The only people I've heard refer to penny's as coppers have been people who'd been playing D&D for more hours than was likely healthy. (Myself included)
I would indeed rather have the emotional fulfillment. It's an entire planet worth of knowledge, we're not going to learn it all in a few decades, and we're not going to learn much of it until we have scientists living there, working hands on. Here's a question as a reply to yours: Would you rather get started on proper colonization now, allowing serious research to get started as soon as possible, or would you prefer to save some money for the time being, send robots which are of limited scientific use in the long term, just so you can feel "fiscally responsible"?
Why not? I mean, who would buy it in the first place? Can you see the advertising campaign? Try our new foo paint, now with extra lead! Guaranteed to cause cancer or double your money back!
Why would they bother telling you that there's lead in the paint? If you remove government controls, what company is going to inform their customers about all the harmful properties of their product?
I can't be sure, but I think he may be refering to the fact that a lot of the scientists who developed the rocket technolgy (e.g. VonBraun) that the space program was based on were taken out of Germany at the end of WWII.
I find it unlikely that China will have the resources to build Star Wars-style weaponry, even on a limited scale. Regan pretty much bankrupted the States trying, and still never got so much as an orbital abm laser. The real concern is American military types (including the military industial corps) who will overinflate the threat of such weaponry to get themselves a new cold war.
You mean they stole the ones the Americans didn't get to first. Why do you think everyone was scurrying to be the first to gain control of as much German territory as possible?
I don't see the problem with a small joystick. The only time I tried a VR device, it was a small round platform with a railing around it. You wore a helmet, and held a little "laser gun" that had a small stick on top, sort of like the N64 stick. you operated it with your thumb and used the gun to shoot at the pterydactyl that tries to grab you and carry you off the ground.
I don't exist in a vacuum. I don't have to read it myself to know the opinions of others. I probably would have read The Dreaming if I'd had the money to start in on it, but I try to keep my continuing series purchases to a bare minimum. As far as continuing Sandman rather than doing spin-offs, The Dreaming pretty much is exactly that. I'm not entirely sure that Books of Magic is so much a Sandman spin-off as a general Vertigo universe project. I'd love to read all the Vertigo U stuff, but there's simply too many Swamp Thing and Constantine stories that I don't know. Oh, and a small nit: DC does try to milk every cent out of anything that does as well as Sandman, but Vertigo is the one's who ensured that Gaiman's work was respected.
Your right, the original 75 were great. The spin-offs, anthologies, merchandise, et al, were DC trying to milk Gaiman's creation for every possible cent. I haven't read any of them, and don't intend to. But I will get this as soon as I can afford it. Gaiman isn't the type to do this sort of thing because DC begged and begged (they did), but only because he had something worth writing.
Oh, and Preacher is still great (and almost done. The final arc starts next month.) Transmet is, of course, the best comic being published. Best near-future I've ever read.
I installed that patch (yesterday? two days ago? I need to adopt a regular wake/sleep cycle...) I found a few things interesting in the text on the download page. They say that Express, 98 and 2000 are all vulnerable, but they make a point of saying that 2000 won't activate the worm unless the mail is actually opened. Even when they're plugging holes, they market the new product. (They also seem to imply that you can delete the mail safely in Express or 98 if the preview pane is off.)
Considering how quickly MS responds to potentially dangerous virii that exploit the security holes they otherwise ignore, I have to say that I'm glad there are people out there writing malicious code. If MS keeps falling further behind on Win 2000, they may wind up with something that's reasonably secure. (Sure, it'll still be a ugly kludge, but maybe it'll be safe to use.)
That's Ontario then? I always assumed the rest of the country was just as wired as the cities out here. Telus may be horribly overpriced and utterly horrible about customer service, but they know they have to offer high speed to everyone in the cities because cable's been around for at least two years now. Hell, I was using a sattelite connection back in the summer of '95. (Was damned fast 4 1/2 years ago.)
Anything that reduces the cost of high speed access to home users is a Good Thing. I don't forsee more than ~25% of the $20 savings winding up being passed on though. They said that US West was only $2.something cheaper than the competitor who's paying them $20 to sell the access. Oh well, if this makes DSL profitable, more companies will (hopefully) offer it, and with luck actually compete with one another.
A unified theory will likely include sufficient understanding of gravity to effectively manipulate it by converting other forces into gravitational ones, possibly allowing a type of anti-gravity.
I never realized that it had sat around so long before reaching orbit. It makes sense that it would age poorly in storage.
The modular design is definately a Good Thing, and as long as they continue to upgrade it, we can hopefully be impressed by the latest Hubble discovery for decades. (Although some parts are probably difficult to replace entirely, like the housing and the mirror?)
Each experiment is highly impressive, but why don't they try to do both at once? Yes, logic (and the theory of fo) says that it will work, but they should still test it.
Anyhow, this is something else that still needs to be implemented over a wide area. Many of the main phone carrier lines here are fo, but most buildings still have 20 year old copper, so it doesn't do the user much good. Hopefully telco's will (are?) encouraging the use of fo in new buildings. How much of the U.S. telephone systems have been replaced with fiber?
It seems like one thing or another has gone wrong with Hubble since it was first put into orbit. How reliable was the design expected to be compared to how reliable it has been? What is/was the expected lifespan of Hubble anyhow? The article mentions "pushing its lifespan into the next decade." Seems to be a pretty short lifespan for a very expensive (albiet impressive) piece of hardware. If it were part of NASA's new paradigm of cheap, "expendable" projects, I'd expect a short life span, but from the older projects, I have come to expect Voyager-like lifespan.
Sounds to be a potentially impressive technology. I have to wonder how reliable the players will be. It sounds as though it will have to be magnitudes more precise than a CD player as far as positioning, and seems that it will be easier to jar and possibly damage. How does the scale of this compare to CD and hard disk technology as far as the head movement/distance from media/etc?
One other thing comes to mind: this is yet another of a series of "better than CD" storage devices I've read about, and I suspect it will not show up in my home any quicker than the Ruby/crystal storage devices that I remember there being so much excitment about a couple years ago. What's the ratio of exciting new storage device ideas to new storage devices?
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy ends with a huge Martian civilization, and most of the rest of the system was inhabited too.
The problem we have in finding suitable replacements for the older authors is twofold: modern authors need to beable to justify whatever scientific leaps they create, far more so than Asimov or Bradbury ever did; and we aren't several decades past the writing of their works. In the 2020's or 2030's, people will look back to the 90's Science Fiction masters, as we look back now.
Why not? Former terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes because there not blowing random civilians up any more, so why not make Deng "man of the year" since the students that weren't ran over have a better economic situation now?
Slashdot Mirror
The only people I've heard refer to penny's as coppers have been people who'd been playing D&D for more hours than was likely healthy. (Myself included)
I would indeed rather have the emotional fulfillment. It's an entire planet worth of knowledge, we're not going to learn it all in a few decades, and we're not going to learn much of it until we have scientists living there, working hands on. Here's a question as a reply to yours: Would you rather get started on proper colonization now, allowing serious research to get started as soon as possible, or would you prefer to save some money for the time being, send robots which are of limited scientific use in the long term, just so you can feel "fiscally responsible"?
Four Nerf guns is too many? Fourty might be pushing it I suppose, but four is nowhere near enough...
Why not? I mean, who would buy it in the first place? Can you see the advertising campaign? Try our new foo paint, now with extra lead! Guaranteed to cause cancer or double your money back!
Why would they bother telling you that there's lead in the paint? If you remove government controls, what company is going to inform their customers about all the harmful properties of their product?
I can't be sure, but I think he may be refering to the fact that a lot of the scientists who developed the rocket technolgy (e.g. VonBraun) that the space program was based on were taken out of Germany at the end of WWII.
I find it unlikely that China will have the resources to build Star Wars-style weaponry, even on a limited scale. Regan pretty much bankrupted the States trying, and still never got so much as an orbital abm laser. The real concern is American military types (including the military industial corps) who will overinflate the threat of such weaponry to get themselves a new cold war.
You mean they stole the ones the Americans didn't get to first. Why do you think everyone was scurrying to be the first to gain control of as much German territory as possible?
I don't see the problem with a small joystick. The only time I tried a VR device, it was a small round platform with a railing around it. You wore a helmet, and held a little "laser gun" that had a small stick on top, sort of like the N64 stick. you operated it with your thumb and used the gun to shoot at the pterydactyl that tries to grab you and carry you off the ground.
between Microsoft reps/lawyers and ??? Someone from DOJ? Has the DoJ ever said what remedy they would like to see?
I don't exist in a vacuum. I don't have to read it myself to know the opinions of others. I probably would have read The Dreaming if I'd had the money to start in on it, but I try to keep my continuing series purchases to a bare minimum. As far as continuing Sandman rather than doing spin-offs, The Dreaming pretty much is exactly that. I'm not entirely sure that Books of Magic is so much a Sandman spin-off as a general Vertigo universe project. I'd love to read all the Vertigo U stuff, but there's simply too many Swamp Thing and Constantine stories that I don't know.
Oh, and a small nit: DC does try to milk every cent out of anything that does as well as Sandman, but Vertigo is the one's who ensured that Gaiman's work was respected.
Insightful huh? Moderator must also think that I need some sleep :)
Didn't I already read this article? I didn't notice anything in this one that wasn't in Katz' original article from before he went to Orlando.
or maybe I just need to go to sleep now...
Your right, the original 75 were great. The spin-offs, anthologies, merchandise, et al, were DC trying to milk Gaiman's creation for every possible cent. I haven't read any of them, and don't intend to. But I will get this as soon as I can afford it. Gaiman isn't the type to do this sort of thing because DC begged and begged (they did), but only because he had something worth writing.
Oh, and Preacher is still great (and almost done. The final arc starts next month.) Transmet is, of course, the best comic being published. Best near-future I've ever read.
I installed that patch (yesterday? two days ago? I need to adopt a regular wake/sleep cycle...) I found a few things interesting in the text on the download page. They say that Express, 98 and 2000 are all vulnerable, but they make a point of saying that 2000 won't activate the worm unless the mail is actually opened. Even when they're plugging holes, they market the new product. (They also seem to imply that you can delete the mail safely in Express or 98 if the preview pane is off.)
Considering how quickly MS responds to potentially dangerous virii that exploit the security holes they otherwise ignore, I have to say that I'm glad there are people out there writing malicious code. If MS keeps falling further behind on Win 2000, they may wind up with something that's reasonably secure. (Sure, it'll still be a ugly kludge, but maybe it'll be safe to use.)
That's Ontario then? I always assumed the rest of the country was just as wired as the cities out here. Telus may be horribly overpriced and utterly horrible about customer service, but they know they have to offer high speed to everyone in the cities because cable's been around for at least two years now. Hell, I was using a sattelite connection back in the summer of '95. (Was damned fast 4 1/2 years ago.)
Anything that reduces the cost of high speed access to home users is a Good Thing. I don't forsee more than ~25% of the $20 savings winding up being passed on though. They said that US West was only $2.something cheaper than the competitor who's paying them $20 to sell the access. Oh well, if this makes DSL profitable, more companies will (hopefully) offer it, and with luck actually compete with one another.
A unified theory will likely include sufficient understanding of gravity to effectively manipulate it by converting other forces into gravitational ones, possibly allowing a type of anti-gravity.
And the Dreamcast logo looks just like the Cinnabon logo.
I never realized that it had sat around so long before reaching orbit. It makes sense that it would age poorly in storage.
The modular design is definately a Good Thing, and as long as they continue to upgrade it, we can hopefully be impressed by the latest Hubble discovery for decades. (Although some parts are probably difficult to replace entirely, like the housing and the mirror?)
Each experiment is highly impressive, but why don't they try to do both at once? Yes, logic (and the theory of fo) says that it will work, but they should still test it.
Anyhow, this is something else that still needs to be implemented over a wide area. Many of the main phone carrier lines here are fo, but most buildings still have 20 year old copper, so it doesn't do the user much good. Hopefully telco's will (are?) encouraging the use of fo in new buildings. How much of the U.S. telephone systems have been replaced with fiber?
Sympathy
It seems like one thing or another has gone wrong with Hubble since it was first put into orbit. How reliable was the design expected to be compared to how reliable it has been? What is/was the expected lifespan of Hubble anyhow? The article mentions "pushing its lifespan into the next decade." Seems to be a pretty short lifespan for a very expensive (albiet impressive) piece of hardware. If it were part of NASA's new paradigm of cheap, "expendable" projects, I'd expect a short life span, but from the older projects, I have come to expect Voyager-like lifespan.
Sounds to be a potentially impressive technology. I have to wonder how reliable the players will be. It sounds as though it will have to be magnitudes more precise than a CD player as far as positioning, and seems that it will be easier to jar and possibly damage. How does the scale of this compare to CD and hard disk technology as far as the head movement/distance from media/etc?
One other thing comes to mind: this is yet another of a series of "better than CD" storage devices I've read about, and I suspect it will not show up in my home any quicker than the Ruby/crystal storage devices that I remember there being so much excitment about a couple years ago. What's the ratio of exciting new storage device ideas to new storage devices?
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy ends with a huge Martian civilization, and most of the rest of the system was inhabited too.
The problem we have in finding suitable replacements for the older authors is twofold: modern authors need to beable to justify whatever scientific leaps they create, far more so than Asimov or Bradbury ever did; and we aren't several decades past the writing of their works. In the 2020's or 2030's, people will look back to the 90's Science Fiction masters, as we look back now.
Why not? Former terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes because there not blowing random civilians up any more, so why not make Deng "man of the year" since the students that weren't ran over have a better economic situation now?