I think this is a good set of ideas... NASA should be not-for-profit if they aren't already. Have they ever made a profit? I think not. The government can give them 'grants' instead of 'funding' them and the rest of us could 'fund' them w/ our tax-exempt contributions.
Same could be true of orgs like the US Mail, various research programs and the like, instead of levying taxes on us ostensibly to go to the orgs but somehow never showing up (red-tape anyone, admin expenses, etc).
Then these 'quasi-governmental' orgs could "put advertisements in sci-fi products encouraging people to donate" and enlighten (read lobby) us all as to why their projects are the most important... what could be more republican/democratic/capitalistic/american?
Anybody know if NASA is 'charitable' as in non-profit, etc... can all us 'geeks' and sci/fi nerds donate our tax dollars to NASA? maybe just a percentage...
Would be a very nice alternative to paying for the military/welfare/[org-you-don't-like here].
What about forcing marketers to register in a database? New legislation that states that any marketer not registered and still found to be actively marketing will suffer mandatory fines w/ a 3 strikes rule or something for repeat offenders.
This would mandate and maintain opt-in and opt-out standards while still allowing initial marketing by the business. ie: they could send us one mail, we could decide if we wanted to ever receive from them again and then go to the database and choose to opt-out or later on choose to opt-in again.
This would also give consumers recourse against 'rogue' marketers. Businesses who are legitimately marketing thier product would not have any problem with this and 'rogue' marketers could be foudn guilty of invasion of privacy, which is what this all amounts to...
Mod this up if you think it's a legitimate idea, or maybe even start an 'Ask Slashdot' article to see if we could hash out a workable version and push for legislation somehow.
Re:cover 1% of earth surface: why not sea surface?
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 1
This is for all the 'cover up the ocean' ideas... ever hear of evaporation? or the 'water cycle'?
I can just imagine what wierd havok covering up any percent of our oceans would do to the climate... not to mention the inadvertent destruction of variou habitats.
That's why the moon is so great, no earth environment impact from collecting... now the distribution part, that's another matter.
It could reawaken the old "I want to be an Astronaut when I grow up!", dream though.. an institution that is currently even more exclusive. With a colony on the moon it could become a somewhat realistic dream for a kid.
Re:Doesn't the earth receive more?
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2
Maybe that's what all this 'hole in the ozone' effort for the last 50 years has been about?
Maybe 'the brightest industry brains' have already figured it out and are setting up solar arrays in Antartica as we speak? who knows? could be, hehehe...
Good question about how the earth's atmosphere might diffuse the very energy we seek to gather... only not during collection, during transportation, back to earth.
Anyone know how this would dilute the amount of energy or how much extra it would take to overcome this? That 1% could turn in to 10% collected, 1% received. Maybe even contribute to some sort of Global Warming? ya know, that much energy passing through our atmosphere..
Ah but then who would subsidize? If big business who has all the money can't turn a profit off of something they just won't support it.
Enabling free energy isn't the purpose here, it's enabling limitless energy and commoditizing it to boot.
I'd love it if our tax dollars were spent on creating efficient energy but then what would the current energy industry do to turn a buck? Ever hear about those tires that were designed so well that they would never need to be replace? no... I did but only briefly, that patent got bought so quickly I got whiplash!
Point is that no product will be made available unless it employs hundreds of thousands of people if for no other reason than to keep them off the streets/making babies/doing drugs/committing crimes or just generally making a nuisance of themselves to the 'haves'.
Mostly my point was that energy waves in the range that cellular phones use are considered microwaves... meaning that when you use it to communicate you are sending and receiving microwaves through the air all over the place, and yes in close proximity to your brain's natural magnetic field this has been known to cause problems but in general we all seem to be alive at the moment despite the millions of microwave transmissions occuring at this very second. (run-on sentences are fun;-p
Ever used a cell phone? Those are friggin' microwaves too...
Re:doesnt seem economical
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ah, but imagine the new global economic return just in the number of jobs this would create.
Rememeber that this would be akin to colonizing the moon and not just for curiosity's sake or 'research'. We've been looking for a viable commercial reason to do something like this and voila!
Do you realize how much this would further the US's interest in developing countries... if we didn't have to build their power grid from scratch, we could hire all those work hungry people out there to do everything we don't want to do and for pennies on the dollar!
I do care about people though and of course I'm thinking about the children and what a boon for them to have 24/7 access to teletubbies which would free up their mothers to join their husbands in the manufacturing plants.. all powered by the lunar energy consortium (or whatever) at very low rates, because when you have the whole world as your customer base you don't need to charge much individually. Better yet the energy could be bought nationally and redistributed by local carriers who could compete for customers, etc... sounds good to me.
My favorite part...
"Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent. It is now Apple Computers offering us temptation, thereby aligning themselves with the forces of darkness."
So it's a reference to the tree of knowledge, knowing the difference between good and evil.. thereby having a choice.. what's so wrong withe that?
"It chains you to a 1-button mouse,"... Mac's come w/ a one-button mouse but it's just the default. MacAlly/Logitech/M$ all make multi-button mice and OMG, trackballs/joysticks etc... most of which are supported by OS X.
I tell you, this is an awesome idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I support it 100% and will provide any and I mean any! graphic support necessary for the endeavor. (public post: jhatfield@avamar.com webmaster and art-director for www.avamar.com if you need a reference )
For those who don't read the article and yet are influenced by the title:
"We should state at the outset that we are devoted fans of the Macintosh human interface and frequent users of Macintosh computers. Our purpose is not to argue that the Macintosh human interface guidelines are bad principles, but rather to explore alternative approaches to computer interfaces. The Anti-Mac interface is not intended to be hostile to the Macintosh, only different."
READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE JUDGEMENT
As a user of Apple products and an advocate of their philosophy (user experience / get shit done) I believe that Apple has made the most effort as a commercial company to enage the user as a person, instead of a 'worker'.
They don't do everything right but they do somehow manage to bridge the gap between what is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and what is aesthetically pleading to the mind... and with OS X have managed to stay within societally correct technical perspectives.
It doesn't take a genius to discern that a UI should present the user with, essential tools in the easiest manner possible. How do you do that? By presenting them with an interface that gets straight to the point, ie., tell them what you, as an expert, would do in their place, while presenting any alternatives that make sense.
Apple simply seems to do this best. No reason, they just make the effort to look into what people really want to do, not what they want them to do (ie: M$) but what is most useful for them.
X-Windows does this as well but because it is not an integral part of the experience it is a second class citizen. All aspects need to be reviewed, down to the pixels which communicate functionality (icons/menus)
Process is a key factor here. What do you look for first, what is most important to you and are you satisfied enough with what you have to improve upon it.
Many linux users still complain about the kernel.... what does the UI have to do with that? When the linux kernel is taken for granted and relegated to something only payed reviewers attend, then the GUI will become more paramount. Here is where standards and API's take hold... ie Themes...
Of course these are all interrelated eventually, but it is more of an engineering feat than philosopjy... Look at Apple as a fount of experience, then improve upon it..
Power to the consumer... you didn't like the product. I love my rev.1 TiG4 w/ 500mhz and 1GB RAM... runs OS X like a charm!
Much faster than the P3 800mhz Win2kPro 'testing' box I have at work to try out Java 1.4 stuff and look at html compatibility.. heck even the ailing 350 G4 desktop (also 1GB of RAM) kicks the P3's @ss (well it only has 512 MB RAM...).
You should care about "cocoa vs. carbon, display postscript, window managers, OpenGL, UNIX, C++, java, or any of that." cause what ever new software you plan on using will surely be affected by it, and even ways you obviously can't fathom. C++? comeon bro.. every app worth shite takes it's glory from C++.
Carbon is basically a porting API, Cocoa is where it's at w/ Objective C at it's core. See posts on Chimera to preview the implications.. and any of the fast apps on OS X have all been written w/ the Cocoa API. Well, that doesn't include any of the commercial non-Apple apps but still.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is a good set of ideas... NASA should be not-for-profit if they aren't already. Have they ever made a profit? I think not. The government can give them 'grants' instead of 'funding' them and the rest of us could 'fund' them w/ our tax-exempt contributions.
Same could be true of orgs like the US Mail, various research programs and the like, instead of levying taxes on us ostensibly to go to the orgs but somehow never showing up (red-tape anyone, admin expenses, etc).
Then these 'quasi-governmental' orgs could "put advertisements in sci-fi products encouraging people to donate" and enlighten (read lobby) us all as to why their projects are the most important... what could be more republican/democratic/capitalistic/american?
Have you heard about the 'bullet tax' being proposed in California? It would go to pay for bullet wound victim expenses...
;-p
...or how about the 'soda tax' that would go to offsetting 'obesity' expenses...
just a few more examples of ludicrous taxes being proposed.
I'm thinking a 'shoe' tax for expenses due to sidewalk revovation...
Anybody know if NASA is 'charitable' as in non-profit, etc... can all us 'geeks' and sci/fi nerds donate our tax dollars to NASA? maybe just a percentage...
Would be a very nice alternative to paying for the military/welfare/[org-you-don't-like here].
anyone?
Not to mention limitless energy.
1 22 3&mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/23/024
Did any of you guys read the article about solar arrays on the moon? OMG.
"There HAS to be a big project to catch the imagination and attention"
Hello? I think colonizing the moon to create an installation which would supply limitless energy to earth might fall into this category.
What about forcing marketers to register in a database? New legislation that states that any marketer not registered and still found to be actively marketing will suffer mandatory fines w/ a 3 strikes rule or something for repeat offenders.
This would mandate and maintain opt-in and opt-out standards while still allowing initial marketing by the business. ie: they could send us one mail, we could decide if we wanted to ever receive from them again and then go to the database and choose to opt-out or later on choose to opt-in again.
This would also give consumers recourse against 'rogue' marketers. Businesses who are legitimately marketing thier product would not have any problem with this and 'rogue' marketers could be foudn guilty of invasion of privacy, which is what this all amounts to...
Mod this up if you think it's a legitimate idea, or maybe even start an 'Ask Slashdot' article to see if we could hash out a workable version and push for legislation somehow.
There are several articles on /. concerning lawsuits against spammers.
i ng &op=stories&author=&topic=111§ion=&sort=1
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=sue+sued+su
Mod this up... a very insightful comment.
This is for all the 'cover up the ocean' ideas... ever hear of evaporation? or the 'water cycle'?
I can just imagine what wierd havok covering up any percent of our oceans would do to the climate... not to mention the inadvertent destruction of variou habitats.
That's why the moon is so great, no earth environment impact from collecting... now the distribution part, that's another matter.
It could reawaken the old "I want to be an Astronaut when I grow up!", dream though.. an institution that is currently even more exclusive. With a colony on the moon it could become a somewhat realistic dream for a kid.
Maybe that's what all this 'hole in the ozone' effort for the last 50 years has been about?
Maybe 'the brightest industry brains' have already figured it out and are setting up solar arrays in Antartica as we speak? who knows? could be, hehehe...
I like my broadcast energy! It's broadcasting all of this straight to my laptop from 30 ft away right now. ;-p w/ microwaves no less... ;-p
Edison is the one who was a sham. Get your history right.
Read the comment below....
Finally somone has a valid point against this.
Good question about how the earth's atmosphere might diffuse the very energy we seek to gather... only not during collection, during transportation, back to earth.
Anyone know how this would dilute the amount of energy or how much extra it would take to overcome this? That 1% could turn in to 10% collected, 1% received. Maybe even contribute to some sort of Global Warming? ya know, that much energy passing through our atmosphere..
Ah but then who would subsidize? If big business who has all the money can't turn a profit off of something they just won't support it. Enabling free energy isn't the purpose here, it's enabling limitless energy and commoditizing it to boot. I'd love it if our tax dollars were spent on creating efficient energy but then what would the current energy industry do to turn a buck? Ever hear about those tires that were designed so well that they would never need to be replace? no... I did but only briefly, that patent got bought so quickly I got whiplash! Point is that no product will be made available unless it employs hundreds of thousands of people if for no other reason than to keep them off the streets/making babies/doing drugs/committing crimes or just generally making a nuisance of themselves to the 'haves'.
Mostly my point was that energy waves in the range that cellular phones use are considered microwaves... meaning that when you use it to communicate you are sending and receiving microwaves through the air all over the place, and yes in close proximity to your brain's natural magnetic field this has been known to cause problems but in general we all seem to be alive at the moment despite the millions of microwave transmissions occuring at this very second. (run-on sentences are fun ;-p
Ever used a cell phone? Those are friggin' microwaves too...
Ah, but imagine the new global economic return just in the number of jobs this would create.
Rememeber that this would be akin to colonizing the moon and not just for curiosity's sake or 'research'. We've been looking for a viable commercial reason to do something like this and voila!
Do you realize how much this would further the US's interest in developing countries... if we didn't have to build their power grid from scratch, we could hire all those work hungry people out there to do everything we don't want to do and for pennies on the dollar!
I do care about people though and of course I'm thinking about the children and what a boon for them to have 24/7 access to teletubbies which would free up their mothers to join their husbands in the manufacturing plants.. all powered by the lunar energy consortium (or whatever) at very low rates, because when you have the whole world as your customer base you don't need to charge much individually. Better yet the energy could be bought nationally and redistributed by local carriers who could compete for customers, etc... sounds good to me.
My favorite part... "Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent. It is now Apple Computers offering us temptation, thereby aligning themselves with the forces of darkness." So it's a reference to the tree of knowledge, knowing the difference between good and evil.. thereby having a choice.. what's so wrong withe that?
"It chains you to a 1-button mouse,"... Mac's come w/ a one-button mouse but it's just the default. MacAlly/Logitech/M$ all make multi-button mice and OMG, trackballs/joysticks etc... most of which are supported by OS X.
I tell you, this is an awesome idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I support it 100% and will provide any and I mean any! graphic support necessary for the endeavor. (public post: jhatfield@avamar.com webmaster and art-director for www.avamar.com if you need a reference )
For those who don't read the article and yet are influenced by the title: "We should state at the outset that we are devoted fans of the Macintosh human interface and frequent users of Macintosh computers. Our purpose is not to argue that the Macintosh human interface guidelines are bad principles, but rather to explore alternative approaches to computer interfaces. The Anti-Mac interface is not intended to be hostile to the Macintosh, only different." READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE JUDGEMENT
As a user of Apple products and an advocate of their philosophy (user experience / get shit done) I believe that Apple has made the most effort as a commercial company to enage the user as a person, instead of a 'worker'. They don't do everything right but they do somehow manage to bridge the gap between what is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and what is aesthetically pleading to the mind... and with OS X have managed to stay within societally correct technical perspectives. It doesn't take a genius to discern that a UI should present the user with, essential tools in the easiest manner possible. How do you do that? By presenting them with an interface that gets straight to the point, ie., tell them what you, as an expert, would do in their place, while presenting any alternatives that make sense. Apple simply seems to do this best. No reason, they just make the effort to look into what people really want to do, not what they want them to do (ie: M$) but what is most useful for them. X-Windows does this as well but because it is not an integral part of the experience it is a second class citizen. All aspects need to be reviewed, down to the pixels which communicate functionality (icons/menus) Process is a key factor here. What do you look for first, what is most important to you and are you satisfied enough with what you have to improve upon it. Many linux users still complain about the kernel.... what does the UI have to do with that? When the linux kernel is taken for granted and relegated to something only payed reviewers attend, then the GUI will become more paramount. Here is where standards and API's take hold... ie Themes... Of course these are all interrelated eventually, but it is more of an engineering feat than philosopjy... Look at Apple as a fount of experience, then improve upon it..
Power to the consumer... you didn't like the product. I love my rev.1 TiG4 w/ 500mhz and 1GB RAM... runs OS X like a charm! Much faster than the P3 800mhz Win2kPro 'testing' box I have at work to try out Java 1.4 stuff and look at html compatibility.. heck even the ailing 350 G4 desktop (also 1GB of RAM) kicks the P3's @ss (well it only has 512 MB RAM...). You should care about "cocoa vs. carbon, display postscript, window managers, OpenGL, UNIX, C++, java, or any of that." cause what ever new software you plan on using will surely be affected by it, and even ways you obviously can't fathom. C++? comeon bro.. every app worth shite takes it's glory from C++. Carbon is basically a porting API, Cocoa is where it's at w/ Objective C at it's core. See posts on Chimera to preview the implications.. and any of the fast apps on OS X have all been written w/ the Cocoa API. Well, that doesn't include any of the commercial non-Apple apps but still.
Reminds me of another fruity company that I support... what's their name again?