Is it easy to change the region codes so that I can play non-north american dvd's? Is it done (like most other dvd players) by using the remote and entering codes or change a selection in the menu system? I like the idea of a simple to use networked player as who wants a noisy computer in the living room, and people who can't use a computer tend to find remote controls hard too (especially if there are three of them. To get ordinary people to use computers and networked appliances, they should be easy to use and essencially invisible.
Is this a dream? Some sort of right-wing/communist hybrid (actually, that would technically make it a middle-of-the-road liberal democricy?), but anyway, it's amusing to find corporate (magazine) america "editing history by ommision"...what it it about the corporate right-wing media, do they not understand the concept of hyper-linking and the purpose of the internet, or are they typically so intersted in maintaining the world-wiew of the right-wingers of the world by this stunt. For years, the right-wing in the world proudly stated that the press in the west was a FREE press that put out ALL ideas (not cover-ups etc, no REVISIONIST HISTORY that the EVIL COMMYS were trying to pollute our minds, etc. Too bad the cold war ended... and too bad the real face of the media and corporate interests (SCO anybody?) is now trying to go back to the usual "lets brainwash the unwashed masses".
The down-side I see, is that the new xbox will not draw people who like to mod the box (hardware and software) and play with it's configurations. Of course, this is what MS wants, it also want to try out its DRM on the gaming crowd first and will probably crash and burn as a result. I wil, for one, look to buy the old version of xbox, MS doesn't get it that a platform that is non-hackable won't be as popular as a hackable platform...when the windoz DRM version arrives someday, there will be a big sound of migrating consumers to non-DRM technologies like Linux. People do not like having their computers turned into dumb dvd players controlled by big companies.
We need computers that we can talk to and talk back at us...if we want to mess with assembly language and higher-level languages, then go replicate some (ancient)hardware and software that can do this (if you do this, you are probably a computer historian or hobbiest). Future computer systems (if they could even be called that), will probablly use neural networks, and possiblly what then passes as computer hardware/sofware. The logic of using command-line for future computers makes as much logic as using switches and leds to enter and read your spread-sheet or word processor work you have to do. We are just at a phase in history where computers interfaces and hardware are at a point where the interfaces can sort-of do what a non-computer tech literate user can accomplish, but the feild will really flourish when computers are powerful enough to use semi-intelligent knowlege-bases like CYC and have neural nets and have at least big enough roms and non-volitile rams that you can seperate the OS's into parts of the computer that the applications can't touch, with enough redundancy that the OS NEVER crashes and has some real intelligence. People lose track that computers are simply tools, we waste too many decades (of potencial productivity) playing these stupid MS and Intel driven political (and money) games when we whould be making very powerfull, easy (ie: invisible) computer systems anybody can use, then we will see an age of exponential productivity driven and enabled by smart tools....nobody expects people to know hardware and software to use a calulator, we should not expect them to do the same when using a computer, that is plain stupid, and shows that we are the ones with no vision of what good computer system interfaces should be designed like.
They use the CYC AI database thecnology so that you can ask a question in plain english..(much better than all the over "dumb" search engines combined). I find that the Ask search engine is better at finding stuff that the dumber search engines are not capable of remotely gettin close too. As far as microsoft buying them, I am not too exitied about that company owning more things in the whole universe, it's bad enough that 98% of all computers runs their crap OS's, and that they spend all their time constantlly changing (but not improve) their languages and OS's (to take over the world), now they have grabbed of the better search engines.
The advent of cheap nanotechnolgy (and biotechnology), with nanotech causing a big explosion in material access and nano/biotech causing essencially very big life extention posibilities and also, brain power enhancment, we will see all sorts of these "excess quantity" effects. It will be very interesting to see what happens to the "normal benchmarks" of what scocieties think of beauty, monitairy success and really smart people, when everyone can obtain these goals reasonably easilly. What probablly will happen, is that a whole explosion of new ideas and looks will occure, which means that the limited abount of success benchmarks we have now a days will mushroom into vast ammounts of possibilities with none monopolizing the whole culture at once.
It's not like DVD's in my collction are cheap, but I would rather they last a long time (make all those AOL discs corn based, I don't care, but keep my linux and video collections secure). I am rather suspicious about a corn-based DVD not being prone to being eaten by a bug or prone to growing somthing on it in say, a high humid evironment (an exessivlly rainy day, or somebody spilling something on it), say.
I saw a program on tv (Bill Moyars I think) where Virgin airlines founder Richard Branson explained that the reason for concords retirement was that british airways wanted to boost its business class service on its sub-sonic fleet. He also said that he wanted to take over concord and he thought that he could run it at a proffit, he even offered to keep the planes with the same marking as british airlines, so as to not embarras them by making a proffit, but they don't like that idea and are trying to block him. The other thing he mentioned, was that the billions it took to develop concord were paid equally by the UK and France and that british airways only paid a token "british pound" for each airliner, so, in effect, the public owned the planes and sould decide if virgin airlines could take over the service.
Like every other human pursuit, science requires support from the population, not from a small group of self appointed "old boys" network. Because we are at a time in human history where our civillization is using science to discover and harness the discoveries and technologies that the activity of doing science rewards us with. To do that, we need to open up the access to science and technologys through TV programs and the use of the internet. Back in the early 1970's, a lot of TV networks did not like the idea of general science information programs, but these programs turned out to be very popular. If we move to the present, examples of popularizing science and technolgy can be found on any TV network. It would, of course, be nice to have a hard science TV network that has more than "fluff" information on it. One thing that we must remember, is that it is natural human nature, that given a group of people (in this case, people involved in science), there will always be a sub-group that appoints itself the be the high-priests of that given diciplin....remember, 20 years ago (before personal computers), 99% of the population had no access to computers, you had to either have access to a computer at work, or through a college or university. So essentially, we had this high-priesthood that regulated and controlled access to this technology. You simply could not get access to CPU's, for example, assembly language was considered to be something that college graduates and university graduates were capable of understanding, fast forwared to today, and you find kids programming computers in assembly with no problem. This is why these special interests groups can not be allowed to dictate how science is done and how it is communicated to people. Besides, people who popularize science have allways come under attack by "purists", it makes you wonder if these purists don't want people to find out that science can be done by ordinary people. Another example is the cancellation of SETI research by the republicans back in the early 90's and the treatended black-listing of people who would dare to propose and SETI research, of course, now we have seri@home and lots of cool NASA and world-wide SETI science going on. Because science is a human activity, and depends upon supports from the population at-large, to keep it growing, we should "open the gates" to more access, not restrict it to what ammount to a "dark middle ages" closed community.
I run seti@home, my motherboard died too, I haven't bothered to test the cpu to make sure that it was the motherboard (it's too out of date anyway), and I'm a bit pissed off it died, but computer stuff nowadays is not built to last, even expensive gigabyte motherboards, so I just replaced it with a cheap all-in-one amd cpu motherboard and continue to run seti@home (anyway the new board is faster than the old one). I think that running seti@home is more important, and if the quality of expensive motherboards is that bad (assuming the motherboard), I will just buy the really cheap slightlly out of date computer hardware and continue on. Of coures, it would be nice to buy a really good system to run games on etc...but that will have to wait....just hope the cheap motherboard doesn't burp too much running seti..
This time, so as to stay in space for the long haul, we need to push nanotech research so as to develop cheap methods of getting and living in space (like the space elevator and cheaper launch vehicles). We will also need nanotech repair nanobots so we can live in the high-radiation eviroment of space and of course, the health advantages of nanotech to reverse things like muscle wating in zero G etc. Growing space stations and bases on the moon would be needed, plus the super AI automation needed to build/run/maintain all these space life support systems. We will probablly need all this technology here on earth soon, as we are polluting ourselves out of exisitence here and our present econimic systems here on earth cannot evolve fast enough and are incapable of adapting to including the natural world as part of the equation. The only way we can survive as a half-decent world is to restore most of the earths biospere (for example, I read on the bbc web site, that the world's oceans are getting more acidic due to C02 pollution, that's a really bad sign). Developing non-polluting nanotech industries, most improtant, we need to eliminate materialism (as a cultural icon and goal) through nanotech produced/recycled items (since all objets would be described as a cad file to be replicated) is a good start.
Create two sections, first, the peer-reviewed articles, and then, another section: Yet-to-be-peer-reviewed section....Your choice (the reader), as to what section you want to read first (or at all). That way, all articles have a chance to get read, under the circumstance that a ground breaking peice of work comes along that is so radically differnt and advanced that most scientists do no want to, or won't peer review it for whatever reason, then simply put it into the as-yet-to-be-reviewed box (section), so that the readers can review it themseves. after all, good ideas survive (eventually), and even really bad ones (who knows), may be that triggering insight for someone out there who can discover the real truth or even a new tangent to a really cool idea.
If PC's were used to translate voice to text (voice recognition)and at the recieving end, translate the text to voice (voice sythesis), wouldn't the resulting data stream be small text packets that could be easily encoded/decoded and/or hidden in creative ways plus the result would be smaller amount of data to send over the net? (thesound may not be the original speaker, but it may sound cool, and also, the computers could interact with the parties as the decoded text strings could now be recognized by computer programs and the computers could resond to you too, sort of like an application where you could talk to and get a response from search engines (or other computer entities (CYC?, like ask.com) on the net?
We need a sensible, low cost, open hardware archetecture that does not have the X86 Re-boot problem and other hardware legacy stuff to burden it down. Also, this platform should be easy to interface to/epand on, and also, easy to develop programs for using whatever language you choose. Perhaps this is a time to openly start developing a long-term solution (cpu/bus architectures) and make the whole design open and free of patent issues etc.
Part of the problem with PC's and their ability to run linux can be traced back to all those years where MS and Intel dictated new PC buses and OS/hardware interfaces and future directions that then PC were to take both in hardware archetecture and software architecture. One of the reasons Intel and MS have been so successfull is that these companies locked people into these technologies and made them so complex that a lot of hardware/software porblems and issues needed generations of "experts" and "consultants" to solve peoples and business problems (if a computer OS was easy to use, then all these consultants/re-sellers of hardware and software services would have to find other lines of work. The fact that the current PC does not run Linux well is it has been constanlly pushed in it's gradual evolution (both chip & software) towwards supporting MS in its OS and all applications. MS has verified it by it's propoganda about open source being "not of capitalsm" and therefor unholy in their pargdime model of the universe of creators and us as consumers of the past and current and future IP technology and porduct lines.
The bar owners can call up your picture and information. so when you cause a fight, or don't pay your bill, then in a few min all the other bars in the system get an alert with your picture and name etc. so you then can't go down the road to a new bar and try the same thing again..(or in the future, go to any bar in the system without that bar knowing what problems you have caused at other bars before)
Just because you hate [insert person's name here] does not mean that everyone should use new thechnology to kill everyone else they don't like, after all, that is how every single tehcnology in the past, was used to develop "future tech" to kill people they did not like. For instance, guns, dynamite, nukes, lasers, you name it, we will pervert it into said killing machine. After all, all those terrorists did it, why not continue for the next 1000 years doing it again, and again...we will have nanotech soon so everyone can remove somebody they don't like real cheaply too!!
I remember the times before the current internet..(dark ages)..I did not have access to the pre-browser internet age, but to find out about technical stuff, I had to collect information by reading magazines and watching tv, sendign away for books reading Omni, scientific american, pop science, pop-electronics etc...pretty dark age, as it took me about 1 week to 6 months to locate interesting stuff, now it's a few minutes to find something, and I can download programs/applications in a few min again...(super-fast, no cost). In fact, the internet is fundementallyy changes the way the world embraces change and how people educate themselves, get new technology, produce new tech etc. When the age of nanotech arrives, then things will move 100 or more times faster....
Free markets are a buzword for private corporate GREED! The simple fact, is that when private companies control major (in this case, power) ifrastructures, they first, charge more to buy said product (power), they can artificially limit access to raise prices, they can cut back on funding maintanance, future improvements to the infrastructure (for future demands), which leads to running the system at 100% of capacity (more proned to massive crashes) and, of course, the holy grail is PROFFITS..These proffits can be generated by paying workers less, charging more for power, etc. Public power systems play by different rules, they don't have to make a proffit, they can re-invest money to keep the power grid up-to-date, they can invest in building extra capacity that can absorb unexpected power interruption condition that otherwise would lead to a total systems collapse. Nead I say more?
By all means, increase the number of lines on screen, make those tv's and movies we watch super clear..it's a good way to get the big technology push we need for better cpu's, faster/bigger memory chips and hard drives etc..ALSO..it wil show that we pay WAY-TO-MUCH for our $dollars/bits we get over those so-called broadband pipes we have into our homes (phone lines too). IF these future Ultra-high-performance displays are to be used (and they will). we will need a big increase in the performance and size (and likewise, decrease in costs) of all these new technologies.
Nanotech technologies (like carbon nanotube displays) will help to make these super-big displays a reality, but we need to develop cheap fiber-to-the home AT cheap data-rates, not the rip-off rates crruently charged to broadband computer users by the big monopolies.
If these companies are using the "business user" ISP use cahrges as a benchmark, that is missleading because business users have no choice and cannot go any where else, just look at the rates for business phone charges anywhere in the world, it's like 5 to 10X the rate for a hmoe phone...it's the principal applied to busisness, charge massive amounts for this service since businesess are assumed to make money (as viewed by the phone company and ISP provider), but this won't work with the typical howe-owner, so they charge less but compare your home service with artifically-over-priced business service and use that as a justification for limiting and over-charging for "typical" home use patterns...
My ISP here in canada (shaw cable) says that their cap is about 1 or so gig of stuff a month!!, and they say that their ASDL competitor (tellus), is about the same (1gig) for a months downloading..whereas this article says that comcast is 1 or 2gigs cap a day!!...(another thisn, apparently, if you are a telus user and you exceed your 1 gig cap, you are dinged for a not-so-small bit of change for that overight). I think that I'm (and other people in canada are really getting ripped off...it's about time people really complained about this artifical inflated (out-dated telephone industry legacy )pricing for just sending bits through these high-speed fiber systems. With this sort of nonsence, what will happen in the future?..will every ISP try to bring pricing down to what is what, $40/month for a gig of download...how are you supposed to download any big software package (borland, for instance or Eclipse say)..not to mention all those new-fangled video-on-demand stuff the ISP's and hollywood are trying to cram down our throats in the not too distant future. One of the most annoying thing about so-called broadband now is the obvious lack of what broadband was supposed to be..ie: good quality video from a server..just try to view a movie trailer (pick a format and screen size) and try to watch it without it burping and freezing...the present internet is a joke and these ISP's and their star-trek Jetson's future drivell and their 19th century telephone based pricing schemes are just too much.
The thing with humans, is that we social animals and usually need goals to get everybody moving to get things done, to really achieve these goals, we need a lot of basic research into nanotechnology to be able to "grow" the required space hardware, both ships here to establish orbiting space ship manufacturing and also ship manufacturing on the moon and moonbases, plus all the nanotech, so that we can live on the moon and mars without any health problems, plus, the fact that any sufficiently advanced memdical nano could also be used for stopping and reversing the aging process in cells here on earth, not to mention, increasing brain power, good looks etc..it's important for the US to start on this, or be left behind as there are a lot of other countries out there who also want to get established in space, of course, if you diidn't want to compete and waste $ duclipcating space research/manuf resources, you could work with other countries that want to get to the moon and mars by combining all these seperate space efforts..also, with a big project like this, it will send a message to young people around the world that the west is not really that bad and goals for humanity are really productive and it's better than blowing each other up over stupid issues..
What we see here is the addiction to a funding agency (the military)...this is typical of societies that have developed large militaries...before, it was the Britan (before WWI) that was the biggest military, now, due to history, it's the US's turn...in the distant future, it's going to be China's turn. The trouble with this situation, is that, sure, you now have this giant funding machine, (given a given superpower (this case, the US), the funding machine in question (military), is the biggest in this given country, it drains all the funding resources into itself (like a black hole), it therefore pervades all thinking as it is the biggest and therefore, the correct way of thinking and funding all new technologies..this is dangerous in the long run because it promotes a military view of the world: all funding goes through the military/ industrial complex, it is the only source of decent funding for future hi-tech, most important, big militaries determin your politics (IE: Goerge Bush-lets invade everybody thinking to sove all problems). The trouble with this, is many, first all other countries do the same (arms race to oblivion), because wepons get bigger and scarier (real bakc holes, super AI, genetics gone wild), it drains funding for real science and commercial developemnt.. this is the most important, as countries that develop normal science and commercial technology will win in the long run as most lasting and productive science and products manufacturing come form the commercial sector (whitness the current and future growth of far east manufacturing).. it has been pointed out before by historians that big military states fail because, they can't compeat commercially, the big military ssytems don't make money, they burn up money, cost money to maintain and, most important, they produce generations of scientists, engineers that can't develope/manufature good comercial items on-time and under budget because they came form this very inefficient military/industrial culture, it happened after the last big military/industrial spending spree in the 80's, it looks like it is starting over again in a new cycle.
Jee, I don't know...(forests on fire, really hot europe, less fish etc..), I think that the eviromental collapse is just now starting to show itself....I guess it's time to stop financing the military and wars (lets see, 6 billion/month for afghanistan and iraq..), lets start by taking THAT money and investing in a massive world-wide nanotechnology "manhattan style" R&D fest to develop all the less-polluting and Enviro-recycling/regenerating technologies we really need right now (actually: yesterday)..Imagine a future where there are no Bill Gates creating endless useless money making technologes, but where nanotech fixes the eviroment, stops aging, where nerds can do their own nanotech research, people download plans for the latest nano-manufactured item (if you don't like the old item, don't throw it out, reclycle it into the next new item). We seriously need this as human history is an experiment in evolving civilization, right now, we have evolved capitalism to it's max, the system now is reducing the middle-class to the lower-class and just the rich, funny thing, if people make no money, they don't buy stuff...remember, we can't go back (ie: feudalism etc.), we mus go forward to a nanotech future where solar energy makes everything, nerds come up with cool ideas to drive this new economy...after all, it's not much different than today..farmers get free light to grow plants, fishermen get ocean-made fish, the biospere supports farms (okay, so the original farmers got the land for free, any other land since then costs money)....The thing is, we need to probably invest 100 billion/year quickly to get a crash program going..after all, the 4 billion invested during WWII was for a 3-4 year program to develop the bomb, that investment and massive R&D pushed nuclear technology ahead 36 years into the future in a space of 4 years, we need to do the same today, except now you get all the industrialized countries to contribute resources/manpower, in a few years you can bring in lots more people in developing countries (remember, internet is everywhere now..). Right now it's expensive to do nanotech, but soon, once we develop small nanotech labs, we could send them all over the world...remember, there are 100's of milions of nerds out there waiting to create/invent/disover something new...perhaps it's the next solution to a problem we need soved..
If we run the clock ahead to the future (20 to 50 years), we may find a world where a lot of robotics and microscopic nanobots are both grown (using nanotech), and employed everywhere, so that we are overrun by a sea of robots that do and make most items...probablly by then, however, we will also have the capability to boost everybody's intelligence to any level...then we may find that the more ruthless among us, use this new capability to try to dominate everyone else, or, we may find that since everyone is now about the same capabilities, a sort of deadlock now exists, since nobody can be an "eliteist" as everybody can now be as smart as everyone else...so we don't need this elitest culture we now have...
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Is it easy to change the region codes so that I can play non-north american dvd's? Is it done (like most other dvd players) by using the remote and entering codes or change a selection in the menu system? I like the idea of a simple to use networked player as who wants a noisy computer in the living room, and people who can't use a computer tend to find remote controls hard too (especially if there are three of them. To get ordinary people to use computers and networked appliances, they should be easy to use and essencially invisible.
Is this a dream? Some sort of right-wing/communist hybrid (actually, that would technically make it a middle-of-the-road liberal democricy?), but anyway, it's amusing to find corporate (magazine) america "editing history by ommision"...what it it about the corporate right-wing media, do they not understand the concept of hyper-linking and the purpose of the internet, or are they typically so intersted in maintaining the world-wiew of the right-wingers of the world by this stunt. For years, the right-wing in the world proudly stated that the press in the west was a FREE press that put out ALL ideas (not cover-ups etc, no REVISIONIST HISTORY that the EVIL COMMYS were trying to pollute our minds, etc. Too bad the cold war ended... and too bad the real face of the media and corporate interests (SCO anybody?) is now trying to go back to the usual "lets brainwash the unwashed masses".
The down-side I see, is that the new xbox will not draw people who like to mod the box (hardware and software) and play with it's configurations. Of course, this is what MS wants, it also want to try out its DRM on the gaming crowd first and will probably crash and burn as a result. I wil, for one, look to buy the old version of xbox, MS doesn't get it that a platform that is non-hackable won't be as popular as a hackable platform...when the windoz DRM version arrives someday, there will be a big sound of migrating consumers to non-DRM technologies like Linux. People do not like having their computers turned into dumb dvd players controlled by big companies.
We need computers that we can talk to and talk back at us...if we want to mess with assembly language and higher-level languages, then go replicate some (ancient)hardware and software that can do this (if you do this, you are probably a computer historian or hobbiest). Future computer systems (if they could even be called that), will probablly use neural networks, and possiblly what then passes as computer hardware/sofware. The logic of using command-line for future computers makes as much logic as using switches and leds to enter and read your spread-sheet or word processor work you have to do. We are just at a phase in history where computers interfaces and hardware are at a point where the interfaces can sort-of do what a non-computer tech literate user can accomplish, but the feild will really flourish when computers are powerful enough to use semi-intelligent knowlege-bases like CYC and have neural nets and have at least big enough roms and non-volitile rams that you can seperate the OS's into parts of the computer that the applications can't touch, with enough redundancy that the OS NEVER crashes and has some real intelligence. People lose track that computers are simply tools, we waste too many decades (of potencial productivity) playing these stupid MS and Intel driven political (and money) games when we whould be making very powerfull, easy (ie: invisible) computer systems anybody can use, then we will see an age of exponential productivity driven and enabled by smart tools....nobody expects people to know hardware and software to use a calulator, we should not expect them to do the same when using a computer, that is plain stupid, and shows that we are the ones with no vision of what good computer system interfaces should be designed like.
They use the CYC AI database thecnology so that you can ask a question in plain english..(much better than all the over "dumb" search engines combined). I find that the Ask search engine is better at finding stuff that the dumber search engines are not capable of remotely gettin close too. As far as microsoft buying them, I am not too exitied about that company owning more things in the whole universe, it's bad enough that 98% of all computers runs their crap OS's, and that they spend all their time constantlly changing (but not improve) their languages and OS's (to take over the world), now they have grabbed of the better search engines.
The advent of cheap nanotechnolgy (and biotechnology), with nanotech causing a big explosion in material access and nano/biotech causing essencially very big life extention posibilities and also, brain power enhancment, we will see all sorts of these "excess quantity" effects. It will be very interesting to see what happens to the "normal benchmarks" of what scocieties think of beauty, monitairy success and really smart people, when everyone can obtain these goals reasonably easilly. What probablly will happen, is that a whole explosion of new ideas and looks will occure, which means that the limited abount of success benchmarks we have now a days will mushroom into vast ammounts of possibilities with none monopolizing the whole culture at once.
It's not like DVD's in my collction are cheap, but I would rather they last a long time (make all those AOL discs corn based, I don't care, but keep my linux and video collections secure). I am rather suspicious about a corn-based DVD not being prone to being eaten by a bug or prone to growing somthing on it in say, a high humid evironment (an exessivlly rainy day, or somebody spilling something on it), say.
I saw a program on tv (Bill Moyars I think) where Virgin airlines founder Richard Branson explained that the reason for concords retirement was that british airways wanted to boost its business class service on its sub-sonic fleet. He also said that he wanted to take over concord and he thought that he could run it at a proffit, he even offered to keep the planes with the same marking as british airlines, so as to not embarras them by making a proffit, but they don't like that idea and are trying to block him. The other thing he mentioned, was that the billions it took to develop concord were paid equally by the UK and France and that british airways only paid a token "british pound" for each airliner, so, in effect, the public owned the planes and sould decide if virgin airlines could take over the service.
Like every other human pursuit, science requires support from the population, not from a small group of self appointed "old boys" network. Because we are at a time in human history where our civillization is using science to discover and harness the discoveries and technologies that the activity of doing science rewards us with. To do that, we need to open up the access to science and technologys through TV programs and the use of the internet. Back in the early 1970's, a lot of TV networks did not like the idea of general science information programs, but these programs turned out to be very popular. If we move to the present, examples of popularizing science and technolgy can be found on any TV network. It would, of course, be nice to have a hard science TV network that has more than "fluff" information on it. One thing that we must remember, is that it is natural human nature, that given a group of people (in this case, people involved in science), there will always be a sub-group that appoints itself the be the high-priests of that given diciplin....remember, 20 years ago (before personal computers), 99% of the population had no access to computers, you had to either have access to a computer at work, or through a college or university. So essentially, we had this high-priesthood that regulated and controlled access to this technology. You simply could not get access to CPU's, for example, assembly language was considered to be something that college graduates and university graduates were capable of understanding, fast forwared to today, and you find kids programming computers in assembly with no problem. This is why these special interests groups can not be allowed to dictate how science is done and how it is communicated to people. Besides, people who popularize science have allways come under attack by "purists", it makes you wonder if these purists don't want people to find out that science can be done by ordinary people. Another example is the cancellation of SETI research by the republicans back in the early 90's and the treatended black-listing of people who would dare to propose and SETI research, of course, now we have seri@home and lots of cool NASA and world-wide SETI science going on. Because science is a human activity, and depends upon supports from the population at-large, to keep it growing, we should "open the gates" to more access, not restrict it to what ammount to a "dark middle ages" closed community.
I run seti@home, my motherboard died too, I haven't bothered to test the cpu to make sure that it was the motherboard (it's too out of date anyway), and I'm a bit pissed off it died, but computer stuff nowadays is not built to last, even expensive gigabyte motherboards, so I just replaced it with a cheap all-in-one amd cpu motherboard and continue to run seti@home (anyway the new board is faster than the old one). I think that running seti@home is more important, and if the quality of expensive motherboards is that bad (assuming the motherboard), I will just buy the really cheap slightlly out of date computer hardware and continue on. Of coures, it would be nice to buy a really good system to run games on etc...but that will have to wait....just hope the cheap motherboard doesn't burp too much running seti..
This time, so as to stay in space for the long haul, we need to push nanotech research so as to develop cheap methods of getting and living in space (like the space elevator and cheaper launch vehicles). We will also need nanotech repair nanobots so we can live in the high-radiation eviroment of space and of course, the health advantages of nanotech to reverse things like muscle wating in zero G etc. Growing space stations and bases on the moon would be needed, plus the super AI automation needed to build/run/maintain all these space life support systems. We will probablly need all this technology here on earth soon, as we are polluting ourselves out of exisitence here and our present econimic systems here on earth cannot evolve fast enough and are incapable of adapting to including the natural world as part of the equation. The only way we can survive as a half-decent world is to restore most of the earths biospere (for example, I read on the bbc web site, that the world's oceans are getting more acidic due to C02 pollution, that's a really bad sign). Developing non-polluting nanotech industries, most improtant, we need to eliminate materialism (as a cultural icon and goal) through nanotech produced/recycled items (since all objets would be described as a cad file to be replicated) is a good start.
Create two sections, first, the peer-reviewed articles, and then, another section: Yet-to-be-peer-reviewed section....Your choice (the reader), as to what section you want to read first (or at all). That way, all articles have a chance to get read, under the circumstance that a ground breaking peice of work comes along that is so radically differnt and advanced that most scientists do no want to, or won't peer review it for whatever reason, then simply put it into the as-yet-to-be-reviewed box (section), so that the readers can review it themseves. after all, good ideas survive (eventually), and even really bad ones (who knows), may be that triggering insight for someone out there who can discover the real truth or even a new tangent to a really cool idea.
If PC's were used to translate voice to text (voice recognition)and at the recieving end, translate the text to voice (voice sythesis), wouldn't the resulting data stream be small text packets that could be easily encoded/decoded and/or hidden in creative ways plus the result would be smaller amount of data to send over the net? (thesound may not be the original speaker, but it may sound cool, and also, the computers could interact with the parties as the decoded text strings could now be recognized by computer programs and the computers could resond to you too, sort of like an application where you could talk to and get a response from search engines (or other computer entities (CYC?, like ask.com) on the net?
We need a sensible, low cost, open hardware archetecture that does not have the X86 Re-boot problem and other hardware legacy stuff to burden it down. Also, this platform should be easy to interface to/epand on, and also, easy to develop programs for using whatever language you choose. Perhaps this is a time to openly start developing a long-term solution (cpu/bus architectures) and make the whole design open and free of patent issues etc. Part of the problem with PC's and their ability to run linux can be traced back to all those years where MS and Intel dictated new PC buses and OS/hardware interfaces and future directions that then PC were to take both in hardware archetecture and software architecture. One of the reasons Intel and MS have been so successfull is that these companies locked people into these technologies and made them so complex that a lot of hardware/software porblems and issues needed generations of "experts" and "consultants" to solve peoples and business problems (if a computer OS was easy to use, then all these consultants/re-sellers of hardware and software services would have to find other lines of work. The fact that the current PC does not run Linux well is it has been constanlly pushed in it's gradual evolution (both chip & software) towwards supporting MS in its OS and all applications. MS has verified it by it's propoganda about open source being "not of capitalsm" and therefor unholy in their pargdime model of the universe of creators and us as consumers of the past and current and future IP technology and porduct lines.
The bar owners can call up your picture and information. so when you cause a fight, or don't pay your bill, then in a few min all the other bars in the system get an alert with your picture and name etc. so you then can't go down the road to a new bar and try the same thing again..(or in the future, go to any bar in the system without that bar knowing what problems you have caused at other bars before)
Just because you hate [insert person's name here] does not mean that everyone should use new thechnology to kill everyone else they don't like, after all, that is how every single tehcnology in the past, was used to develop "future tech" to kill people they did not like. For instance, guns, dynamite, nukes, lasers, you name it, we will pervert it into said killing machine. After all, all those terrorists did it, why not continue for the next 1000 years doing it again, and again...we will have nanotech soon so everyone can remove somebody they don't like real cheaply too!!
I remember the times before the current internet..(dark ages)..I did not have access to the pre-browser internet age, but to find out about technical stuff, I had to collect information by reading magazines and watching tv, sendign away for books reading Omni, scientific american, pop science, pop-electronics etc...pretty dark age, as it took me about 1 week to 6 months to locate interesting stuff, now it's a few minutes to find something, and I can download programs/applications in a few min again...(super-fast, no cost). In fact, the internet is fundementallyy changes the way the world embraces change and how people educate themselves, get new technology, produce new tech etc. When the age of nanotech arrives, then things will move 100 or more times faster....
Free markets are a buzword for private corporate GREED! The simple fact, is that when private companies control major (in this case, power) ifrastructures, they first, charge more to buy said product (power), they can artificially limit access to raise prices, they can cut back on funding maintanance, future improvements to the infrastructure (for future demands), which leads to running the system at 100% of capacity (more proned to massive crashes) and, of course, the holy grail is PROFFITS..These proffits can be generated by paying workers less, charging more for power, etc. Public power systems play by different rules, they don't have to make a proffit, they can re-invest money to keep the power grid up-to-date, they can invest in building extra capacity that can absorb unexpected power interruption condition that otherwise would lead to a total systems collapse. Nead I say more?
By all means, increase the number of lines on screen, make those tv's and movies we watch super clear..it's a good way to get the big technology push we need for better cpu's, faster/bigger memory chips and hard drives etc..ALSO..it wil show that we pay WAY-TO-MUCH for our $dollars/bits we get over those so-called broadband pipes we have into our homes (phone lines too). IF these future Ultra-high-performance displays are to be used (and they will). we will need a big increase in the performance and size (and likewise, decrease in costs) of all these new technologies. Nanotech technologies (like carbon nanotube displays) will help to make these super-big displays a reality, but we need to develop cheap fiber-to-the home AT cheap data-rates, not the rip-off rates crruently charged to broadband computer users by the big monopolies.
If these companies are using the "business user" ISP use cahrges as a benchmark, that is missleading because business users have no choice and cannot go any where else, just look at the rates for business phone charges anywhere in the world, it's like 5 to 10X the rate for a hmoe phone...it's the principal applied to busisness, charge massive amounts for this service since businesess are assumed to make money (as viewed by the phone company and ISP provider), but this won't work with the typical howe-owner, so they charge less but compare your home service with artifically-over-priced business service and use that as a justification for limiting and over-charging for "typical" home use patterns...
My ISP here in canada (shaw cable) says that their cap is about 1 or so gig of stuff a month!!, and they say that their ASDL competitor (tellus), is about the same (1gig) for a months downloading..whereas this article says that comcast is 1 or 2gigs cap a day!!...(another thisn, apparently, if you are a telus user and you exceed your 1 gig cap, you are dinged for a not-so-small bit of change for that overight). I think that I'm (and other people in canada are really getting ripped off...it's about time people really complained about this artifical inflated (out-dated telephone industry legacy )pricing for just sending bits through these high-speed fiber systems. With this sort of nonsence, what will happen in the future? ..will every ISP try to bring pricing down to what is what, $40/month for a gig of download...how are you supposed to download any big software package (borland, for instance or Eclipse say)..not to mention all those new-fangled video-on-demand stuff the ISP's and hollywood are trying to cram down our throats in the not too distant future. One of the most annoying thing about so-called broadband now is the obvious lack of what broadband was supposed to be..ie: good quality video from a server..just try to view a movie trailer (pick a format and screen size) and try to watch it without it burping and freezing...the present internet is a joke and these ISP's and their star-trek Jetson's future drivell and their 19th century telephone based pricing schemes are just too much.
The thing with humans, is that we social animals and usually need goals to get everybody moving to get things done, to really achieve these goals, we need a lot of basic research into nanotechnology to be able to "grow" the required space hardware, both ships here to establish orbiting space ship manufacturing and also ship manufacturing on the moon and moonbases, plus all the nanotech, so that we can live on the moon and mars without any health problems, plus, the fact that any sufficiently advanced memdical nano could also be used for stopping and reversing the aging process in cells here on earth, not to mention, increasing brain power, good looks etc..it's important for the US to start on this, or be left behind as there are a lot of other countries out there who also want to get established in space, of course, if you diidn't want to compete and waste $ duclipcating space research/manuf resources, you could work with other countries that want to get to the moon and mars by combining all these seperate space efforts..also, with a big project like this, it will send a message to young people around the world that the west is not really that bad and goals for humanity are really productive and it's better than blowing each other up over stupid issues..
What we see here is the addiction to a funding agency (the military)...this is typical of societies that have developed large militaries...before, it was the Britan (before WWI) that was the biggest military, now, due to history, it's the US's turn...in the distant future, it's going to be China's turn. The trouble with this situation, is that, sure, you now have this giant funding machine, (given a given superpower (this case, the US), the funding machine in question (military), is the biggest in this given country, it drains all the funding resources into itself (like a black hole), it therefore pervades all thinking as it is the biggest and therefore, the correct way of thinking and funding all new technologies..this is dangerous in the long run because it promotes a military view of the world: all funding goes through the military/ industrial complex, it is the only source of decent funding for future hi-tech, most important, big militaries determin your politics (IE: Goerge Bush-lets invade everybody thinking to sove all problems). The trouble with this, is many, first all other countries do the same (arms race to oblivion), because wepons get bigger and scarier (real bakc holes, super AI, genetics gone wild), it drains funding for real science and commercial developemnt.. this is the most important, as countries that develop normal science and commercial technology will win in the long run as most lasting and productive science and products manufacturing come form the commercial sector (whitness the current and future growth of far east manufacturing).. it has been pointed out before by historians that big military states fail because, they can't compeat commercially, the big military ssytems don't make money, they burn up money, cost money to maintain and, most important, they produce generations of scientists, engineers that can't develope/manufature good comercial items on-time and under budget because they came form this very inefficient military/industrial culture, it happened after the last big military/industrial spending spree in the 80's, it looks like it is starting over again in a new cycle.
Jee, I don't know...(forests on fire, really hot europe, less fish etc..), I think that the eviromental collapse is just now starting to show itself....I guess it's time to stop financing the military and wars (lets see, 6 billion/month for afghanistan and iraq..), lets start by taking THAT money and investing in a massive world-wide nanotechnology "manhattan style" R&D fest to develop all the less-polluting and Enviro-recycling/regenerating technologies we really need right now (actually: yesterday)..Imagine a future where there are no Bill Gates creating endless useless money making technologes, but where nanotech fixes the eviroment, stops aging, where nerds can do their own nanotech research, people download plans for the latest nano-manufactured item (if you don't like the old item, don't throw it out, reclycle it into the next new item). We seriously need this as human history is an experiment in evolving civilization, right now, we have evolved capitalism to it's max, the system now is reducing the middle-class to the lower-class and just the rich, funny thing, if people make no money, they don't buy stuff...remember, we can't go back (ie: feudalism etc.), we mus go forward to a nanotech future where solar energy makes everything, nerds come up with cool ideas to drive this new economy...after all, it's not much different than today..farmers get free light to grow plants, fishermen get ocean-made fish, the biospere supports farms (okay, so the original farmers got the land for free, any other land since then costs money)....The thing is, we need to probably invest 100 billion/year quickly to get a crash program going..after all, the 4 billion invested during WWII was for a 3-4 year program to develop the bomb, that investment and massive R&D pushed nuclear technology ahead 36 years into the future in a space of 4 years, we need to do the same today, except now you get all the industrialized countries to contribute resources/manpower, in a few years you can bring in lots more people in developing countries (remember, internet is everywhere now..). Right now it's expensive to do nanotech, but soon, once we develop small nanotech labs, we could send them all over the world...remember, there are 100's of milions of nerds out there waiting to create/invent/disover something new...perhaps it's the next solution to a problem we need soved..
If we run the clock ahead to the future (20 to 50 years), we may find a world where a lot of robotics and microscopic nanobots are both grown (using nanotech), and employed everywhere, so that we are overrun by a sea of robots that do and make most items...probablly by then, however, we will also have the capability to boost everybody's intelligence to any level...then we may find that the more ruthless among us, use this new capability to try to dominate everyone else, or, we may find that since everyone is now about the same capabilities, a sort of deadlock now exists, since nobody can be an "eliteist" as everybody can now be as smart as everyone else...so we don't need this elitest culture we now have...