ways...
In the sense that the one story was about the Shadow war, you are right. It was told well to the point of climax, then all the rest of the stuff happened. Why? Because B5 was a collection of minor stories, overshadowed by the shadow war story. These sideshows always paled in comparison to the main event, and were never enough to build audience interest in subsequent seasons.
It was never intended to be an endless many year long series.
Har! B5's sole intention was to keep Straczynski employed for as long as possible. That's why after his failures with Crusade and Jeremiah, he's back flogging the B5 horse again. The guy is a great businessman and knows how to mine the last $ from his franchise.
And just because it had a good storyline, a beginning, an end, and a very well done in-between,
That's accurate only for seasons 2 and 3. Season 1 had a clunky pace and except for a few key scenes, could be discarded. Seasons 4 and 5, the B5 movies and Crusade were sideshows. Extended denoument, really, and a search for the next big idea.
it will remain my all-time sci-fi favourite, despite my friendly:) relation to all ST (and DS9 above all) and Firefly.
Keep in mind that at the time, the only other US Sci-fi competition was the Trek franchise, so I can see why B5 endeared itself to you. But have you stopped watching sci-fi TV?
B5 was a prototype that evolved as cheap green-screen CGI made space stories affordable to tell. Since then, however there have been several sci-fi stories from the same mold, with better writing and graphics. Lexx, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Firefly, and now BattleStar Galactica all have long story lines, and have managed to keep their dramatic climax very near the end of the tale, instead of dead center.
Firefly has been particularly successful by using its movie to deliver the climactic moment and the story resolution. That worked quite nicely.
You gotta hand it to Straczynski. He is a savvy businessman and deserves to wring every last buck from his fan base. His work methods have proved a useful model for others, who now have the luxury of focusing on the creative process because they can simply follow Straczynski's trailblazing work.
I think Straczynski might benefit from knocking out a few webisodes to whet the appetite for the DVDs. I bet he comes around to that eventually. BSG is blazing that path, sci-fi-wise.
With distribution such as Netflix, it is not difficult for consumers to find niche productions that may appeal to relatively small audiences.
Why go to media when you can distribute your small production through Google Video or another internet video service? That's what BattleStar Galactica is doing with its webisodes.
Anyone with a green bedsheet, some clamplights, a dv cam and a computer can cobble together a webisode. Sure, good writing and acting come in handy, but lack of those never stopped B5 from making it to the screen.
That's what I'd do, because the media is merely a method of transferring data from client to service provider.
If management insists on keeping the original media (which is of negative value because of the overhead expense needed to file, store and retreive the disks), I would buy boxes of 100-disk spindles (that blank media is packaged in), fill those spindles, write a code number on the outside, and send them off to the back of the warehouse. 30,000 disks is 300 spindles.
No, scratch all of that!
Media is not needed. I would negotiate with customers so that they are sending ISO images to me over the internet, encrypted as need be.
As the others have pointed out, Clifton's film was not part of the items NASA lost.
My observation is that Clifton found a reel of 16mm filmstock.
The items NASA lost were reels of magnetic tape that can play through ONLY ONE MACHINE ON EARTH, which is about to be decommissioned.
Wouldn't it be nice for NASA to begin uploading digitized footage to Google Video? Yes, that would be nice.
Say, are there any professors out there who have calculated the rates at which filmed footage is being digitized and the rates at which it is decaying/lost/destroyed?
I think it would open your eyes to discover just how much information is captured and lost in a short period of time.
Yes, indeed. For librarians have discovered their error and hold little hope for recovery.
The reason? In a clerical error of no small consequence, the tapes originally requested by one Oliver Stone--for a movie project--were instead sent to one Oliver North. Signature on the delivery slip shows that one Fawn Hall acknowledged receipt for Mr. North's office.
There are a couple of good reasons to change your proposal, and both have to do with introducing heat sources into a frigid environment. Why run a computer in the freezer? And why send in humans to run it?
Keep the heat-producing logic units out of the fridge and in a controlled environment that is conducive to logic. Comfortable seating, air nicely dried and chilled, cigar in mouth and martini at the ready.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the USA is recognized around the globe as the biggest energy pig, perhaps the rest of the globe should address that problem by subsidizing solar installations on US houses and offices. Then, with the extra oil freed up, they can expand their own economies.
For example, for every 10 cars assembled overseas, a US house has to be insulated and converted to solar power, on the importer's nickle.
Dude, you back up your data at home? Really???
Do you want a job at our company?
On a day when terabyte hard drives are announced, it's sad that you are saddled with tape. Your boss doesn't see the false economy of tape.
Back up to disk in the office, and for offsite storage, us an internet service. Or, put up a system in your home and back up through the network to that device. You could have your company pay your bandwidth and a portion of your electric bill.
Here's what they learned from the Northridge quake: No matter how important your data is, if your building is condemned you cannot get inside to get your tapes.
So, you have a month to gather and present ancient computer junk that no one cares about. Oh, joy.
Can I make a suggestion?
Offer to recycle any vintage hardware that comes through the door, and spend the $600 to haul it to the recycling center.
And, as that crap comes in the front door, dust some of it off and put it on display. Have some old-timers handy to identify the items (or just a browser and wireless link--we don't need old-timers any more. Sorry.) Put the best on display. In no time you'll have collected more worthless items than you could imagine.
Of course, all those times before, there was no modern human civilization to suffer the impact of the sudden rise of sea levels and loss of arable land.
Consider that cold snaps lasting a decade or so have been enough to topple ancient civilizations, then multiply that by the immense magnitude of what we face by the super-dependence of a huge population on increasingly smaller amounts of land for food production and you might get a grasp of what lies ahead.
Soylent Green will be workable only for a few decades, then it will all go to hell in an handbasket!
"Oy! The sand gets in EVERYWHERE!"
It seems that if you haul enough blocks to the pyramid, you might just come up with a better way to get the job done!
Please wake me up when Leisure Suit Larry is released for the Wii, 'cuz that new controller offers real possibilities...
Why does it annoy you that the web-successful are seeking an audience through a bigger screen size? Say, you don't suffer screen envy, do you?
It's a money thing. A revenue thing. The profit motive gets diluted on the internet, so if you want to add some digits to your paycheck, you must seek the delivery channel that focuses the audience.
This means that your rooftop can now be rented out as advertising space.
This is made possible by Google Earth and the other satellite mapping services.
I wonder how long it will be before the local high school seniors rearrange the Colonel into something a little more, shall we say, anti-establishment?
Serious question: how do you know when the satellite will take the next snapshot? It's been a few years around my neck of the woods.
Wrong show, Gary.
The new Dr. Who is nicely done and quite entertaining, though. Thanks for pointing out yet another good use of green-screen video tech in current Sci-Fi TV.
What?!? How can this be? There are a lot of fans here who said that B5 is the greatest show because the stories were told to completion!!! It can't be both ways...
Straczynski is banking on this.
Bend over, bub, here comes your point...
The build up over many episodes to the simultaneous torture and fucking of Gaius Baltar.
You may now admit defeat...
In the sense that the one story was about the Shadow war, you are right. It was told well to the point of climax, then all the rest of the stuff happened. Why? Because B5 was a collection of minor stories, overshadowed by the shadow war story. These sideshows always paled in comparison to the main event, and were never enough to build audience interest in subsequent seasons.
Har! B5's sole intention was to keep Straczynski employed for as long as possible. That's why after his failures with Crusade and Jeremiah, he's back flogging the B5 horse again. The guy is a great businessman and knows how to mine the last $ from his franchise.
That's accurate only for seasons 2 and 3. Season 1 had a clunky pace and except for a few key scenes, could be discarded. Seasons 4 and 5, the B5 movies and Crusade were sideshows. Extended denoument, really, and a search for the next big idea.
Keep in mind that at the time, the only other US Sci-fi competition was the Trek franchise, so I can see why B5 endeared itself to you. But have you stopped watching sci-fi TV?
B5 was a prototype that evolved as cheap green-screen CGI made space stories affordable to tell. Since then, however there have been several sci-fi stories from the same mold, with better writing and graphics. Lexx, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Firefly, and now BattleStar Galactica all have long story lines, and have managed to keep their dramatic climax very near the end of the tale, instead of dead center.
Firefly has been particularly successful by using its movie to deliver the climactic moment and the story resolution. That worked quite nicely.
You gotta hand it to Straczynski. He is a savvy businessman and deserves to wring every last buck from his fan base. His work methods have proved a useful model for others, who now have the luxury of focusing on the creative process because they can simply follow Straczynski's trailblazing work.
I think Straczynski might benefit from knocking out a few webisodes to whet the appetite for the DVDs. I bet he comes around to that eventually. BSG is blazing that path, sci-fi-wise.
Can't you just confine it to composting and turning off extra lights?
Geez...
Since they haven't built a prototype other than as individual components on different lab benches, they've never heard the sound it makes.
I'm betting it screams like those killer robots in the movie Screamers.
A list of books made the top story? Oprah makes lists of books and you don't see them here.
I'm losing interest in Slashdot. Digg has cool graphics to look at when the news is slow--Slashdot just amps up press releases when news is slow.
RTFA.
Reat the First Amendment.
Applies to the media, especially, although not to those who leak confidential information.
And, of course, it applies only to the United States.
Yes, $30 per disk IS too much to ask.
Even better! I watch Google videos of the games being played by show-offs and that saves me time and the expense of purchasing the game.
That's what I'd do, because the media is merely a method of transferring data from client to service provider.
If management insists on keeping the original media (which is of negative value because of the overhead expense needed to file, store and retreive the disks), I would buy boxes of 100-disk spindles (that blank media is packaged in), fill those spindles, write a code number on the outside, and send them off to the back of the warehouse. 30,000 disks is 300 spindles.
No, scratch all of that!
Media is not needed. I would negotiate with customers so that they are sending ISO images to me over the internet, encrypted as need be.
As the others have pointed out, Clifton's film was not part of the items NASA lost.
My observation is that Clifton found a reel of 16mm filmstock.
The items NASA lost were reels of magnetic tape that can play through ONLY ONE MACHINE ON EARTH, which is about to be decommissioned.
Wouldn't it be nice for NASA to begin uploading digitized footage to Google Video? Yes, that would be nice.
Say, are there any professors out there who have calculated the rates at which filmed footage is being digitized and the rates at which it is decaying/lost/destroyed?
I think it would open your eyes to discover just how much information is captured and lost in a short period of time.
Yes, indeed. For librarians have discovered their error and hold little hope for recovery.
The reason? In a clerical error of no small consequence, the tapes originally requested by one Oliver Stone--for a movie project--were instead sent to one Oliver North. Signature on the delivery slip shows that one Fawn Hall acknowledged receipt for Mr. North's office.
There are a couple of good reasons to change your proposal, and both have to do with introducing heat sources into a frigid environment. Why run a computer in the freezer? And why send in humans to run it?
Keep the heat-producing logic units out of the fridge and in a controlled environment that is conducive to logic. Comfortable seating, air nicely dried and chilled, cigar in mouth and martini at the ready.