Exactly. What's up there, that you can't get easier here? Basalt and quartz are plentiful enough here. What could you do with a lot of silicon, vacuum, and free solar energy?
What you might get from the moon: - Astronomical observations (especially on far side) - First class secrecy (on far side) - Solar power? - Fair vacuum, easily accessed - Prestige - High ground, drop rocks on anybody you don't like (Heinlein)
It was done with 1960s technology once...
on
China Plans Moonbase
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The Americans sent men to the moon using 1960s technology. The very thought of this makes my blood run cold. However, it worked.
I'd say any sufficiently determined organization with enough money to sink into the project could build a moon base.
Another factor: They'll find it easy to recruit enthusiasts from all over the world. Imagine a brain drain toward China.
The abstract of the article in Science doesn't mention Mercury either. (Nosy free registration required.) I don't know where the BBC got the idea. It would be cool (hot) if it was true, but don't know who originated it. Another note about the meteorite, referring to "another Vesta," but not Mercury.
The other way to get around learning curves a and b (above) is, if the contractors are a small enough community so that they know in general what's going on in the geographical area or the technical field. Also, so that they know each other. This could only occur in an atmosphere of specialization much more marked than we have now. Possibly also would lead to trades & crafts-like certification requirements, keeping the pool of contractors small and controllable (by the contractors themselves).
Zero-sum thinking is the big danger here as many other places.
Zero-inventory = getting the supplies only when you need them, saving overhead in storage and so on. Hiring contractors instead of maintaining employees is analogous. Get workers only when you need them.
However, a worker is not like a part off the shelf that can be popped into place. For projects of any complexity, there is going to be a learning period.
a) About the project
b) About each other. There are always human dynamics to consider, even among focused technical personnel.
I see this as successful only in an environment of standardized work projects--more like an assembly line than anything else. And if it's that standardized, it'll probably find its way to the second or third world pretty soon.
It is easy to imagine management trying to treat a project, any project, as if it could be handled with plug-in workers. It's equally easy to imagine this leading to tremendous delays and failures.
I've been both contractor and employee. Always preferred the freedom of contracting. But I have a high tolerance for being broke.
Thanks! Yeah, I wrote it after I saw the movie a few months ago and wished I could make a few slight changes.
For Martyn S., here's the key-- - Overlays: Computer-generated actors, or sets of actors, replacing the originals. - Tuners: Some kind of technology that allows you to set the amount of romance, scenery, violence, history, magic, humor, or other features (up to 500 with the Gordon tuner software) to your personal preference. Sort of like adjusting brightness/contrast/colors in an image file, on a conceptual level. - OSc is "open source creativity." It means that a lot of people modify the "base" video, under control of maintainers. These people are called consensualists or consos. - Snaps = snapshots of the what the video looks like at one point in time, because with OSc it's changing all the time. - Virals = nickname for a generation, like "flappers" or "hippies" is to us.
Let me begin by once again repeating the truism: no video whatsoever can match the scenes as they appear to your imagination during a simple, unaided reading of the three volumes of Tolkien's original text.
With that out of the way, I will say that my own favorite among the video versions is the recent blockbuster edition, followed by the "Midlands" OSc 2072 dist (tuned 2,-1,4,0); and after that, the 2001-2003 movies using the Gibson/Taylor overlay. This review concentrates on videos; I will leave VRs for another day.
There is no need, at this remove, to cite the failings of the Bakshi anime (1978) or Jackson's groundbreaking 2001-2003 live action movie.... However, when WWM re-released the "long" version on tab with a selection of overlays, including Mercer/Tran/Lopez and Gibson/Taylor, the movie was transformed from a mere classic to a paradigm of style. Its effect on a generation resembled the effect of the original books on the "Sixties Era" (roughly 1964-1972). The wildly popular M/T/L overlay, its unearthly beauty toning down the somewhat brutal original video, went straight to the heart of the virals.
At the same time, the first underground OSc version, "OS-LOTR", was in process. Remember that this was before the Hurst case and copyright law was still in the postmillennial phase. Nevertheless, thousands of people participated. By any standard, the first version was pretty primitive. The base disappeared during Hurst. Only 18 snaps survive;...[and they] show a wide range of competence. Some scenes, such as//this//, are nothing short of brilliant. However, I can't agree with those who believe that a large quantity of sublime art was lost. OSc was in its infancy, and the original consensualists tended to be technical personnel with vivid but unsophisticated imaginations. I have seen all 18 remaining snaps of OS-LOTR, and am convinced that nothing of value was lost to the Tolkienist or to the viewing public.
The first legal OSc version ("OurRing") is also available at universities, but is not worth the casual viewer's time. The maintainers provided no guidance. Story elements of an unsavory nature, having nothing to do with the original books, found their way into the base. Tuning was in its infancy: OurRing provides only five settings in each of three dimensions. The project became overlarge, and never gained popularity outside a hobbyist community. It is of historical interest only, as is the short-lived "Bakshi", based on the anime, begun and closed within a year after OurRing.
"Midlands", on the other hand, became a classic within weeks of startup. It derives most of its visual imagery and pacing from the centennial remake, but retains none of the bizarrer elements. A comparison of snaps is extremely revealing. The earliest still archived (two days in) is almost an exact copy of LOTR-100. In one week more, participation skyrocketed by 6000 percent, and the nine-day snap contains none at all of the odd politico-academic coloration. Note the gradients in this//graph// of the isologs: precipitous in the higher dimensions, almost flat in D1 through D5. Midlands is universally available and is the vehicle through which most young people first meet Tolkien. It is still maintained, although the classic version stabilized in 2072.
Midlands is far more tunable than OurRing. The original tuner, which is part of the OSc v. 5.4 kernel, allowed for 15 dimensions. Addicts and purists apply the 500-dimension Gordon tuner. I have viewed several allegedly "perfectly" Gordon-tuned versions and could see no difference at all. These decimal-place variations invisible to anyone else fuel quite vitriolic disputes in the hobbyist community.
"Zealand" and "Hildebrandt", Midlands' two nearest competitors, have a much smaller following. Zealand is of course based on the 2003 video. Hildebrandt is experimental; it combines OSc and overlay technologies. There is no dist--as the maintainer states in true twentieth-century fashion, it is intended to be a "work in progress", to be "as dynamic as the events it portrays". This can lead to surprises if you view over a period of days instead of capturing the whole thing at once. Its consos also tend to be outside the standard demo.
Last year's remake is, in my opinion, the best of all. Yes, it condenses the story, but this is not a bad thing, as anyone will agree who has played one of the realtime VRs. Stern's directorial imagination could not possibly be closer to Tolkien's original vision. There is, of course, no truth to the rumor that he is a clone of Tolkien made for the purpose.....
Suppose they did not evolve to fit with our perceptions, but rather that the cats' high vs. low frequencies, rising vs. falling tones, short vs. continuous sounds, and so on, are used for roughly the same meanings (food! alarm! momma!) as among other creatures that communicate vocally. If this is the case, our sounds and Kitty's probably echo calls heard in the primeval swamps. How about that!
"Actually, the comensual bacteria in our guts do produce most of the vitamin-K..."
Thanks for this piece of knowledge. Now I am a slightly less ignorant techie.
As for the other comment by the Anonymous Coward, I wasn't implying some virus or nano would kill ALL bacteria. If it hit even one strain, depending on which species, it's conceivable that the result might be ecologically troublesome.
If they limited their attacks to bacteria, we could still be in serious trouble. The entire ecosystem depends on bacteria. Without bacteria there is no "dust to dust." On a more personal level, the "good" bacteria in your innards don't provide nutrients (that I know of, being an ignorant techie, not a scientist), but they do other things for you like keep their nasty cousins from eating you alive. We'd also be in trouble without the cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae").
Fire ant bites sting like fire because the "unbeatables" (S. invicta) spit acid into the bite, and then the bite always develops into a pustule because the ant also spits bacteria, and they take months to go away. How to prevent this (other than not going outside at all in Texas): When you get ant-bit, immediately rub bleach on the spot. Straight bleach, Clorox or the like. Reason: neutralizes the acid, kills the bacteria. Or so I have been told. Disclaimer: I am no kind of medical professional at all. Also, those bites can kill you if you have an allergic reaction beyond the normal. More than you want to know, with pictures you don't want to see, cached at Google.
This kind of thing is interesting and fits the Slashdot masthead description "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." If biology doesn't matter I don't know what does.
A UT student worker told me once that the University kept the "first photograph ever taken" (this one--"and it doesn't look like much") in a special room. In case of fire, the door would automatically lock and the room fill up with some kind of inert gas incapable of sustaining combustion--or life. "What, with you in there?" She said, "Well, it's supposed to lock automatically but we always have the door propped open with a chunk of wood."
Re:Biologists and Psychologists Abuse this...
on
Digital Biology
·
· Score: 2
Yes. DV is right. For instance, naturall Philosophers compared thought to a system of air pumps when air-pumps were new (can't find a reference). You can also see the constellation "Air-Pump" in the southern hemisphere as a result of the awe generated by this new technology.
Later, about the time of Ben Franklin and Mary Shelley, they began to talk about thought as electricity. This really was a lot closer.
After another few decades, your brain became an internal telegraph-and-railroad system, and then a telephone exchange; and that brings us up to the era of the Giant Computing Machines that have afflicted the analogies of non-techies for the last 50 years.
Finally after 20 years I've found the other people who like TRON as much as I do. I saw it 7 times that summer. (ET once, which was plenty.) It was the first movie I ever saw that showed my kind of people in my kind of universe doing the kind of things I'd like to do.
Re, In Japan, what gets aired for their younger children is far less censored...
Sailor Moon was originally written for little girls of 9 to 12. In one Sailor Moon special, all the original "pretty soldiers" (junior high-aged girls themselves) get bloodily massacred one by one as they save the world. I have to say I was astounded.
There are some pretty deep cultural differences here that go beyond censorship standards.
Personally, I'm dubious about showing kids cartoons, or reading them stories or even non-fiction that will promote the idea of glorious, spectacular self-immolation. Sept. 11 shows what happens when people get into that frame of mind.
I prefer the mindset of the guy who, when a grenade landed in the back of a truck carrying a bunch of troops including him, picked it up and threw it back out again. Of course, you can't extract much drama from that.
"...we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality" is right, and the reason is: "'There are a number of California anti-spam laws but, like all laws, they were passed by politicians. So there is a huge loophole that permits politicians to spam,'" --quote in the article from anti-spam activist Laura Atkins (emphasis added).
And "politician" is one of the word-oriented professions that has most difficulty adapting to computers or anything cyber at all. Lawyers, preachers, journalists, professors, politicians, writers, and a few other types predictably resist learning and using computers. I learned about this pattern when I was doing ISP tech support.
Read more about some new GPS-equipped tractors in an article from the January Progressive Farmer, "Deere Leaps Into Autosteer."
Excerpt: "The farmers most likely to buy AutoTrac are those with large operations that require many field passes...
"Initially, [Deere] doesn't expect that will include a lot of row-crop applications. But it will include farmers who use wide tillage equipment or air seeders and farmers who have crops such as cotton that require a lot of field work.
"Like retrofit autosteer systems that have been on the market for a few years, Deere's AutoTrac relies on positioning information from satellites. Onboard computers process that information and use it to electronically steer...
"[How it works]...an operator makes an initial pass in a field as a computer records position information. The driver then turns the tractor at the headland, a computer screen helps him "acquire" a new parallel row and--at the push of a button--the computer takes control of the steering. The driver doesn't have to touch the steering wheel until he turns the tractor at the end of the new row....
"Deere's AutoTrac gets its 10-centimeter accuracy from the company's StarFire network, which uses multiple ground stations, computers and relay satellites to send positioning corrections to customers anywhere in North America."
Re, "... NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS...for a residential DSL line that never worked!...."
I can beat that. They charged me several hundred dollars total for:
- Activating DSL that I never ordered, at a location I wasn't living at during the time - Monthly fees for DSL that was never used because I didn't order it and didn't have the equipment - A couple of hundred dollars penalty for "early cancellation" of a service I never ordered in the first place and never used
This took months to straighten out. Before DSL, I was not a cynic about the phone company. After seeing how they acted for our (ISP) customers, and with this episode on top of it, I am now very wary of them.
Of course, you have to take into consideration that 5 or 6 years ago The Phone Company (all of them) simply had to plug along like they had for 100 years providing local and long distance and a few specialty services. Then, every consumer in the US suddenly wants a second line--and no static--and this, that, and the other. It's as if the railroad companies suddenly had to operate a spaceport with launches every 5 minutes of everybody's private spaceship.
You could get into the program and change a variable or two and have your characters looking like they really are on a high-gravity or low-gravity planet, or in the viscous atmosphere of Jupiter, or whatever you like! I'm looking forward to it.
OK, they give birth to larvae, not lay eggs like ordinary respectable arthropods. Principle is the same, anyway. Here is all you probably want to know about sleeping sickness with large drawings of the brain-eating microbes, from a professor at Tulane.
For population control, predators (including parasites) don't work nearly as well as the demographic transition. Learn about this concept, because it controls your future. Definition with nice graph.
"The sterile flies with compete with the non-sterile flies for resources. So some sterile flies will die. This will leave a lot more than 2 sterile flies left."
That's not how it works. It works like this: The sterile flies compete for MATES, not resources. These boys are sterile, but still have all their natural instincts. Lots of mating takes place, but no fertilization. Satisfied but deceived she-flies lay eggs that will never hatch.
And, the way to tell if it'll never work, is to look at where it's been tried. This technique has worked very well over the last 40 or 50 years in screwworm eradication.
Slashdot Mirror
A beautiful statement of mourning. We needed him longer. But he left his words, and what fine, clear words they are.
Exactly. What's up there, that you can't get easier here? Basalt and quartz are plentiful enough here. What could you do with a lot of silicon, vacuum, and free solar energy?
What you might get from the moon:
- Astronomical observations (especially on far side)
- First class secrecy (on far side)
- Solar power?
- Fair vacuum, easily accessed
- Prestige
- High ground, drop rocks on anybody you don't like (Heinlein)
The Americans sent men to the moon using 1960s technology. The very thought of this makes my blood run cold. However, it worked.
I'd say any sufficiently determined organization with enough money to sink into the project could build a moon base.
Another factor: They'll find it easy to recruit enthusiasts from all over the world. Imagine a brain drain toward China.
The abstract of the article in Science doesn't mention Mercury either. (Nosy free registration required.) I don't know where the BBC got the idea. It would be cool (hot) if it was true, but don't know who originated it. Another note about the meteorite, referring to "another Vesta," but not Mercury.
The other way to get around learning curves a and b (above) is, if the contractors are a small enough community so that they know in general what's going on in the geographical area or the technical field. Also, so that they know each other. This could only occur in an atmosphere of specialization much more marked than we have now. Possibly also would lead to trades & crafts-like certification requirements, keeping the pool of contractors small and controllable (by the contractors themselves).
Zero-sum thinking is the big danger here as many other places.
Zero-inventory = getting the supplies only when you need them, saving overhead in storage and so on. Hiring contractors instead of maintaining employees is analogous. Get workers only when you need them.
However, a worker is not like a part off the shelf that can be popped into place. For projects of any complexity, there is going to be a learning period.
a) About the project
b) About each other. There are always human dynamics to consider, even among focused technical personnel.
I see this as successful only in an environment of standardized work projects--more like an assembly line than anything else. And if it's that standardized, it'll probably find its way to the second or third world pretty soon.
It is easy to imagine management trying to treat a project, any project, as if it could be handled with plug-in workers. It's equally easy to imagine this leading to tremendous delays and failures.
I've been both contractor and employee. Always preferred the freedom of contracting. But I have a high tolerance for being broke.
Check the reply to the next message below.
Thanks! Yeah, I wrote it after I saw the movie a few months ago and wished I could make a few slight changes.
For Martyn S., here's the key--
- Overlays: Computer-generated actors, or sets of actors, replacing the originals.
- Tuners: Some kind of technology that allows you to set the amount of romance, scenery, violence, history, magic, humor, or other features (up to 500 with the Gordon tuner software) to your personal preference. Sort of like adjusting brightness/contrast/colors in an image file, on a conceptual level.
- OSc is "open source creativity." It means that a lot of people modify the "base" video, under control of maintainers. These people are called consensualists or consos.
- Snaps = snapshots of the what the video looks like at one point in time, because with OSc it's changing all the time.
- Virals = nickname for a generation, like "flappers" or "hippies" is to us.
the year is 2095. the reviewer speaks:
...[and they] show a wide range of competence. Some scenes, such as //this//, are nothing short of brilliant. However, I can't agree with those who believe that a large quantity of sublime art was lost. OSc was in its infancy, and the original consensualists tended to be technical personnel with vivid but unsophisticated imaginations. I have seen all 18 remaining snaps of OS-LOTR, and am convinced that nothing of value was lost to the Tolkienist or to the viewing public.
//graph// of the isologs: precipitous in the higher dimensions, almost flat in D1 through D5. Midlands is universally available and is the vehicle through which most young people first meet Tolkien. It is still maintained, although the classic version stabilized in 2072.
....
Let me begin by once again repeating the truism: no video whatsoever can match the scenes as they appear to your imagination during a simple, unaided reading of the three volumes of Tolkien's original text.
With that out of the way, I will say that my own favorite among the video versions is the recent blockbuster edition, followed by the "Midlands" OSc 2072 dist (tuned 2,-1,4,0); and after that, the 2001-2003 movies using the Gibson/Taylor overlay. This review concentrates on videos; I will leave VRs for another day.
There is no need, at this remove, to cite the failings of the Bakshi anime (1978) or Jackson's groundbreaking 2001-2003 live action movie.... However, when WWM re-released the "long" version on tab with a selection of overlays, including Mercer/Tran/Lopez and Gibson/Taylor, the movie was transformed from a mere classic to a paradigm of style. Its effect on a generation resembled the effect of the original books on the "Sixties Era" (roughly 1964-1972). The wildly popular M/T/L overlay, its unearthly beauty toning down the somewhat brutal original video, went straight to the heart of the virals.
At the same time, the first underground OSc version, "OS-LOTR", was in process. Remember that this was before the Hurst case and copyright law was still in the postmillennial phase. Nevertheless, thousands of people participated. By any standard, the first version was pretty primitive. The base disappeared during Hurst. Only 18 snaps survive;
The first legal OSc version ("OurRing") is also available at universities, but is not worth the casual viewer's time. The maintainers provided no guidance. Story elements of an unsavory nature, having nothing to do with the original books, found their way into the base. Tuning was in its infancy: OurRing provides only five settings in each of three dimensions. The project became overlarge, and never gained popularity outside a hobbyist community. It is of historical interest only, as is the short-lived "Bakshi", based on the anime, begun and closed within a year after OurRing.
"Midlands", on the other hand, became a classic within weeks of startup. It derives most of its visual imagery and pacing from the centennial remake, but retains none of the bizarrer elements. A comparison of snaps is extremely revealing. The earliest still archived (two days in) is almost an exact copy of LOTR-100. In one week more, participation skyrocketed by 6000 percent, and the nine-day snap contains none at all of the odd politico-academic coloration. Note the gradients in this
Midlands is far more tunable than OurRing. The original tuner, which is part of the OSc v. 5.4 kernel, allowed for 15 dimensions. Addicts and purists apply the 500-dimension Gordon tuner. I have viewed several allegedly "perfectly" Gordon-tuned versions and could see no difference at all. These decimal-place variations invisible to anyone else fuel quite vitriolic disputes in the hobbyist community.
"Zealand" and "Hildebrandt", Midlands' two nearest competitors, have a much smaller following. Zealand is of course based on the 2003 video. Hildebrandt is experimental; it combines OSc and overlay technologies. There is no dist--as the maintainer states in true twentieth-century fashion, it is intended to be a "work in progress", to be "as dynamic as the events it portrays". This can lead to surprises if you view over a period of days instead of capturing the whole thing at once. Its consos also tend to be outside the standard demo.
Last year's remake is, in my opinion, the best of all. Yes, it condenses the story, but this is not a bad thing, as anyone will agree who has played one of the realtime VRs. Stern's directorial imagination could not possibly be closer to Tolkien's original vision. There is, of course, no truth to the rumor that he is a clone of Tolkien made for the purpose.
Suppose they did not evolve to fit with our perceptions, but rather that the cats' high vs. low frequencies, rising vs. falling tones, short vs. continuous sounds, and so on, are used for roughly the same meanings (food! alarm! momma!) as among other creatures that communicate vocally. If this is the case, our sounds and Kitty's probably echo calls heard in the primeval swamps. How about that!
"Actually, the comensual bacteria in our guts do produce most of the vitamin-K..."
Thanks for this piece of knowledge. Now I am a slightly less ignorant techie.
As for the other comment by the Anonymous Coward, I wasn't implying some virus or nano would kill ALL bacteria. If it hit even one strain, depending on which species, it's conceivable that the result might be ecologically troublesome.
If they limited their attacks to bacteria, we could still be in serious trouble. The entire ecosystem depends on bacteria. Without bacteria there is no "dust to dust." On a more personal level, the "good" bacteria in your innards don't provide nutrients (that I know of, being an ignorant techie, not a scientist), but they do other things for you like keep their nasty cousins from eating you alive. We'd also be in trouble without the cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae").
Fire ant bites sting like fire because the "unbeatables" (S. invicta) spit acid into the bite, and then the bite always develops into a pustule because the ant also spits bacteria, and they take months to go away. How to prevent this (other than not going outside at all in Texas):
When you get ant-bit, immediately rub bleach on the spot. Straight bleach, Clorox or the like. Reason: neutralizes the acid, kills the bacteria. Or so I have been told. Disclaimer: I am no kind of medical professional at all. Also, those bites can kill you if you have an allergic reaction beyond the normal. More than you want to know, with pictures you don't want to see, cached at Google.
This kind of thing is interesting and fits the Slashdot masthead description "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." If biology doesn't matter I don't know what does.
Model it on the law for child actors, who are heavily protected.
A UT student worker told me once that the University kept the "first photograph ever taken" (this one--"and it doesn't look like much") in a special room. In case of fire, the door would automatically lock and the room fill up with some kind of inert gas incapable of sustaining combustion--or life. "What, with you in there?" She said, "Well, it's supposed to lock automatically but we always have the door propped open with a chunk of wood."
Yes. DV is right. For instance, naturall Philosophers compared thought to a system of air pumps when air-pumps were new (can't find a reference). You can also see the constellation "Air-Pump" in the southern hemisphere as a result of the awe generated by this new technology.
Later, about the time of Ben Franklin and Mary Shelley, they began to talk about thought as electricity. This really was a lot closer.
After another few decades, your brain became an internal telegraph-and-railroad system, and then a telephone exchange; and that brings us up to the era of the Giant Computing Machines that have afflicted the analogies of non-techies for the last 50 years.
Finally after 20 years I've found the other people who like TRON as much as I do. I saw it 7 times that summer. (ET once, which was plenty.) It was the first movie I ever saw that showed my kind of people in my kind of universe doing the kind of things I'd like to do.
Re, In Japan, what gets aired for their younger children is far less censored...
Sailor Moon was originally written for little girls of 9 to 12. In one Sailor Moon special, all the original "pretty soldiers" (junior high-aged girls themselves) get bloodily massacred one by one as they save the world. I have to say I was astounded.
There are some pretty deep cultural differences here that go beyond censorship standards.
Personally, I'm dubious about showing kids cartoons, or reading them stories or even non-fiction that will promote the idea of glorious, spectacular self-immolation. Sept. 11 shows what happens when people get into that frame of mind.
I prefer the mindset of the guy who, when a grenade landed in the back of a truck carrying a bunch of troops including him, picked it up and threw it back out again. Of course, you can't extract much drama from that.
"...we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality" is right, and the reason is: "'There are a number of California anti-spam laws but, like all laws, they were passed by politicians. So there is a huge loophole that permits politicians to spam,'" --quote in the article from anti-spam activist Laura Atkins (emphasis added).
And "politician" is one of the word-oriented professions that has most difficulty adapting to computers or anything cyber at all. Lawyers, preachers, journalists, professors, politicians, writers, and a few other types predictably resist learning and using computers. I learned about this pattern when I was doing ISP tech support.
Read more about some new GPS-equipped tractors in an article from the January Progressive Farmer, "Deere Leaps Into Autosteer."
Excerpt:
"The farmers most likely to buy AutoTrac are those with large operations that require many field passes...
"Initially, [Deere] doesn't expect that will include a lot of row-crop applications. But it will include farmers who use wide tillage equipment or air seeders and farmers who have crops such as cotton that require a lot of field work.
"Like retrofit autosteer systems that have been on the market for a few years, Deere's AutoTrac relies on positioning information from satellites. Onboard computers process that information and use it to electronically steer...
"[How it works]...an operator makes an initial pass in a field as a computer records position information. The driver then turns the tractor at the headland, a computer screen helps him "acquire" a new parallel row and--at the push of a button--the computer takes control of the steering. The driver doesn't have to touch the steering wheel until he turns the tractor at the end of the new row....
"Deere's AutoTrac gets its 10-centimeter accuracy from the company's StarFire network, which uses multiple ground stations, computers and relay satellites to send positioning corrections to customers anywhere in North America."
Re,
"... NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS...for a residential DSL line that never worked!...."
I can beat that. They charged me several hundred dollars total for:
- Activating DSL that I never ordered, at a location I wasn't living at during the time
- Monthly fees for DSL that was never used because I didn't order it and didn't have the equipment
- A couple of hundred dollars penalty for "early cancellation" of a service I never ordered in the first place and never used
This took months to straighten out. Before DSL, I was not a cynic about the phone company. After seeing how they acted for our (ISP) customers, and with this episode on top of it, I am now very wary of them.
Of course, you have to take into consideration that 5 or 6 years ago The Phone Company (all of them) simply had to plug along like they had for 100 years providing local and long distance and a few specialty services. Then, every consumer in the US suddenly wants a second line--and no static--and this, that, and the other. It's as if the railroad companies suddenly had to operate a spaceport with launches every 5 minutes of everybody's private spaceship.
You could get into the program and change a variable or two and have your characters looking like they really are on a high-gravity or low-gravity planet, or in the viscous atmosphere of Jupiter, or whatever you like! I'm looking forward to it.
OK, they give birth to larvae, not lay eggs like ordinary respectable arthropods. Principle is the same, anyway. Here is all you probably want to know about sleeping sickness with large drawings of the brain-eating microbes, from a professor at Tulane.
The World Health Organization's page on trypanosomiasis.
For population control, predators (including parasites) don't work nearly as well as the demographic transition. Learn about this concept, because it controls your future. Definition with nice graph.
"The sterile flies with compete with the non-sterile flies for resources. So some sterile flies will die. This will leave a lot more than 2 sterile flies left."
That's not how it works. It works like this: The sterile flies compete for MATES, not resources. These boys are sterile, but still have all their natural instincts. Lots of mating takes place, but no fertilization. Satisfied but deceived she-flies lay eggs that will never hatch.
And, the way to tell if it'll never work, is to look at where it's been tried. This technique has worked very well over the last 40 or 50 years in screwworm eradication.