I'd like to be under the sea In a Saturn's rings beneath the waves We'd dance and shout, and sing refrains until explosive decompression got our brains.
I'm posting this as a preemptive rebuttle. Children are not quite as delicate as our paternalistic legislators would have us believe. When I was young, I watched Blade Runner, and look how I turned. ..okay, bad example. The point is that good prophylactic parenting and perhaps, I know it's crazy, an apres-movie parent-child discussion can make potentially "dangerous" movies like South Park and Eyes Wide Shut into a valuable learning experience, as they allow the youngster to think about the issues involved. Instead of deciding that profanity, a proven cause of homocidal mania and sociopathy, should simply be stamped out, one should speak with one's kids about why it is often inapropriate. We need to stop any censoring as soon as we can, because when censorship has momentum, it's incredibly hard to stop.
I have been brutally exposed to the "real world" recently (I like using quotation "marks" arbitrarily), and I doubt the average user will ever own two desktop systems. Aside from costs from moniters and other nonsharable peripherals, the average user can't set up a LAN, unless someone, and I'm thinking of a hypothetical God here, could make Plug 'n' Pray live up to its expectations. As for your wired house, I think that when that sort of thing becomes affordable, it will be on a USB-like I/O port. I just pray that we don't end up with proprietary toast protocols, and suchlike.
As for VCR's, the most I am willing to grant them, excepting Stevie Wonder, is that they might be marginally more bright than hamster.
Implanting nanotech computers in people is cool; that is not disputed. We do, however, need to look at the possible downsides, as these buggers might prove to have some rather dark side effects, especially because with computers that size, molecular manipulation is a viable peripheral option. E.g.: 1. "Your trial period for WinZip is now over, and you have selected not to uninstall. Thank you for using WinZip, and please enjoy our complementary copy of eHerpes 5.0" 2. "System resource conflict with HP SCSI mini-CD drive and Generic Liver." 3. "Speak to me! You're alive, I know it! God, why did I install NT on my brother?" 4. "Man, it's hell when you're in a job interview and you get some porn site's spam."
>What we need is PCOAFC - PC on a few chips. Make >it moduler so it's easy to upgrade. Make it cheap >so I can buy it. Make it fast so I can run the >next iteration of Quake.
Modular chips would be nice. On the other hand, I'd also like to fly. If integration succeeds completely, we'll all be running iMacs--but I don't think it will be universal. High-end PC's will remain highly upgradable, simply because they begin to fade in to servers at some vague point, and servers are, in theory, machines operated and maintained by knowledgable proffessionals and, in fact, very expensive hunks of metal and plastic that one would like to use for more than 6 months. All other PC's, however, will suffer from the iMac syndrome wherein your only chance for expansion is a USB port and you're reduced to sitting around drinking cheap tequila remembering the days when DOS was king and you had enough expansion slots for all your dreams. *Slap* Sorry about that. My point is that most users will upgrade infrequently at best, and that sad statistic will only increase as integration, Microsoft, FUD, El Nino, et cetera claim the chances of budding pre-geeks to learn.
I'm glad someone's paying attention. Actually, it would appear that I dropped a decimal. She actually weighed about 300 g: I've been doing the interracial (human/faerie folk) dating thing for a while now. I tell you, it's a pain when you date tries to pick you up in a wagon pulled by mice.
Perhaps, my friend, that may be leaping to a conclusion. For all the talk of "dirty snowballs" (doesn't that sound like it should be vulgar?) we aren't sure what lurks inside the comets, our favorite slushies from the Oort cloud. Remember that if we wanted to piss off Europe, we would just nuke Luxemburg. We could do it in about three hours.
Secondly, there will be no cabeling. We are not attemting to bring the comet in so that we can harvest it to feed the tribe-we are trying to make an explosion to spray comet stuff all over. You were right in that we don't have anything that could stand up to the force of impact. The harpoon will be destroyed, as something going at 10,000 m/s at 500,000 g of mass would have 2.5 * 10^10 Joules of energy, roughly enough to launch my last girlfriend at 1,118,468,146 miles an hour (1,800,000,000 kph). The whole point, as I said, is to make a big explosion, which I feel justifies itself.
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Frankly, I do. I'm about to pass out here.
I'd like to be
under the sea
In a Saturn's rings beneath the waves
We'd dance and shout,
and sing refrains
until explosive decompression got our brains.
I'm posting this as a preemptive rebuttle. Children are not quite as delicate as our paternalistic legislators would have us believe. When I was young, I watched Blade Runner, and look how I turned. . .okay, bad example. The point is that good prophylactic parenting and perhaps, I know it's crazy, an apres-movie parent-child discussion can make potentially "dangerous" movies like South Park and Eyes Wide Shut into a valuable learning experience, as they allow the youngster to think about the issues involved. Instead of deciding that profanity, a proven cause of homocidal mania and sociopathy, should simply be stamped out, one should speak with one's kids about why it is often inapropriate. We need to stop any censoring as soon as we can, because when censorship has momentum, it's incredibly hard to stop.
I have been brutally exposed to the "real world" recently (I like using quotation "marks" arbitrarily), and I doubt the average user will ever own two desktop systems. Aside from costs from moniters and other nonsharable peripherals, the average user can't set up a LAN, unless someone, and I'm thinking of a hypothetical God here, could make Plug 'n' Pray live up to its expectations. As for your wired house, I think that when that sort of thing becomes affordable, it will be on a USB-like I/O port. I just pray that we don't end up with proprietary toast protocols, and suchlike.
As for VCR's, the most I am willing to grant them, excepting Stevie Wonder, is that they might be marginally more bright than hamster.
Implanting nanotech computers in people is cool; that is not disputed. We do, however, need to look at the possible downsides, as these buggers might prove to have some rather dark side effects, especially because with computers that size, molecular manipulation is a viable peripheral option.
E.g.:
1. "Your trial period for WinZip is now over, and you have selected not to uninstall. Thank you for using WinZip, and please enjoy our complementary copy of eHerpes 5.0"
2. "System resource conflict with HP SCSI mini-CD drive and Generic Liver."
3. "Speak to me! You're alive, I know it! God, why did I install NT on my brother?"
4. "Man, it's hell when you're in a job interview and you get some porn site's spam."
>What we need is PCOAFC - PC on a few chips. Make
>it moduler so it's easy to upgrade. Make it cheap
>so I can buy it. Make it fast so I can run the
>next iteration of Quake.
Modular chips would be nice. On the other hand, I'd also like to fly. If integration succeeds completely, we'll all be running iMacs--but I don't think it will be universal. High-end PC's will remain highly upgradable, simply because they begin to fade in to servers at some vague point, and servers are, in theory, machines operated and maintained by knowledgable proffessionals and, in fact, very expensive hunks of metal and plastic that one would like to use for more than 6 months. All other PC's, however, will suffer from the iMac syndrome wherein your only chance for expansion is a USB port and you're reduced to sitting around drinking cheap tequila remembering the days when DOS was king and you had enough expansion slots for all your dreams. *Slap* Sorry about that. My point is that most users will upgrade infrequently at best, and that sad statistic will only increase as integration, Microsoft, FUD, El Nino, et cetera claim the chances of budding pre-geeks to learn.
I'm glad someone's paying attention. Actually, it would appear that I dropped a decimal. She actually weighed about 300 g: I've been doing the interracial (human/faerie folk) dating thing for a while now. I tell you, it's a pain when you date tries to pick you up in a wagon pulled by mice.
Perhaps, my friend, that may be leaping to a conclusion. For all the talk of "dirty snowballs" (doesn't that sound like it should be vulgar?) we aren't sure what lurks inside the comets, our favorite slushies from the Oort cloud. Remember that if we wanted to piss off Europe, we would just nuke Luxemburg. We could do it in about three hours.
Secondly, there will be no cabeling. We are not attemting to bring the comet in so that we can harvest it to feed the tribe-we are trying to make an explosion to spray comet stuff all over. You were right in that we don't have anything that could stand up to the force of impact. The harpoon will be destroyed, as something going at 10,000 m/s at 500,000 g of mass would have 2.5 * 10^10 Joules of energy, roughly enough to launch my last girlfriend at 1,118,468,146 miles an hour (1,800,000,000 kph). The whole point, as I said, is to make a big explosion, which I feel justifies itself.