I think Arthur C. Clark wrote about this in 'The fountains of paradise' (could be wrong there though)
A 'space elevator' to the moon is a little impractical - not the least reason is that the moon is not in geosynchronous orbit with the earth.
Of course, the idea that you could have a geostationary platform, and a 'cable' to it has been bounced around. It's one of those 'well in theory it might work' sort of ideas - You're right about no material strong enough though - IIRC only spiders web, and kevlar even come close to being able to support their own weight when you're talking about a couple of hundred kilometres.
Mono-filament anyone? Bucky tubes perhaps?
Of course, the other problem is that you have conservation of energy problems. If you lift 20 tons into orbit, the 'platform' get's pulled downwards thus making it break orbit.
The solution is a counterweight, but that becomes really difficult if you are using the platform for orbital launches. You'd have to resupply the counterweights by a 'conventional' launch.
It would work out somewhat cheaper though. (Since the vast majority of energy in a launch is spent climbing out of the earth's 'potential energy well')
I also seem to recall that if you trail a 'really long' conductor (1+Km) in space, you get some interesting things happen. Different ends of the conductor are at different points within the earth and the sun's magnetic field, meaning that you can get a current flow. Which could be entertaining if we wanted to build a monorail to the moon:)
The statemant that anything is hackable comes from the assumption that the system _must_ give access to legitimate users. (Otherwise, it's pointless).
Thus if you assume that at some level it's possible to masquerade as a legitate user, then it must be possible to hack anything.
The 'authentication' method may be really complex and convoluted, making it very hard to masquerade, but until you find some way of uniquely, unforgeably and unduplicatably identifying someone then it's always possible somehow.
It's a nice idea (leaving aside the fact that ftp etc. won't have this). The major flaw is how do you make anyone comply?
The _biggest_ problem with trying to legislate the net is that it's not in any single country. So what we have at the moment is a nasty legal tangle where things are illegal on a website hosted in one place, but is legal elsewhere.
You could publish an RFC suggesting this, and you might get some sites complying (IIRC it's a fairly minor modification to an apache config file). But the offenders (IE the pr0n sites) won't bother. They'll just move their hosting to somewhere where it doesn't apply.
Such a method _would_ allow for voluntary content rating, and I'd imaging it would be possible to allow or deny traffic based on if it is rated or not. Unfortunately, this is what a load of the 'netnanny' programs do already...
Vote now! Make me Tzar of the Internet and I shall make everything wonderful and safe, but also free and happy. Or something:)
You sir, have comitted a thought-crime.
Please report to your nearest social re-engineering centre for thought process adjustment.
Under the 1984 mental discipline act, you should make your way to room 101 forthwith.
:)
What a wonderful idea!
Let's just make it illegal for anyone anywhere to put pr0n on the net.
Surely then they'll all stop?
It's nice to see that at least they're starting to realise that writing laws, without understanding the tech is a waste of time. A bit too late for those who've already been squished by such heavyhanded legislation, but nice to see none the less.
To (mis)quote a Dilbert strip: You wish to pit your expertise against the collective sex drives of all the teenagers in the world? Good luck.
It looks like companies really are finding out the hard way, that just because a market is really expensive to enter (A 'chip' factory is definitely one of the most expensive things you can build) that hasn't prevented savage competition when it was profitable.
Then the market saturates, and people stop buying. Prices crash, and that really expensive factory you bought is a white elephant.
Course, that doesn't stop me feeling all enthusiastic about 4Gb of RAM in a desktop:)
Oh certainly. IT does need to fulfil a role.
This is why we end up running a lotus notes architecture. It does have the concept of a 'shared' file, to which you can send a link to multiple other users, and thus have 1 copy of a huge file.
The problem is that despite this fact, many many users just do not bother to think about it. And thus we get large emails sent to everyone/multiple people.
I do have somewhat oldfashioned ideas. I expect that these 'power users' who want to be able to do wonderful things with their tools actually bother to find out something about how they work.
Oh well.
Those who have windows users with laptops who can't understand any other mail client, but the admins run a 'proper' shop and have Exim on their MXs.
Just tell them that it _is_ exchange (honest) and they'll shut up and go away, happy that they've thrown a buzzword at you that makes them look knowlegable.
Cynic? Of course not, what makes you say that?
The problem is 'Outlook' has many many smart features such as shared calendars, netfolders, meeting scheduling, kitchen sink etc.
Unfortunately, without an exchange server, they are flakey to say the least.
(RANT: Exchange corporate has 2 modes of operation. Internet and 'corporate'. The former supports IMAP mail, and allows you to send Plain Text/HTML/RTF by default. It also allows you to over ride the text setting with 'Plain Text' on a per user basis. - not any other format. The latter does not support IMAP. Will allow the same 'default' formats but only allows an override of 'always send RTF' to this user.
Annoying but we can cope. Unfortunately, the undocumented 'feature' is that Shared folders/calendars etc. DO NOT WORK without RTF.
What kind of monkey designs a program with two exclusive sets of features?
No. Don't answer that. I already know.
Sigh. 'less-than' gets parsed as html.
I think I'll give up and go to the pub.
FWIW that comment should have the following chunk in the middle ... delivery in under 30 seconds, corporate address books and major feature creep.
I can honestly...
A Unix based mail program, that gives in to the 'feature keen' pointy haired ones!
Handy.
I've been trying to convince them that 'proper' email is text only, and attachments if you are completely ftp-impaired but to no avail. They seem to insist on 200Mb attachments (sent to 30 other users no less. Shudder), delivery in
I can honestly say I've never had a problem with an Exim/Solaris mail gateway. Well, except for the 200Mb multi delivery thing. No crashes (hahaaha exchange! lotus notes!). Easy to backup (not HUGE databases) and a reliable OS underneath.
Unfortunately, I suspect that OpenMail may suffer from the influence of point and drool admins, who can't cope with anything they can't click on. Meaning it's going to go the same way, and bloat, and become unstable.
Can't stand NT admins who's attitude is 'its going a bit slow, so I'll reboot it'. And who think that uptimes in the matter of _days_ is normal.
Bah.
Not quite a 3d file system, but the beast of redmond has done some research into a '3d desktop'.
It was on The Register some while ago, and may be worth a look. MS Task Gallery
Urgh, well I was close.
Caffeine overdose:)
If ya want safety and oodles of cash stick with FF FF FF FF (or 7F). (actually, almost any numbers in those 4 bytes, as long as you fill all 4 is enough that you will have so much that you are unlikely to lose.)
Never did the infinite lives thing, but savegame hacking I have done.
Basically note down your 'cash' (gold, energy, credits, whatever).
Save the game, and quit.
Load the save file up in your favourite hex editor.
Look for the 'cash' as a hex value.
Usually the bytes will be reversed (something to do with the processor architecture IIRC - x86 are 'little endian' meaning the byte order is reversed).
Replace these numbers with FF FF - 65535 of 'cash'. (If it shows up as -1 then you need to change the first F to a 7 because they're using a 'signed' number)
Even better if you have a leading 00 00 you can replace these too - the game designers anticipated you earning more than 65535 of cash.
replace with FFs or for a nice round number
00 40 42 0F will be a million (sad I remember that).
It worked nicely on Sim City 2000, and Command and Conquer as I recall. May not work _quite_ so well on others.
Also, don't forget, cheat codes are 'free advertising'.
Someone discoverers a really neat cheat code, sends it to a load of game magasines, and the game gets a bit more free coverage. Ok, it's not much, but the 'cheat codes' are going to be there for testing anyway so...
Of course, some game programmers strip them out/don't ever add them (westwood for example).
I reckon they do detract from the gaming experience. Paranoid tension is what makes things like half life, system shock 2 and doom _really_ good games.
I have cheated, and I have used a walkthru. The final (ish) mission of Starcraft wasn't nearly as much fun, but I reckon having a look at the walkthrough for Planescape Torment, after completing it to find some of the 'fun' stuff was justified:)
It's not a government thing, its a society thing.
If there is a demand for 'blood, carnage and violence' then people will make games/films about it. Even if it become illegal, all you succeed in doing is creating a black market.
Then again, maybe we should look at what makes us enjoy such things. Could it be that the human race find such things 'exciting' because at heart, many of us are still cave men? (Or women)
Legislation is not the way forward. Legislation should be to enforce the will of the public - if they want violence, then legislating against it will simply cause them to ignore the legislation (consider the prohibition).
I have noticed a decline in smoking recently though. Not because of laws, but because social tolerance of it has decreased. Maybe that's the way it should go.
Perhaps we _should_ bring back the colosseum... Least then it'd be 'honest' violence.
This is what we like to see.
Governments protecting us from playing things that are naughty.
Thought police strike again. Anyone think that.au has seen the draconian legislation that the US and the EU have started trying to bring about and want to join in the party?
Well, as long as you can still buy pr0n, I guess that's ok:)
The place where I work has decided to 'wait and see' because there's apparantly no real cost-benefit to leasing software when we had to buy NT.
So we're going to be sticking with 4.0 for the near future at any rate.
I've been trying to convince them that linux is a 'suitable' substitute, but it's not working especially well. Our purchasers seem to be of the opinion that since they've already paid the 'Redmond Tax', Windows must be used.
It mat sound wierd but an awful lot of companies wont 'buy' free stuff (software especially). They like the security that a bazillion pounds of support contract and software maintenance gives them.
The fact that the support I've had on _numerous_ free software is far better than you'd expect from a tech support department is irrelevant because there are no _guarantees_.
Selling gnu tools as a business model may actually be viable:) Provided you offer 'support' on such things...:)
Now you too can have Ad Cookies for your TV.
Targeted marketing!
Bill boards which flash special offers, tailored for your individual needs!
Oh dear. I hate ad banners.
I intensely dislike ad banners which collate information.
TV profiling just seems... too sick.
Of course, it's on a par with 'store cards' which they can use to track what you buy and when, but I am not a number. I am a free man!.
Or something:)
AMD, Intel and Sun have all reached the conclusion that 'Mhz don't matter'. As a measure of processor speed it's only of a little relevance. The UltraSPARC III+ at 1015 Mhz is going to hit benchmarks comparable to a 2Ghs P4.
Got to wonder about 'Athlon XP' though. I mean, did Windows beat them to it? And couldn't they think of anything less of an 'XP' cache (sic) in?
Athlon RF (really fast).
Athlon BI (Better than Intel).
Athlon Turbo.:)
I've always considered copying software to be pretty much what it exists for.
I _will_ go and buy a product which I use and think is good, because then the developers of it will be encouraged to produce more/better.
I think I own a number of windows licenses, which is really annoying since I only have one machine which runs it (Yes, Linux rules, but Dune Emperor doesn't run under linux). Unfortunately, it's really hard to buy a PC system _without_ a copy of windows. (Naked PCs (almost) illegal) And of course, it's illegal to transfer those licenses. I guess the pirates are doing the 'transferring' for me...
Slashdot Mirror
I think Arthur C. Clark wrote about this in 'The fountains of paradise' (could be wrong there though) :)
A 'space elevator' to the moon is a little impractical - not the least reason is that the moon is not in geosynchronous orbit with the earth.
Of course, the idea that you could have a geostationary platform, and a 'cable' to it has been bounced around. It's one of those 'well in theory it might work' sort of ideas - You're right about no material strong enough though - IIRC only spiders web, and kevlar even come close to being able to support their own weight when you're talking about a couple of hundred kilometres.
Mono-filament anyone? Bucky tubes perhaps?
Of course, the other problem is that you have conservation of energy problems. If you lift 20 tons into orbit, the 'platform' get's pulled downwards thus making it break orbit.
The solution is a counterweight, but that becomes really difficult if you are using the platform for orbital launches. You'd have to resupply the counterweights by a 'conventional' launch.
It would work out somewhat cheaper though. (Since the vast majority of energy in a launch is spent climbing out of the earth's 'potential energy well')
I also seem to recall that if you trail a 'really long' conductor (1+Km) in space, you get some interesting things happen. Different ends of the conductor are at different points within the earth and the sun's magnetic field, meaning that you can get a current flow. Which could be entertaining if we wanted to build a monorail to the moon
The statemant that anything is hackable comes from the assumption that the system _must_ give access to legitimate users. (Otherwise, it's pointless).
Thus if you assume that at some level it's possible to masquerade as a legitate user, then it must be possible to hack anything.
The 'authentication' method may be really complex and convoluted, making it very hard to masquerade, but until you find some way of uniquely, unforgeably and unduplicatably identifying someone then it's always possible somehow.
It's a nice idea (leaving aside the fact that ftp etc. won't have this). The major flaw is how do you make anyone comply?
:)
The _biggest_ problem with trying to legislate the net is that it's not in any single country. So what we have at the moment is a nasty legal tangle where things are illegal on a website hosted in one place, but is legal elsewhere.
You could publish an RFC suggesting this, and you might get some sites complying (IIRC it's a fairly minor modification to an apache config file). But the offenders (IE the pr0n sites) won't bother. They'll just move their hosting to somewhere where it doesn't apply.
Such a method _would_ allow for voluntary content rating, and I'd imaging it would be possible to allow or deny traffic based on if it is rated or not. Unfortunately, this is what a load of the 'netnanny' programs do already...
Vote now! Make me Tzar of the Internet and I shall make everything wonderful and safe, but also free and happy. Or something
You sir, have comitted a thought-crime.
:)
Please report to your nearest social re-engineering centre for thought process adjustment.
Under the 1984 mental discipline act, you should make your way to room 101 forthwith.
What a wonderful idea!
Let's just make it illegal for anyone anywhere to put pr0n on the net.
Surely then they'll all stop?
It's nice to see that at least they're starting to realise that writing laws, without understanding the tech is a waste of time. A bit too late for those who've already been squished by such heavyhanded legislation, but nice to see none the less.
To (mis)quote a Dilbert strip: You wish to pit your expertise against the collective sex drives of all the teenagers in the world? Good luck.
It looks like companies really are finding out the hard way, that just because a market is really expensive to enter
:)
(A 'chip' factory is definitely one of the most expensive things you can build) that hasn't prevented savage competition when it was profitable.
Then the market saturates, and people stop buying. Prices crash, and that really expensive factory you bought is a white elephant.
Course, that doesn't stop me feeling all enthusiastic about 4Gb of RAM in a desktop
And no, it wasn't just their still exploding.
Oh certainly. IT does need to fulfil a role.
This is why we end up running a lotus notes architecture. It does have the concept of a 'shared' file, to which you can send a link to multiple other users, and thus have 1 copy of a huge file.
The problem is that despite this fact, many many users just do not bother to think about it. And thus we get large emails sent to everyone/multiple people.
I do have somewhat oldfashioned ideas. I expect that these 'power users' who want to be able to do wonderful things with their tools actually bother to find out something about how they work.
Oh well.
Those who have windows users with laptops who can't understand any other mail client, but the admins run a 'proper' shop and have Exim on their MXs.
Just tell them that it _is_ exchange (honest) and they'll shut up and go away, happy that they've thrown a buzzword at you that makes them look knowlegable.
Cynic? Of course not, what makes you say that?
The problem is 'Outlook' has many many smart features such as shared calendars, netfolders, meeting scheduling, kitchen sink etc.
Unfortunately, without an exchange server, they are flakey to say the least.
(RANT: Exchange corporate has 2 modes of operation. Internet and 'corporate'. The former supports IMAP mail, and allows you to send Plain Text/HTML/RTF by default. It also allows you to over ride the text setting with 'Plain Text' on a per user basis. - not any other format. The latter does not support IMAP. Will allow the same 'default' formats but only allows an override of 'always send RTF' to this user.
Annoying but we can cope. Unfortunately, the undocumented 'feature' is that Shared folders/calendars etc. DO NOT WORK without RTF.
What kind of monkey designs a program with two exclusive sets of features?
No. Don't answer that. I already know.
Sigh. 'less-than' gets parsed as html.
... delivery in under 30 seconds, corporate address books and major feature creep. ...
I think I'll give up and go to the pub.
FWIW that comment should have the following chunk in the middle
I can honestly
A Unix based mail program, that gives in to the 'feature keen' pointy haired ones!
:)
Handy.
I've been trying to convince them that 'proper' email is text only, and attachments if you are completely ftp-impaired but to no avail. They seem to insist on 200Mb attachments (sent to 30 other users no less. Shudder), delivery in I can honestly say I've never had a problem with an Exim/Solaris mail gateway. Well, except for the 200Mb multi delivery thing. No crashes (hahaaha exchange! lotus notes!). Easy to backup (not HUGE databases) and a reliable OS underneath.
Unfortunately, I suspect that OpenMail may suffer from the influence of point and drool admins, who can't cope with anything they can't click on. Meaning it's going to go the same way, and bloat, and become unstable.
Can't stand NT admins who's attitude is 'its going a bit slow, so I'll reboot it'. And who think that uptimes in the matter of _days_ is normal.
Bah.
Oh well, I can hope
Not quite a 3d file system, but the beast of redmond has done some research into a '3d desktop'.
It was on The Register some while ago, and may be worth a look.
MS Task Gallery
Urgh, well I was close. :)
Caffeine overdose
If ya want safety and oodles of cash stick with FF FF FF FF (or 7F). (actually, almost any numbers in those 4 bytes, as long as you fill all 4 is enough that you will have so much that you are unlikely to lose.)
Never did the infinite lives thing, but savegame hacking I have done. Basically note down your 'cash' (gold, energy, credits, whatever). Save the game, and quit. Load the save file up in your favourite hex editor. Look for the 'cash' as a hex value. Usually the bytes will be reversed (something to do with the processor architecture IIRC - x86 are 'little endian' meaning the byte order is reversed). Replace these numbers with FF FF - 65535 of 'cash'. (If it shows up as -1 then you need to change the first F to a 7 because they're using a 'signed' number) Even better if you have a leading 00 00 you can replace these too - the game designers anticipated you earning more than 65535 of cash. replace with FFs or for a nice round number 00 40 42 0F will be a million (sad I remember that). It worked nicely on Sim City 2000, and Command and Conquer as I recall. May not work _quite_ so well on others.
Also, don't forget, cheat codes are 'free advertising'. Someone discoverers a really neat cheat code, sends it to a load of game magasines, and the game gets a bit more free coverage. Ok, it's not much, but the 'cheat codes' are going to be there for testing anyway so... Of course, some game programmers strip them out/don't ever add them (westwood for example). I reckon they do detract from the gaming experience. Paranoid tension is what makes things like half life, system shock 2 and doom _really_ good games. I have cheated, and I have used a walkthru. The final (ish) mission of Starcraft wasn't nearly as much fun, but I reckon having a look at the walkthrough for Planescape Torment, after completing it to find some of the 'fun' stuff was justified :)
It's not a government thing, its a society thing.
If there is a demand for 'blood, carnage and violence' then people will make games/films about it. Even if it become illegal, all you succeed in doing is creating a black market.
Then again, maybe we should look at what makes us enjoy such things. Could it be that the human race find such things 'exciting' because at heart, many of us are still cave men? (Or women)
Legislation is not the way forward. Legislation should be to enforce the will of the public - if they want violence, then legislating against it will simply cause them to ignore the legislation (consider the prohibition).
I have noticed a decline in smoking recently though. Not because of laws, but because social tolerance of it has decreased. Maybe that's the way it should go.
Perhaps we _should_ bring back the colosseum... Least then it'd be 'honest' violence.
This is what we like to see. .au has seen the draconian legislation that the US and the EU have started trying to bring about and want to join in the party?
:)
Governments protecting us from playing things that are naughty.
Thought police strike again. Anyone think that
Well, as long as you can still buy pr0n, I guess that's ok
The place where I work has decided to 'wait and see' because there's apparantly no real cost-benefit to leasing software when we had to buy NT. So we're going to be sticking with 4.0 for the near future at any rate. I've been trying to convince them that linux is a 'suitable' substitute, but it's not working especially well. Our purchasers seem to be of the opinion that since they've already paid the 'Redmond Tax', Windows must be used.
It mat sound wierd but an awful lot of companies wont 'buy' free stuff (software especially). They like the security that a bazillion pounds of support contract and software maintenance gives them. The fact that the support I've had on _numerous_ free software is far better than you'd expect from a tech support department is irrelevant because there are no _guarantees_. Selling gnu tools as a business model may actually be viable :) Provided you offer 'support' on such things... :)
Now you too can have Ad Cookies for your TV. Targeted marketing! Bill boards which flash special offers, tailored for your individual needs! Oh dear. I hate ad banners. I intensely dislike ad banners which collate information. TV profiling just seems... too sick. Of course, it's on a par with 'store cards' which they can use to track what you buy and when, but I am not a number. I am a free man!. Or something :)
AMD, Intel and Sun have all reached the conclusion that 'Mhz don't matter'. As a measure of processor speed it's only of a little relevance. The UltraSPARC III+ at 1015 Mhz is going to hit benchmarks comparable to a 2Ghs P4. Got to wonder about 'Athlon XP' though. I mean, did Windows beat them to it? And couldn't they think of anything less of an 'XP' cache (sic) in? Athlon RF (really fast). Athlon BI (Better than Intel). Athlon Turbo. :)
I've always considered copying software to be pretty much what it exists for. I _will_ go and buy a product which I use and think is good, because then the developers of it will be encouraged to produce more/better. I think I own a number of windows licenses, which is really annoying since I only have one machine which runs it (Yes, Linux rules, but Dune Emperor doesn't run under linux). Unfortunately, it's really hard to buy a PC system _without_ a copy of windows. (Naked PCs (almost) illegal) And of course, it's illegal to transfer those licenses. I guess the pirates are doing the 'transferring' for me...