Right now, an awfully large slice of the Russian economy is being channelled to western Europe, particularly the nightclubs of north London, by a billionaire oligarch via a front organisation called Chelsea Football Club.
I wonder how the Roman Abramovitch 'Buy Success In Football' programme compares in cost with the Russian government's space programme?
Well, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that we'll finally be seeing a new design for a female protagonist in a Miyazaki film. Hey, it's only been about 25 years... This one's aged ninety or so throughout most of the film, so it'll be difficult for her to be yet another Nausicaa lookalike.
Hmm, don't know... reckon we can swamp this lot? It'd be challenging, I admit, but wouldn't it be tremendous to brag about to the grandchildren in years to come?
Comet riders? Can you provide a link that explains this concept in more detail?
I think it was Sagan's idea originally, though it might have been Dyson. Comets contain water and organic chemicals; if you have nuclear fusion to turn water (i.e. hydrogen) into energy, sufficiently advanced biotech to convert the simple organics into food, and sufficiently advanced metallurgy to build new machines from raw materials as the old ones wear out, then the problem of interstellar travel is solved: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud contain all the supplies we'll ever need. A comet full of human settlers with this technology is a Von Neumann machine, which can use the comet clouds around stars as oases on its nomadic course across the Galaxy, and can reproduce itself as it goes.
Can't find a decent link - alas, searching for 'comet starship' gets a lot of Star Trek, while 'comet nomad' gets a lot of Velikovsky - but I think Sagan's book Comet was where I first read the proposal. Searching based off that, I find this delightfully green starship.
If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor.
No, no, no! Hobbits and dwarves are completely different! Dwarves get a bonus to constitution, while hobbits get extra dexterity! Really, what sort of a geek are you?
I've thought about this myself... it's clear enough that the comet-riding nomad lifestyle would work, given the necessary technological sophistication, and that such a culture could fill the galaxy very quickly in evolutionary terms. Fermi therefore comes into play: why hasn't anyone else done this yet?
My answer here is that while comet-riders could certainly spread to fill the entire galaxy, they would find it difficult to go beyond that. Intergalactic distances are enormous; you'd need a colossal commitment of resources to put together a comet fleet capable of sustaining a colony throughout the journey, and it would take an awfully long time. This requires that intelligent life arises on average once per giant galaxy or less: Andromeda might already have been filled, but they haven't yet been able to get over here.
And some enterprising person in the EU or Japan or where ever couldn't blantantly rip off this idea and make a localized version for themselves?
If they did, it would probably work better than in the US. The US is a huge country with a relatively small population; Japan and Europe are much more crowded, so you can expect to have a greater number of prospective traders within a given radius of each other.
That's probably sufficient reason for the US not to go to war with someone. Same with North Korea. Iraq was invaded because they didn't have weapons of mass destruction; if Saddam had really been able to unleash apocalyptic horrors within 45 minutes, do you seriously think we'd have gone anywhere near the place?
This is highly irrelevant, but I was wondering if so many electromagnetic fields are going to make us glow in the dark.
Nope - they're all in the radio and microwave frequencies. To glow in the dark you need visible radiation, which requires much, much higher energy. E = hf, and the frequency of a visible photon is several orders of magnitude greater than radio. If your phone is actually glowing in the dark, you probably don't have much to worry about because the battery will only last around five seconds:-)
Am I the only one who's curious about what it would be like to run through a flock of penguins to see if it would it be anything like running through a flock of pigeons?
As a wise man once pointed out, ever seen a angry penguin charging at you in excess of 100mph? You'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
On top of all that: just last week they illustrated the Queens speech with a photo of the back of the Queen's crowned head
Good God, it's worse than I thought! They're showing the back of the Queen's head? Don't they know that the back of her head is a state secret? Now all the secret intelligence resources that MI6 keep in her hair are compromised!...
I mean, FFS. The evidence of BBC bias is that they didn't kowtow sufficiently to some old woman? Surely they'd be biased if they followed royal protocol 100%? What ratio of front shots to back shots of the Queen do you think would represent a balanced view of Her Majesty?
It is not like startrek, where americans rule the world, you know.
Even in Star Trek, Americans don't rule the world. The Vulcans rule the world - they're massively overrepresented in Starfleet high command and in the Federation government, every time we see the top brass there are pointy ears everywhere. But we notice that no Starfleet ship ever has more than one or two Vulcans on board, and the occasional representative of one of the other Federation races. What's going on here?
Answer: the Vulcans, nervous about their Klingon and Romulan neighbours, found a culture just emerging from pre-warp savagery and made contact. Since then they've been quietly manipulating Earth, making sure it's always humans in the front line doing the fighting and dying and Vulcans in High Command, and placing Vulcan agents on all starships to ensure political control of the fleet, like the KGB used to do with the Soviet navy.
Of course, humans aren't stupid and a lot of them have caught on to what the Vulcans are up to. So what have they done about it? Answer: exactly what the Vulcans did, on a smaller scale. Notice how not only are Starfleet crews predominantly human, but predominantly American? No coincidence. And the occasional Scottish engineer or suspiciously English-sounding French captain? Yep... political control again.
Note that the Federation government is based in Paris (IIRC), while Starfleet Command is in San Francisco. Who's giving the orders, and who's doing the fighting? Right.
If your IP shows up a lot, you'll make it into a verification stage. If they can verify that you're distributing their stuff, then the lawsuit appears.
So: the more you share, the more likely you are to be sued? Very well... how about this:
Have the P2P app index your entire collection - let's say ten gigabytes. However, have it only share one gigabyte, chosen at random. After some time - let's say, 24 hours uptime - have it replace that gigabyte with a different gigabyte, again chosen at random.
The result is that all your mp3s are available, just not all at once, thereby reducing your visibility to RIAA evil. If the RIAA are looking at a hundred million people all sharing exactly a gigabyte, where do they begin? Only at random, so the valuable users who have immense collections are effectively shielded.
Possible refinements: an 'always share these' whitelist, for your rarities that are statistically unlikely to be readily available elsewhere on the net; different thresholds for different filetypes, for instance 1G for music, 40G for movies, unlimited for legitimate media; a 'full access to these IP numbers' whitelist to allow verified trustworthy users access to the whole collection.
Morgan? No, not quite, but close. They're sending up the sample now...
Re:TV piracy is next?
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I watched the second half of Buffy series 6 and all of series 7 by downloading them, mostly from USENET. The BBC had stopped just as S6 was starting to turn really nasty, and I couldn't be waiting! I downloaded the last few that I had seen, and then all the rest of S6, and then all of S7 that had been aired to date, and thereafter I got the new episodes weekly, shortly before the US air date.
When the BBC finally caught up, they cut the last few episodes to ribbons, meaning that we didn't see Willow cutting anyone to ribbons... but I already had my high-quality, ad-free, uncut and unbranded pirate copies in which that naughty, naughty girl ties up, tortures, skins and burns that lucky, lucky guy...
And ripping them to 'puter is ok, but you'll find this weird vid at a car boot sale in 2014 and think back to this slashdot story...
Yep. I mean, what am I supposed to do if I wake up in deep space somewhere, seventy-odd years from now, with a colossal medical bill for cryogenics and only an old video I made when I was a kid to remind me of my forgotten past? Travel all the way back to Earth with some bloody idiot cowboys to hunt down an obsolete tape deck?
That said, I don't buy VHS any more. But the number of bloody anime DVDs accumulating in my room is getting quite alarming:-)
mplayer dvd://2 - publisher's intro clip
mplayer dvd://3 - another intro clip
mplayer dvd://4 - trailer
mplayer dvd://5 - another bloody trailer
mplayer dvd://6 - interview with director
mplayer dvd://7 - hooray! The film! Just one more thing to do...
mplayer dvd://7 -alang ja -slang en
Canada is obviously delaying putting people into space until after they develop a reliable method for brewing beer in zero gravity...
Right now there's only one country with any real manned capability, and they're not going to bother with beer. Distilling vodka in zero gravity, now, that's another matter.
In time we can probably expect the US to get back into orbit, but seriously, would you want to drink their space beer? Bloody American beer, tastes like recycled piss...
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how the Roman Abramovitch 'Buy Success In Football' programme compares in cost with the Russian government's space programme?
Don't forget high-speed pizza delivery!
Well, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that we'll finally be seeing a new design for a female protagonist in a Miyazaki film. Hey, it's only been about 25 years... This one's aged ninety or so throughout most of the film, so it'll be difficult for her to be yet another Nausicaa lookalike.
/ \" /-,!
(sorry... l33t doesn't really work in Japanese, does it?)
It's actually the original English title. In Japanese it's Hauru no Ugoku Shiro. Howl is the name of the evil wizard.
Hmm, don't know... reckon we can swamp this lot? It'd be challenging, I admit, but wouldn't it be tremendous to brag about to the grandchildren in years to come?
I think it was Sagan's idea originally, though it might have been Dyson. Comets contain water and organic chemicals; if you have nuclear fusion to turn water (i.e. hydrogen) into energy, sufficiently advanced biotech to convert the simple organics into food, and sufficiently advanced metallurgy to build new machines from raw materials as the old ones wear out, then the problem of interstellar travel is solved: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud contain all the supplies we'll ever need. A comet full of human settlers with this technology is a Von Neumann machine, which can use the comet clouds around stars as oases on its nomadic course across the Galaxy, and can reproduce itself as it goes.
Can't find a decent link - alas, searching for 'comet starship' gets a lot of Star Trek, while 'comet nomad' gets a lot of Velikovsky - but I think Sagan's book Comet was where I first read the proposal. Searching based off that, I find this delightfully green starship.
No, no, no! Hobbits and dwarves are completely different! Dwarves get a bonus to constitution, while hobbits get extra dexterity! Really, what sort of a geek are you?
This is one of the most delightful kinds of Slashdot posts - I really enjoy these. Moderators: read carefully before you shoot!
However, if you actually do manage it, the story was also covered by the Independent today.
Where are the consequences shown to the appalling behaviour in Judges 19? AFAIK, that guy just gets clean away with dismembering a woman...
My answer here is that while comet-riders could certainly spread to fill the entire galaxy, they would find it difficult to go beyond that. Intergalactic distances are enormous; you'd need a colossal commitment of resources to put together a comet fleet capable of sustaining a colony throughout the journey, and it would take an awfully long time. This requires that intelligent life arises on average once per giant galaxy or less: Andromeda might already have been filled, but they haven't yet been able to get over here.
If they did, it would probably work better than in the US. The US is a huge country with a relatively small population; Japan and Europe are much more crowded, so you can expect to have a greater number of prospective traders within a given radius of each other.
This, I suppose, would be something to do with the practice of medicine?
That's probably sufficient reason for the US not to go to war with someone. Same with North Korea. Iraq was invaded because they didn't have weapons of mass destruction; if Saddam had really been able to unleash apocalyptic horrors within 45 minutes, do you seriously think we'd have gone anywhere near the place?
Nope - they're all in the radio and microwave frequencies. To glow in the dark you need visible radiation, which requires much, much higher energy. E = hf, and the frequency of a visible photon is several orders of magnitude greater than radio. If your phone is actually glowing in the dark, you probably don't have much to worry about because the battery will only last around five seconds :-)
Am I the only one who's curious about what it would be like to run through a flock of penguins to see if it would it be anything like running through a flock of pigeons? As a wise man once pointed out, ever seen a angry penguin charging at you in excess of 100mph? You'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
Good God, it's worse than I thought! They're showing the back of the Queen's head? Don't they know that the back of her head is a state secret? Now all the secret intelligence resources that MI6 keep in her hair are compromised!...
I mean, FFS. The evidence of BBC bias is that they didn't kowtow sufficiently to some old woman? Surely they'd be biased if they followed royal protocol 100%? What ratio of front shots to back shots of the Queen do you think would represent a balanced view of Her Majesty?
Even in Star Trek, Americans don't rule the world. The Vulcans rule the world - they're massively overrepresented in Starfleet high command and in the Federation government, every time we see the top brass there are pointy ears everywhere. But we notice that no Starfleet ship ever has more than one or two Vulcans on board, and the occasional representative of one of the other Federation races. What's going on here?
Answer: the Vulcans, nervous about their Klingon and Romulan neighbours, found a culture just emerging from pre-warp savagery and made contact. Since then they've been quietly manipulating Earth, making sure it's always humans in the front line doing the fighting and dying and Vulcans in High Command, and placing Vulcan agents on all starships to ensure political control of the fleet, like the KGB used to do with the Soviet navy.
Of course, humans aren't stupid and a lot of them have caught on to what the Vulcans are up to. So what have they done about it? Answer: exactly what the Vulcans did, on a smaller scale. Notice how not only are Starfleet crews predominantly human, but predominantly American? No coincidence. And the occasional Scottish engineer or suspiciously English-sounding French captain? Yep... political control again.
Note that the Federation government is based in Paris (IIRC), while Starfleet Command is in San Francisco. Who's giving the orders, and who's doing the fighting? Right.
So: the more you share, the more likely you are to be sued? Very well... how about this:
Have the P2P app index your entire collection - let's say ten gigabytes. However, have it only share one gigabyte, chosen at random. After some time - let's say, 24 hours uptime - have it replace that gigabyte with a different gigabyte, again chosen at random.
The result is that all your mp3s are available, just not all at once, thereby reducing your visibility to RIAA evil. If the RIAA are looking at a hundred million people all sharing exactly a gigabyte, where do they begin? Only at random, so the valuable users who have immense collections are effectively shielded.
Possible refinements: an 'always share these' whitelist, for your rarities that are statistically unlikely to be readily available elsewhere on the net; different thresholds for different filetypes, for instance 1G for music, 40G for movies, unlimited for legitimate media; a 'full access to these IP numbers' whitelist to allow verified trustworthy users access to the whole collection.
If we don't play God, who will?
Morgan? No, not quite, but close. They're sending up the sample now...
When the BBC finally caught up, they cut the last few episodes to ribbons, meaning that we didn't see Willow cutting anyone to ribbons... but I already had my high-quality, ad-free, uncut and unbranded pirate copies in which that naughty, naughty girl ties up, tortures, skins and burns that lucky, lucky guy...
... I'm sorry, I drifted off a little there.
Yep. I mean, what am I supposed to do if I wake up in deep space somewhere, seventy-odd years from now, with a colossal medical bill for cryogenics and only an old video I made when I was a kid to remind me of my forgotten past? Travel all the way back to Earth with some bloody idiot cowboys to hunt down an obsolete tape deck?
That said, I don't buy VHS any more. But the number of bloody anime DVDs accumulating in my room is getting quite alarming :-)
That usually gets you the anti-piracy warning.
Then:
mplayer dvd://2 - publisher's intro clip
mplayer dvd://3 - another intro clip
mplayer dvd://4 - trailer
mplayer dvd://5 - another bloody trailer
mplayer dvd://6 - interview with director
mplayer dvd://7 - hooray! The film! Just one more thing to do...
mplayer dvd://7 -alang ja -slang en
Not all that convenient.
Right now there's only one country with any real manned capability, and they're not going to bother with beer. Distilling vodka in zero gravity, now, that's another matter.
In time we can probably expect the US to get back into orbit, but seriously, would you want to drink their space beer? Bloody American beer, tastes like recycled piss...