Seems like this is a great argument in favor of municipalities building their own fiber infrastructure like they do with roads, sewers and the like.
Or, like electricity, people could for a Co-Op and get their own broadband.
This sounds like a plot to sap our vitality by adding Flourine to impurify our sacred bodily fluids ^H^H^H^H^H transistors.
Oh, for those who have never seen it, the silly reference is from Dr. Strangeglove.
Guns are designed with the express purpose of killing or at least maiming people.
Guns, when used, do nothing other than kill or maim.
The fear of guns is what provides "protection", not the guns themselves.
So, I would ask you this, if you feel the need to carry a handgun, what gives you the inherent right to kill other people? I understand that many things can be used to kill, such as a steaknife; but handguns are designed and manufactured with the express purpose of inflicting damage.
If a law-abiding citizen is really worried about protecting themselves, there are plenty of defensive, non-lethal measures that they can take.
Hire a bodyguard to step in front of you and take the bullet for you.
Sew Kevlar(tm) into all your clothes.
Stay away from people with guns. As soon as you see or suspect that someone has a gun, get the heck away from there. And don't go back. If it is a public place, let the proprietor know your reason for leaving.
Move to a remote location and install lots of security.
Move to Canada, where even though gun ownership is much greater per capita, gun deaths and injuries are dramatically lower. Plus they have free healthcare, should you get shot and survive.
If you do get into a situation where there is a gunfight in a crowede movie theater, DUCK! There probably will be lots of people who don't move fast enough to get out of the way, and you may be able to make your way to safety.
See? The way to fight fire is not always with fire, sometimes water and sand work just as well. Metaphorically speaking of course.
I am impressed by your analysis of the current unsustainable debt load and its consequences for the future.
I would also like to point out that once our reserves of cheap oil run out, we are really really hozed. Cheap oil is propping up agriculture, industry, and de-centralization. Eventually Wal*Mart will die, because it will be to expensive to ship cheap textiles from halfway accross the planet, and sub-urbanites won't be able to gass up their SUV's to drive out to buy the "cheap" underwear. Eventually even senior citizens won't be able to get crappy McJobs and the economy will collapse on account of that too.
Another way the economy will turn on its head is with increasing sophisitcation of automation. Pretty soon McJobs will all be automated. It might be put in place as a "safety" device - after all who wants to be burned by hot fry oil? But soon, there will be fast food places the size of an ATM, and one or two technicians can service dozens. retail will also get automated, with robots stocking the shelves, and RFID scanners doing instant checkout. Every store will look like a wharehouse club, as people will always give up frills like decor and staff for low prices. Other things will get automated for "safety" purposes as well: ariliners to reduce terrorism; ports and shipping container routing to promote safety and efficiency ; truck drivers can eventually be replaced by robot driving systems with vision systems and reduce accidents and loss; you get the idea.
Eventually middle-level management systems will become sophisitcated enough to handle information flow and resource allocation that even many white-collar workers can be replaced by a simple program. Just think of all the people in the typing pool that were replaced by word processing.
Automation will soon concentrate capital in the hands of the very few, and most people will be left out. Anger and unrest will spread through the general populace, but this is a problem that technnolgoy can solve too. By this time, automated fighting vehicles will have managed to become sophisticated enough that a few generals can command a force thousands strong, and all it needs is ammo and a few (million) gallons of disel. The unruly (subversive and anti-government) population can be suppressed and/or eliminated. After all the unemployed don't pay taxes, so they aren't really necessary. More likely they will just be maliciously ignored, left to starve and freeze.
So, there you go, even more ways by which our future looks bleak. All are possible, and even though the future may not come to pass exactly as stated above, elements of those scenarios certainly will.
So, it promises to be a bleak future. I wonder if we will adapt soon enough to try and prevent the harshest of outcomes. Probably not.
You raise a good point. I think one response would be, "Hmm, John Smith himself has a spotless general record. Who is using him as a front?"
And you'd have access to that information as well.
Whatever 'the system' turns out to be, it would be complete and total surveilance.
Everyone is a watchman and everyone is watching everyone else. Only when everyone can be assured of absolutely no privacy whatsoever can we all be truly safe.
There would be no privacy haves and no privacy have nots.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just a pipe dream; there will always be inequalities and those that exploit them.
I would add that anyone can look up anything about anybody else, but this too is being monitored and reported to everyone who's information is beeing looked up.
For example, I can look up what you just had for breakfast [ooh, blueberry Pop-Tarts!] but, the moment I did, you (and anyone else who wants to know) can find out that I just found out what you had for breakfast. I also know that you know that I just looked up what you had for breakfast, and so on.
Sure anyone and everyone is a spy, but you get to know just who is spying on whom. Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
Heat Transfer Fluids
The wide liquid range of Fluorinert liquid FC-77 (-110 deg C to 97 deg C) makes it ideal for use in automated test equipment (ATE) and other semiconductor process equipment. Its high dielectric strength means it will not damage electronic equipment or semiconductor wafers, chips or packages in the event of a leak or other failure.
In addition, FC-77 liquid is chemically stable, nonflammable and practically non-toxic.
Exactly my thought! What if your mouse crapps out? How do you put in a new one once you take the old one out, and the socket is now filled with nice, non-conducting oil?
Long kitchen-type gloves can keep the goo off you hands. And, mineral oil isn't so bad for your hands, it will keep them nice and moist.
And what about any oil-soluable compounds in the electronics? won't they pollute the oiltank? And if resins and other organic compounds do leach out into the mineral oil bath, won't that slowly change the properties of those components?
The chemistry of this might be intersting to investigate, if I were a chemist.
It seems as if this practice is common. I once forgot my State-Issued ID at home before flying. I told the screeners this, and they said that I would have to submit to a more extensive screening if I was to be let into the gates.
My luggage was taken to a MRI scanner and the checkpoint screener examined every key on my key ring, and took out each and every scrap of paper, photo and credit card in my wallet and examined it for, I assume weapons. They took the orthotic inserts out of my shoes and wanded me closely.
I was travelling with my wife, who did have an ID, and I suppose my passive submission to the procedure kept me from staying at home.
This was in May 2004, so either enforcement is somewhat arbirary or the guidelines changes between the time Gillmore attempted to fly and I mistakenly left my ID at home.
Or in the instance of Gillmore V. Ashcroft, the guards knew they had a rebellious troublemaker, and wanted to make sure their authority was unquestioned.
I wonder what would happen now if John Gillmore tried this "stunt" again?
Interestingly, there is a Starbucks right next door, which offers Starbucks coffee, and T-Moblie wireless. I constantly see people at the Bread Co. (Panera) with laptops and rarely see them at the Starbucks.
Of course, I'm usually getting food at the St. Louis Bread Co., during lunchtime, so that probably leads to some skewing of my data-gathering obervations.
True, but are you going to start trying to collect from the Department of Motor Vehicles? They "took" (stole? illegally downloaded photons?) your picture to make a piece of state property: your driver's license.
Same pricniple holds true for passports, student ID's etc.
On the other hand, this approach should be tried by celebreties who want to try and keep the papparizzi from publishing in the tabloids.
At least lawyers (copyright and "IP" lawyers anyway) won't be going hungry any time soon.
Hopefully, they just included "room for future expansion". Right now they are selling excess capacity in terms of floor space, physical security, climate control and bakcup power (should the need arise). I'm sure the marks^H^H^H^H clients pay for their own bandwidth plus a comfortable margin.
The point was, they built it anyway, and the space was going to otherwise be unused. This way IT gets some extra pin money to help defray costs.
Heck, if your company is planning on such a facility, you may as well plan for extra capacity so that you can sell rackspace to smaller companies.
As long as that fits in with your business plan and company objectives.
My company recently became a hosting company as a sideline.
They built this fantastic server room, with climate control, tons of backup power and all the bells and whistles, and found that they could host servers and charge for it.
Think of ways to re-sell your existing infrastructure or other overcapacity.
I just completed a professional degree program after several years away from school. Here are a few nuggets of advice:
Buy/sell used books online, if you can. The campus bookstore still rips you off.
If you don't know already, learn to use Power Point (or similar presentation software). As far as I can tell, all university professors have traded in their old View-Graphs and slide carousels for Power Point presentations.
Collaborate with your classmates (if such is allowed by class/university rules) online. Starting a class blog, or Yahoo! group can help keep you and your classmates up-to-date, and provide a good forum for "what the heck was the prof saying?" type of questions.
Pack your lunch/snack/coffee. Campus food services/vending machines still overcharge for junk food.
Use the campus career center as much as you can, even in the early days of your degree. After all, a new and better job is the untimate goal, and University Career centers are still full of fantastic advice.
Good luck, and make sure to do all the readings and homework this time around.
And also, wouldn't one have to back-calculate what your birthday was (would have been?) under the C&T calendar.
Same problem as the switchover from Julian to Gregorian systems, and Washington's birthday.
Nice Idea, but I think the calendar printing lobby would work against the adoption of C&T. After all, you'd only have to buy one planning calendar. Neton week would be free time, nobody could work, so you wouldn't have to plan to work on those days.
Er, well I'd want doctors, police, & fire fighters to work during Newton. But definatly physicists should get Newton off as a holiday.
The term von Neumann machine also refers to self-replicating machines. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms.
A few self-replicating space probes, Von Neuman pondered, could explorethe galaxy in only a few hundred thousand years.
So, if we colonize one or two other planets, that just gives us a few more baskets. What we need are hundreds or thousands of baskets.
In fact, we should probably abandon planets altogether.
There are tons and tons of nice organics and water waiting for us in the Kupier Belt. Sitting at the bottom of a gravity well, dependent on one biosphere for all your free oxygen is just asking for trouble.
All we need to do is:
Develop fusion technology
invent entire engineering disciplines based on zero-gravity industry/construction/living technologies
Move a substantial representation of our gene- and meme- pools up out of Earth's gravity well
Live for a few centuries in the Kupier Belt and Oort Clouds
Spread to other solar systems like a fungus, possibly using Von Neuman Machines to soften up / improve target planetary systems
FUD in terms of slashdot, means Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
I know that you know it as well. But, in TFA, they were referring to their virutal currency as "PED", which I assume stands for "Project Entropia Dollars". I wanted to creat my own virtual currency, so I named it the FUD.
$FUD is a brand-new currency which corresponds 1-to-1 with the US Dollar.
You see, the way my bridge auciton will work is that prospective bidders all send me envelopes full of cash, which I will convert for them into $FUD, on a one-to-one basis. They then will bid on the bridge with their $FUD. The winner of the auction takes "posession" of his virtual bridge.
Upon completion of the auction, if prospective bidders wish to try to exchange their $FUD back into $USD, then they can go to their nearest currency exchange office.
The currency exchange office is located accross the bridge, which the new owner can chare tolls for, hence the moneymaking opportunity.
Tolls can only be charged in $FUD.
Just to re-iterate:
Anyone who wishes to can give out $USD in exchange for $FUD;
Only I can change $USD into $FUD. Strict currency controlls must be kept in place in order to stabalize the currency.
I have noticed this for about a year and a half now. Most notably on Thursday nights with NBC programming.
ER starts at 8:59, which prevents me from recording CSI on CBS which runs from 8:00 to 9:00.
All TiVo has to do is change its programming a bit. They actually contribute to the conflicts by not allowing you to start recording a program late. Sure you can start recording early, or stop late, but unless you do it completely manually, it is not possible to start late and or end early.
My old VCR used to handle this somewhat more gracefully. If I had a weekly program, say from 7:00 to 8:00, and I had another program that recorded from 7:00 to 7:30, it would record the first program (if it had a higer priority) and then switch channels to record the last half of the other program.
I do not see why TiVo can't simply change the software to "record as much as possible, even if a few minutes are lost" rather than the current model of "even if one minute conflicts, the whole program is abandoned".
Wow, it can last 63 years? That's pretty darn good engineering.
Or are you predicting the total melting of the polar ice caps in 63 years?
Yeah, that must be it, a global warming joke.
While Telcom Somalia has some 25,000 mobile customers - and a similar number have land lines - you very rarely see anyone walking along the streets of Mogadishu chatting on their phone, in case this attracts the attention of a hungry gunman.
By all means get a cell phone. Just don't use it where people can see you, apparently.
The article also mentions that the people running the telecom companies want a government that can provide security, and welcome paying taxes to that extent. They just don't want government to nationalize the nifty telecom system they've set up.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like this is a great argument in favor of municipalities building their own fiber infrastructure like they do with roads, sewers and the like.
Or, like electricity, people could for a Co-Op and get their own broadband.
This sounds like a plot to sap our vitality by adding Flourine to impurify our sacred bodily fluids ^H^H^H^H^H transistors.
Oh, for those who have never seen it, the silly reference is from Dr. Strangeglove.
Guns are designed with the express purpose of killing or at least maiming people.
Guns, when used, do nothing other than kill or maim.
The fear of guns is what provides "protection", not the guns themselves.
So, I would ask you this, if you feel the need to carry a handgun, what gives you the inherent right to kill other people? I understand that many things can be used to kill, such as a steaknife; but handguns are designed and manufactured with the express purpose of inflicting damage
If a law-abiding citizen is really worried about protecting themselves, there are plenty of defensive, non-lethal measures that they can take.
See? The way to fight fire is not always with fire, sometimes water and sand work just as well. Metaphorically speaking of course.
Dear Catbeller:
I am impressed by your analysis of the current unsustainable debt load and its consequences for the future.
I would also like to point out that once our reserves of cheap oil run out, we are really really hozed. Cheap oil is propping up agriculture, industry, and de-centralization. Eventually Wal*Mart will die, because it will be to expensive to ship cheap textiles from halfway accross the planet, and sub-urbanites won't be able to gass up their SUV's to drive out to buy the "cheap" underwear. Eventually even senior citizens won't be able to get crappy McJobs and the economy will collapse on account of that too.
Another way the economy will turn on its head is with increasing sophisitcation of automation. Pretty soon McJobs will all be automated. It might be put in place as a "safety" device - after all who wants to be burned by hot fry oil? But soon, there will be fast food places the size of an ATM, and one or two technicians can service dozens. retail will also get automated, with robots stocking the shelves, and RFID scanners doing instant checkout. Every store will look like a wharehouse club, as people will always give up frills like decor and staff for low prices.
Other things will get automated for "safety" purposes as well: ariliners to reduce terrorism; ports and shipping container routing to promote safety and efficiency ; truck drivers can eventually be replaced by robot driving systems with vision systems and reduce accidents and loss; you get the idea.
Eventually middle-level management systems will become sophisitcated enough to handle information flow and resource allocation that even many white-collar workers can be replaced by a simple program. Just think of all the people in the typing pool that were replaced by word processing.
Automation will soon concentrate capital in the hands of the very few, and most people will be left out. Anger and unrest will spread through the general populace, but this is a problem that technnolgoy can solve too. By this time, automated fighting vehicles will have managed to become sophisticated enough that a few generals can command a force thousands strong, and all it needs is ammo and a few (million) gallons of disel. The unruly (subversive and anti-government) population can be suppressed and/or eliminated. After all the unemployed don't pay taxes, so they aren't really necessary. More likely they will just be maliciously ignored, left to starve and freeze.
So, there you go, even more ways by which our future looks bleak. All are possible, and even though the future may not come to pass exactly as stated above, elements of those scenarios certainly will.
So, it promises to be a bleak future.
I wonder if we will adapt soon enough to try and prevent the harshest of outcomes.
Probably not.
"I see," said the Blind Man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
You raise a good point. I think one response would be, "Hmm, John Smith himself has a spotless general record. Who is using him as a front?"
And you'd have access to that information as well.
Whatever 'the system' turns out to be, it would be complete and total surveilance.
Everyone is a watchman and everyone is watching everyone else. Only when everyone can be assured of absolutely no privacy whatsoever can we all be truly safe.
There would be no privacy haves and no privacy have nots.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just a pipe dream; there will always be inequalities and those that exploit them.
I support your Ideal Case most wholehartedly.
I would add that anyone can look up anything about anybody else, but this too is being monitored and reported to everyone who's information is beeing looked up.
For example, I can look up what you just had for breakfast [ooh, blueberry Pop-Tarts!] but, the moment I did, you (and anyone else who wants to know) can find out that I just found out what you had for breakfast. I also know that you know that I just looked up what you had for breakfast, and so on.
Sure anyone and everyone is a spy, but you get to know just who is spying on whom. Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
Oh, here is some nifty stuff from 3M:
Fluorinert.
Looks like nicely expensive stuff.
At over $500US for 250mL, it would take a princely sum to fill a fishtank....
Exactly my thought! What if your mouse crapps out? How do you put in a new one once you take the old one out, and the socket is now filled with nice, non-conducting oil?
Long kitchen-type gloves can keep the goo off you hands. And, mineral oil isn't so bad for your hands, it will keep them nice and moist.
And what about any oil-soluable compounds in the electronics? won't they pollute the oiltank? And if resins and other organic compounds do leach out into the mineral oil bath, won't that slowly change the properties of those components?
The chemistry of this might be intersting to investigate, if I were a chemist.
It seems as if this practice is common. I once forgot my State-Issued ID at home before flying. I told the screeners this, and they said that I would have to submit to a more extensive screening if I was to be let into the gates.
My luggage was taken to a MRI scanner and the checkpoint screener examined every key on my key ring, and took out each and every scrap of paper, photo and credit card in my wallet and examined it for, I assume weapons. They took the orthotic inserts out of my shoes and wanded me closely.
I was travelling with my wife, who did have an ID, and I suppose my passive submission to the procedure kept me from staying at home.
This was in May 2004, so either enforcement is somewhat arbirary or the guidelines changes between the time Gillmore attempted to fly and I mistakenly left my ID at home.
Or in the instance of Gillmore V. Ashcroft, the guards knew they had a rebellious troublemaker, and wanted to make sure their authority was unquestioned.
I wonder what would happen now if John Gillmore tried this "stunt" again?
At the Westport Plaza St. Louis Bread Co. the staff have always been very helpful, smart, and quick to bring me my order.
Interestingly, there is a Starbucks right next door, which offers Starbucks coffee, and T-Moblie wireless. I constantly see people at the Bread Co. (Panera) with laptops and rarely see them at the Starbucks.
Of course, I'm usually getting food at the St. Louis Bread Co., during lunchtime, so that probably leads to some skewing of my data-gathering obervations.
My favorite sandwich is the Bacon Turkey Bravo. Yummy!
True, but are you going to start trying to collect from the Department of Motor Vehicles? They "took" (stole? illegally downloaded photons?) your picture to make a piece of state property: your driver's license.
Same pricniple holds true for passports, student ID's etc.
On the other hand, this approach should be tried by celebreties who want to try and keep the papparizzi from publishing in the tabloids.
At least lawyers (copyright and "IP" lawyers anyway) won't be going hungry any time soon.
Well, I hope they didn't outrageously overbuild.
Hopefully, they just included "room for future expansion". Right now they are selling excess capacity in terms of floor space, physical security, climate control and bakcup power (should the need arise). I'm sure the marks^H^H^H^H clients pay for their own bandwidth plus a comfortable margin.
The point was, they built it anyway, and the space was going to otherwise be unused. This way IT gets some extra pin money to help defray costs.
Heck, if your company is planning on such a facility, you may as well plan for extra capacity so that you can sell rackspace to smaller companies.
As long as that fits in with your business plan and company objectives.
My company recently became a hosting company as a sideline.
They built this fantastic server room, with climate control, tons of backup power and all the bells and whistles, and found that they could host servers and charge for it.
Think of ways to re-sell your existing infrastructure or other overcapacity.
I just completed a professional degree program after several years away from school. Here are a few nuggets of advice:
Good luck, and make sure to do all the readings and homework this time around.
And also, wouldn't one have to back-calculate what your birthday was (would have been?) under the C&T calendar.
Same problem as the switchover from Julian to Gregorian systems, and Washington's birthday.
Nice Idea, but I think the calendar printing lobby would work against the adoption of C&T. After all, you'd only have to buy one planning calendar. Neton week would be free time, nobody could work, so you wouldn't have to plan to work on those days.
Er, well I'd want doctors, police, & fire fighters to work during Newton. But definatly physicists should get Newton off as a holiday.
Oops! You are correct.
Sorry to forget your final "n" Dr. Von Neumann.
Yes you are correct. It also refers to any self-replicating machine.
From the Wikipedia
A few self-replicating space probes, Von Neuman pondered, could explorethe galaxy in only a few hundred thousand years.
So, if we colonize one or two other planets, that just gives us a few more baskets. What we need are hundreds or thousands of baskets.
In fact, we should probably abandon planets altogether.
There are tons and tons of nice organics and water waiting for us in the Kupier Belt. Sitting at the bottom of a gravity well, dependent on one biosphere for all your free oxygen is just asking for trouble.
All we need to do is:
FUD in terms of slashdot, means Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
I know that you know it as well. But, in TFA, they were referring to their virutal currency as "PED", which I assume stands for "Project Entropia Dollars". I wanted to creat my own virtual currency, so I named it the FUD.
$FUD is a brand-new currency which corresponds 1-to-1 with the US Dollar.
You see, the way my bridge auciton will work is that prospective bidders all send me envelopes full of cash, which I will convert for them into $FUD, on a one-to-one basis. They then will bid on the bridge with their $FUD. The winner of the auction takes "posession" of his virtual bridge.
Upon completion of the auction, if prospective bidders wish to try to exchange their $FUD back into $USD, then they can go to their nearest currency exchange office.
The currency exchange office is located accross the bridge, which the new owner can chare tolls for, hence the moneymaking opportunity.
Tolls can only be charged in $FUD.
Just to re-iterate:
Anyone who wishes to can give out $USD in exchange for $FUD;
Only I can change $USD into $FUD. Strict currency controlls must be kept in place in order to stabalize the currency.
See how simple the system is?
I've got a virtual bridge that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn.
It's sure to generate lots of revenue. It's for sale by auction, I expect to get at least $100,000FUD (equal to $100,000USD).
Seriously though, good luck to all the virtual real-estate agents out there.
Spot on.
Searching for the tools of democracy yields similarly dissappointing results
Roberts Rules of Order on Google:
Gives a list of websites that explain and inform about Robert's Rules of Order, the basis of western parlimentary procedure.
Roberts Rules of Order on Accoona:
Links on were to buy a book about Robert's rules, than a bunch of links for un-related things like "Julia Roberts" and "Norah Roberts".
Consumerism over substance, looks like to me.
I have noticed this for about a year and a half now. Most notably on Thursday nights with NBC programming.
ER starts at 8:59, which prevents me from recording CSI on CBS which runs from 8:00 to 9:00.
All TiVo has to do is change its programming a bit. They actually contribute to the conflicts by not allowing you to start recording a program late. Sure you can start recording early, or stop late, but unless you do it completely manually, it is not possible to start late and or end early.
My old VCR used to handle this somewhat more gracefully. If I had a weekly program, say from 7:00 to 8:00, and I had another program that recorded from 7:00 to 7:30, it would record the first program (if it had a higer priority) and then switch channels to record the last half of the other program.
I do not see why TiVo can't simply change the software to "record as much as possible, even if a few minutes are lost" rather than the current model of "even if one minute conflicts, the whole program is abandoned".
Hear that TiVo? Missing features!
Wow, it can last 63 years? That's pretty darn good engineering.
Or are you predicting the total melting of the polar ice caps in 63 years?
Yeah, that must be it, a global warming joke.
On the other hand:
By all means get a cell phone. Just don't use it where people can see you, apparently.
The article also mentions that the people running the telecom companies want a government that can provide security, and welcome paying taxes to that extent. They just don't want government to nationalize the nifty telecom system they've set up.