My wife went out and bought a yoda cd and it wouldn't play in her circa 1992 sony cd player. Ironically, I was able to make a copy of the CD with my phillips burner that then played fine on her stereo.
Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.
Actually, a buddy and I were talking last night about this and we were discussing rocket technologies and he brought to light something that I had over looked... these days we've got rockets that are alot more reliable and simpler in design then something like a Saturn 5 ever was. His idea was to just use a Silo that would keep the rocket out of the elements, or build a retractable mantle that you could just store the whole craft, totally unfueled until it was needed. Then it would take a couple of hours to fill the tanks, plug in some batteries and presto, your off. Howerver, I think they should still work on getting a better liferaft craft that they could put 10 people in.
I started writing a diatribe about how kids should be exposed to violent video games, but it got me thinking about all the stuff I read on the news and I realized that it's not really about violent video games. It's about blaming something for societies problems. Some senator who's sole focus isn't to improve this country but to grab as many tax dollars as possible from the federal coffers has a problem. See, kids in capitol of the state he represents are in the streets killing one another. Now, he knows that the real problems are drugs, lack of education, lack of opportunity, poor homelife, etc. But he really doesn't want to deal with that. Firstly, 9/10ths of the kids who are in the streets killing one another don't make up a huge constiuence, therefore they don't matter. However, the 20-30's college educated parents with children are. So, when some kid who's parents haven't given him the time of day since he as 4, snaps and goes to school with an AK-47 and starts blowing people away, it's not because he was fucked up in the head, it's because the plays violent video games and therefore has been programmed that the only way to vent his frustrations is to kill things.
See, if he came out and said "Well, the solution isn't as simple as banning video games, it's going to involve better parenting" his ass would skip down the stairs of the capitol building. People want solutions and they don't want to be told that their the problem.
Anyway, I must work now... mod me appropiately... my karma is godlike.
Firstly: "a few simple space capsules"... So your talking about lofting a craft that can accomidate 7-10 people. Be capable of surviving long endurance space flight and be capable of manuvering in space and also be capable of surviving reentry.
Secondly: The idea of keeping several Apollo type rockets kicking around is even more engineeringly hairier then the first idea.
Here's my idea. They should mandate from this point forward that all flying shuttles must be fitted with the external docking collar and the canada arm. Then what they should do is take a well understood satalite design, take out all the communications cruft and fit some big ass fuel tanks on the thing. Then put the satelite in an orbit that a shuttle could intersect with a minimum amount of fuel. Part of the package with this satelite would be all the tools/hoses necissary to allow it to be tied into the shuttles manuvering jets that would allow it to boost its orbit to the ISS.
Now, I do like your first idea. But instead of having them floating around in space, they should use them in place of the soyuz as lifeboats off the ISS. This way we could have more than 3 people on the station at a time.
They were introduced to AU to combat a beetle that was eating sugar cane crops. However after introduction they turned out to be a far greater theeat than the beetle they were introduced to eat. They reproduce prolificly, have few predators and eat pretty much anything they can get into their mouths.
I remember hearing somewhere that most people make a base assessment of someone within 2 seconds of hearing their voice. I'm not sure how true that is, but I do see in popular media the portrayal of people with a southern accent as "impaired"
What exactly are you going to take picures of, the screen? Even though they don't let you take anything with you, your still being watched... They freak about you tearing out a piece of notebook paper... I would suspect a miniture camera would send them over the edge.
Actually... something like that. They call it the "SSWE" or (Secure Safe Work Environment)
You pass through a security check point and have to empty your pockets into a box. No wallet, no watch. The only thing your allowed to carry in is your ID.
You then goto the materials office and check out your notebook and pen. The notebook is one of those funky gridded scientific notebooks with numbered pages. Do yourself a favor... never ever
The office you work in is bleak. There is a digital clock on the wall. You have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, but no computer. I'm not really sure what kind of computer it is (physical demensions etc... don't get to see that stuff)
When you turn the notebook and pen back in, they weigh and count the pages to make sure that all the pages are intact. If their not there, you don't get to leave until they're found.
Hmmm, I wonder what would happen if you setup a look where you'd take a sentence and use a text to speech convert to make an audio file, then you turned around and used a voice to text converter to generate a text file that you then fed back into the text to speech converter.
I asked a buddy of mine who's working on text to speech and voice recognition and he said that after about the 5th iteration you'd get all kinds of high pitched howling...
However in your example, the kid isn't thrown out of the mail for being suspicious.
The question you've got to ask is, "Why do the security guards at the mall watch the kid with the baggy pants in the first place?"
Are they just biased against baggy pants or have they had problems from a disproportionate number of baggy pants' individuals?
Now, if the security guards confronted the kid, demanded that he empty his pockets without having any corroberating evidence other than the fact that he's wearing baggy pants, that would be wrong.
The bigger question that's get asked is, how much liberty are you willing to give up for some security?
I own a copy of "Burger Time" for the Intellivision. My intellivision is no longer functioning, but it's sitting there in the box along with my frogger atari game.
Now, I could go out and buy a prom reader and backup my copy of Burger Time. This is perfectly legal.
Now I can setup a mame emulator on my linux box and play Burger Time until my hearts content.
However, it's illegal for me to go and drop that rom image on my anonymous FTP server because I've gone from backing it up to distributing it.
Now, maybe I'm totally off base... if so, oh well.
Actually, you can have server stored characters. That's how we enforce people not taking their characters and dropping them into a trainer and boosting their stats.
Personally, I think if R&D was truely focused on it, we'd be going in the NCC-1701 type stuff alot sooner. (not warp drives, but real high ouput ion/plasma type stuff)
However, the way that things are currently going, all I can hope is someone like Rutan will come along and give NASA a swift kick in the ass.
The problem is that without putting people into space right now and understanding the unique challenges of keeping people alive and healthy in space for long durations, NCC-1701 type stuff will never happen.
Here's a case in point. In order for us to get people to mars (or put a base on the moon for that matter, or a space station at a Lorange point), among the many technologies we need to develop, one of the most important is a form of radiation shielding that's both light and effective. Without such shielding, we'd be cooked after any real direction of time outside the earths magnetisphere.
What incentives do companies have to create such materials if we're sending unmanned probes and their making it there just fine?
What NASA or some other group has to say is "We're sending people to the moon to establish a base and we need 'this'," which could be anything from non lead based shielding to better space suits, etc.
Hence why I want to go out into the middle of the pacific ocean and start my own floating country! I'll just be a couple thousand football (american) field sized barges all linked together. I'll use solar power to power the whole thing, it'll be great!
Actually I think the idea is that there wouldn't ever be any slack in the cable. Also the cable would be made of a non elastic material so you wouldn't get any "bounce".
We think very much alike. This country would do well to have you as one of its citizens.
When I heard Sen. Hatch's comment all I could think was "A closed mouth gathers no foot"
It wasn't so much that he said something inflammatory, it was that what we said was down right stupid, and unamerican.
Yes, I think something should be done about the pirating of software and peoples IP. However, the sanctioned descruction of personal property is not the solution.
Would the world be a worse planet to live on if all zebrafish glowed in the dark?
Maybe Yes, maybe no. But since we've only got one ecosystem, I'd rather not find out.
What if glowing Zebrafish have some advantage that causes their populations to explode. Suddenly, a dozen natrual species of fish get crowded out of an ecosystem because of food shortage.
Take a good look at the nuckleheaded things Australia has done in regards to introducing "exotic" species into an environment where they have no natural enemies... take a look at this site: Cane Toads
Sounds like a case of MAD, but instead of nuclear weapons and RUSSIA vs. the United States we've got the RIAA/MPAA/Hatch vs. [Those who would oppose the idea of allowing technology that would another group to remotely destroy a piece of property that you own].
Would you really want a cheap whore? It's kinda like buying a high milage cheap car... there's no telling what you'll find under the seat... nevermind the gas tank or the tailpipe!
Dr. McBride(evil): "Hello IBM executives. As you see behind me I've got the SCO source code aimed at linux, if you do not pay me...(dramatic pause)... 1 BILLION Dollars I will press this button and molten unixware will shoot out of the screen of every linux box on the planet"
IBM Execs: Gasp and then laugh
Number 2: "Umm, 1 billion dollars really isn't a lot of money these days..."
Dr. Evil (McBride): (looking into video phone at IMB executives) "300 Billion Dollars!"
IBM Execs: Gasp and start arguing amongst themselves
Dr. Evil (McBride): "You have until next friday to make your decision" he then presses a button and turns off the video phone. He looks around and begins to laugh in a manical "Muhahahahaha, Muahahahahaha" type laugh.
AP Wire writes - "Today Amazon announced it was going to start litigation against the makers of segway for infringing on their 'One Lean' technology." Jeff Bezos is quoated as saying, "We've worked hard to innovate with our special leaning technology. This technology allows our customers to lean towards the screens to initate a purchase. We feel the segway is attempting to benefit from our hard work"
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Fun you should say that...
My wife went out and bought a yoda cd and it wouldn't play in her circa 1992 sony cd player. Ironically, I was able to make a copy of the CD with my phillips burner that then played fine on her stereo.
Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.
Actually, a buddy and I were talking last night about this and we were discussing rocket technologies and he brought to light something that I had over looked... these days we've got rockets that are alot more reliable and simpler in design then something like a Saturn 5 ever was. His idea was to just use a Silo that would keep the rocket out of the elements, or build a retractable mantle that you could just store the whole craft, totally unfueled until it was needed. Then it would take a couple of hours to fill the tanks, plug in some batteries and presto, your off. Howerver, I think they should still work on getting a better liferaft craft that they could put 10 people in.
I started writing a diatribe about how kids should be exposed to violent video games, but it got me thinking about all the stuff I read on the news and I realized that it's not really about violent video games. It's about blaming something for societies problems. Some senator who's sole focus isn't to improve this country but to grab as many tax dollars as possible from the federal coffers has a problem. See, kids in capitol of the state he represents are in the streets killing one another. Now, he knows that the real problems are drugs, lack of education, lack of opportunity, poor homelife, etc. But he really doesn't want to deal with that. Firstly, 9/10ths of the kids who are in the streets killing one another don't make up a huge constiuence, therefore they don't matter. However, the 20-30's college educated parents with children are. So, when some kid who's parents haven't given him the time of day since he as 4, snaps and goes to school with an AK-47 and starts blowing people away, it's not because he was fucked up in the head, it's because the plays violent video games and therefore has been programmed that the only way to vent his frustrations is to kill things.
See, if he came out and said "Well, the solution isn't as simple as banning video games, it's going to involve better parenting" his ass would skip down the stairs of the capitol building. People want solutions and they don't want to be told that their the problem.
Anyway, I must work now... mod me appropiately... my karma is godlike.
Lets thing about this for a moment...
Firstly: "a few simple space capsules"... So your talking about lofting a craft that can accomidate 7-10 people. Be capable of surviving long endurance space flight and be capable of manuvering in space and also be capable of surviving reentry.
Secondly: The idea of keeping several Apollo type rockets kicking around is even more engineeringly hairier then the first idea.
Here's my idea. They should mandate from this point forward that all flying shuttles must be fitted with the external docking collar and the canada arm. Then what they should do is take a well understood satalite design, take out all the communications cruft and fit some big ass fuel tanks on the thing. Then put the satelite in an orbit that a shuttle could intersect with a minimum amount of fuel. Part of the package with this satelite would be all the tools/hoses necissary to allow it to be tied into the shuttles manuvering jets that would allow it to boost its orbit to the ISS.
Now, I do like your first idea. But instead of having them floating around in space, they should use them in place of the soyuz as lifeboats off the ISS. This way we could have more than 3 people on the station at a time.
They were introduced to AU to combat a beetle that was eating sugar cane crops. However after introduction they turned out to be a far greater theeat than the beetle they were introduced to eat. They reproduce prolificly, have few predators and eat pretty much anything they can get into their mouths.
I remember hearing somewhere that most people make a base assessment of someone within 2 seconds of hearing their voice. I'm not sure how true that is, but I do see in popular media the portrayal of people with a southern accent as "impaired"
What exactly are you going to take picures of, the screen? Even though they don't let you take anything with you, your still being watched... They freak about you tearing out a piece of notebook paper... I would suspect a miniture camera would send them over the edge.
Actually... something like that. They call it the "SSWE" or (Secure Safe Work Environment)
You pass through a security check point and have to empty your pockets into a box. No wallet, no watch. The only thing your allowed to carry in is your ID.
You then goto the materials office and check out your notebook and pen. The notebook is one of those funky gridded scientific notebooks with numbered pages. Do yourself a favor... never ever
The office you work in is bleak. There is a digital clock on the wall. You have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, but no computer. I'm not really sure what kind of computer it is (physical demensions etc... don't get to see that stuff)
When you turn the notebook and pen back in, they weigh and count the pages to make sure that all the pages are intact. If their not there, you don't get to leave until they're found.
You get the idea...
Actually they looked a bit like Sony MiniDisc type devices...
Hmmm, I wonder what would happen if you setup a look where you'd take a sentence and use a text to speech convert to make an audio file, then you turned around and used a voice to text converter to generate a text file that you then fed back into the text to speech converter.
I asked a buddy of mine who's working on text to speech and voice recognition and he said that after about the 5th iteration you'd get all kinds of high pitched howling...
However in your example, the kid isn't thrown out of the mail for being suspicious.
The question you've got to ask is, "Why do the security guards at the mall watch the kid with the baggy pants in the first place?"
Are they just biased against baggy pants or have they had problems from a disproportionate number of baggy pants' individuals?
Now, if the security guards confronted the kid, demanded that he empty his pockets without having any corroberating evidence other than the fact that he's wearing baggy pants, that would be wrong.
The bigger question that's get asked is, how much liberty are you willing to give up for some security?
Ironically, the only man among the bunch is Hillary...
Huh?
I own a copy of "Burger Time" for the Intellivision. My intellivision is no longer functioning, but it's sitting there in the box along with my frogger atari game.
Now, I could go out and buy a prom reader and backup my copy of Burger Time. This is perfectly legal.
Now I can setup a mame emulator on my linux box and play Burger Time until my hearts content.
However, it's illegal for me to go and drop that rom image on my anonymous FTP server because I've gone from backing it up to distributing it.
Now, maybe I'm totally off base... if so, oh well.
It's just a setting on the server side.
I agree,
Personally, I think if R&D was truely focused on it, we'd be going in the NCC-1701 type stuff alot sooner. (not warp drives, but real high ouput ion/plasma type stuff)
However, the way that things are currently going, all I can hope is someone like Rutan will come along and give NASA a swift kick in the ass.
The problem is that without putting people into space right now and understanding the unique challenges of keeping people alive and healthy in space for long durations, NCC-1701 type stuff will never happen.
Here's a case in point. In order for us to get people to mars (or put a base on the moon for that matter, or a space station at a Lorange point), among the many technologies we need to develop, one of the most important is a form of radiation shielding that's both light and effective. Without such shielding, we'd be cooked after any real direction of time outside the earths magnetisphere.
What incentives do companies have to create such materials if we're sending unmanned probes and their making it there just fine?
What NASA or some other group has to say is "We're sending people to the moon to establish a base and we need 'this'," which could be anything from non lead based shielding to better space suits, etc.
Hence why I want to go out into the middle of the pacific ocean and start my own floating country! I'll just be a couple thousand football (american) field sized barges all linked together. I'll use solar power to power the whole thing, it'll be great!
Actually I think the idea is that there wouldn't ever be any slack in the cable. Also the cable would be made of a non elastic material so you wouldn't get any "bounce".
Paul,
We think very much alike. This country would do well to have you as one of its citizens.
When I heard Sen. Hatch's comment all I could think was "A closed mouth gathers no foot"
It wasn't so much that he said something inflammatory, it was that what we said was down right stupid, and unamerican.
Yes, I think something should be done about the pirating of software and peoples IP. However, the sanctioned descruction of personal property is not the solution.
Maybe Yes, maybe no. But since we've only got one ecosystem, I'd rather not find out.
What if glowing Zebrafish have some advantage that causes their populations to explode. Suddenly, a dozen natrual species of fish get crowded out of an ecosystem because of food shortage.
Take a good look at the nuckleheaded things Australia has done in regards to introducing "exotic" species into an environment where they have no natural enemies... take a look at this site: Cane Toads
Sounds like a case of MAD, but instead of nuclear weapons and RUSSIA vs. the United States we've got the RIAA/MPAA/Hatch vs. [Those who would oppose the idea of allowing technology that would another group to remotely destroy a piece of property that you own].
Would you really want a cheap whore? It's kinda like buying a high milage cheap car... there's no telling what you'll find under the seat... nevermind the gas tank or the tailpipe!
Nice! Personally, I'm not to thrilled about this movie as I have been for other Marvel movies. I guess it's because I'm getting Marveled out...
But I tripped on my Roomba and fell on my battlebot...
All I can think of is Dr. Evil...
...(dramatic pause)... 1 BILLION Dollars I will press this button and molten unixware will shoot out of the screen of every linux box on the planet"
Dr. McBride(evil): "Hello IBM executives. As you see behind me I've got the SCO source code aimed at linux, if you do not pay me
IBM Execs: Gasp and then laugh
Number 2: "Umm, 1 billion dollars really isn't a lot of money these days..."
Dr. Evil (McBride): (looking into video phone at IMB executives) "300 Billion Dollars!"
IBM Execs: Gasp and start arguing amongst themselves
Dr. Evil (McBride): "You have until next friday to make your decision" he then presses a button and turns off the video phone. He looks around and begins to laugh in a manical "Muhahahahaha, Muahahahahaha" type laugh.
AP Wire writes -
"Today Amazon announced it was going to start litigation against the makers of segway for infringing on their 'One Lean' technology." Jeff Bezos is quoated as saying, "We've worked hard to innovate with our special leaning technology. This technology allows our customers to lean towards the screens to initate a purchase. We feel the segway is attempting to benefit from our hard work"