Scientists claimed to have discovered a huge gas giant beyond Pluto, based on gravitational influences observed on the outer planets in our system, but it's an idea that has grown out of favour, so to speak... basically, there are 9 planets and any number of comets and asteroids. You have to remember that there WAS a planet between Mars and Jupiter, but it was shattered billions of years ago, either by a huge cometary impact or by gravitational stresses from Jupiter. --
Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
But that's like saying, "If our solar system contained life, you'd see evidence of that everywhere, from one planet to another. Because we don't, that proves there's no life here." Mars may or may not be a dead planet, but it's certainly not a healthy planet, at least by our standards.
However, you said "If Mars had any life at all don't you think that life would propagate around the planet filling every possible nick and cranny that is habitable just like earth?" Yes, that's how life works. It doesn't just spread out over everything, in every possible set of conditions. If the conditions are not right to support it, life will -- get this -- not survive there. Getting to the point, if Mars contains life, it will almost certainly be bacterial, anerobic, or possibly silicon-based, though we have no idea whether or not the former is even possible. Moreover, it will not exist on the dry, barren surface of Mars. Like you say, it will exist in the nooks and crannies below ground.
--
Oh, I'm not going to argue that the internet SHOULD be structured based along organization class and physical location, but the time to do that was 5 years ago. It's simply not feasible now. Too many companies hold too much power now. If ICANN told Microsoft they were now microsoft.com.us, I can't honestly see how that could possibly work out well for ICANN at all.
I think we can all agree that the current.com,.org and.net model is total crap. Commercial sites use.org, nonprofit organizations use.com and nobody knows.net from anything else. My ISP is.on.ca -- Great, it's in Ontario, but what else can we tell about it from that?
My point is, it's too late to structure the net the way it should be. It already has become anarchy. Deregulization of TLD naming conventions will not make the net any more confusing, but it will end the trademark dispute once and for all. No company could possibly buy every single combination. The only factor to consider here is if I want to buy, (yes, buy. This register-for-two-years-and-then-pay-us-again plan needs to be abolished as well) say, microsoft.hi. MS obviously wouldn't be pleased with someone owning a domain containing their name. I really wish the governments of major internet powers:-) could arrange some sort of deal whereby legislation was passed to declare that domain names are not subject to copyrights. A business name could be Amazon.com, but they have no hold over the domain name.
There, that's about it for me... -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
me recalls the 'joy' of having one lot of useful stuff on a zx81, another lot on a BBC B, more on a PET, and more on an Apple ][. Communication? forget it. Print it out (onto the right printer for the 'puter in question), and then type it into the other machine. If you were lucky. Even after x86 started to take over, ever try to get WordStar to talk to 123?
Now there may have been a million better ways to get to where we are today, but no-one ever adopted any of them until it was too late. God preserve us from ever being in that situation again. It was not the Golden Age, it was hellish.
Geez, you're right! If the USDoJ breaks up Microsoft, all is lost! Sure, it would be different if we were using technology more advanced than that of 20 years ago, or if we had somehow come up with "standards" or "cross-platform interoperability". I know that whenever I try to copy a file from my Windows machine to my Linux system, I have to first print it out and then retype it on the other. Man, this is going to be HELL! -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
Well, there was an astroid hit 65 million years ago on the coast of what is now Mexico's Yucatan penninsula, that we can be sure of. There's a huge crater there. A 65 million year old crater.
As for the mass extinction 230 million years ago, that, too, has been proven to have been caused primarily by an asteroid impact. There are 5 huge craters in the Northern hemisphere that, when you account for continental drift, line up perfectly, indicating that a large asteroid broke up either by an older collision in space, or upon colliding with our atmosphere.
However, yes, you're correct when you state that the dinosaurs appear to have been on the decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period. It's possible that they were headed for a new evolutionary jump prior to the asteroid impact.
Again, as with the Permian/Turassic extinction, the conditions were already set for a global mass extinction. The fact that an asteroid impacted the earth was purely coincidental. The fact that the two largest mass extinctions have coincided with asteroid impacts doesn't necessarily indicate that they were the sole causes. Both periods were undergoing climactic changes, partially because of continental drift, partially because of the age of the planet. Similar events have happened in the last 10,000 years, with humanity's knack for killing things, as well as during the recent (geologically speaking) ice ages and during the Devonian period. Had a catalyst such as an asteroid impact occurred during any one of those periods, it's likely that much of the plant life would have died out, resulting in the collapse of the food chain, again, leaving only the smaller animals to survive. It wouldn't have happened immediately, but over a period of possibly hundreds of years. -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
Okay, let's cover some basics: Birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs in the mid-Jurassic period. However, Archaeopteryx was an example of parallel evolution, where species progress along the same course, despite the fact that others have progressed similarly. Species of what could be considered "modern birds" were already well established by the time Archeopteryx arrived on the scene. It's almost certainly the case that all current species of birds share a common avian ancestor, but it was probably not Archeopteryx. Now, it IS possible, albeit unlikely, that some of today's birds are the decendants of Archeopteryx, while others are the decendants of the other, more advanced bird species at the time. Moving on to this news story, however, this is not old news. Although the warm blooded/cold blooded debate has raged on for decades, this discovery of a more advanced, four-chambered heart, similar to that of mammals, certainly gives the warm blooded argument more credibility. -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
Okay, I'm just going to have to assume that you're a troll. If you're not, you're an idiot for not noticing that David Hyde Pierce and Kelsey Grammar both did voices for characters that were an obvious parody of their characters on Frasier, as was the "subliminal message", as you call it. -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
I'd just like to say that yes, this has been needed for a very long time. This happens more often than not amongst the Quake community in particular. I'm thinking of the Quake 1 mod Quake Rally here. When Quake 2 was released, the project leaders put it on hold and eventually abandoned it. It was a good mod, but it would have been far better had it been completed. As it is, when a group of people contacted the authors with the intention of restarting development, they were informed that the original source had been lost in a hard drive failiure. Now, had the UFO program been around back then, there's a very good chance that Quake Rally would have been completed.
As for your questions, Well, I can't answer your first one, but the second two I think I can field.
If the original author wants back in, but the current maintainer isn't really into that, what's to stop them from simply starting a parallel project, based on the original source?
According to the GPL, once a project is open-sourced, people have the right to use the source to build upon. However, they do not have the right to make that closed-source. They have to provide the source to anyone who wants it.
Amen. I see no reason whatsoever why this should not and COULD not be done. Sure, it couldn't happen overnight, but it could happen very quickly. Even NSI has no reason to oppose this. (Weird, eh?) -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
... your C server would be a lot busier (serving.com) than your Z server. Yes, and? I think you're assuming that all 36 servers would be the exact same and have the same bandwidth capacity. That wouldn't be a terribly great idea, because of the problems you cited. So, what do you do? How about making the busier servers faster and increasing their capacity?:-) -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
Correct, nobody DOES care about the guidelines. Which is why I'd like to bring up my proposal, which is the complete deregulation of TLDs. Keep the current system so that.edu,.gov,.mil and the country codes remain avaliable only to the organizations they were designed for, but allow everyone else to register anything as a TLD. I could own chameleon.chameleon, whereas someone else could own linux.chameleon. The only possible restriction would be the length of the TLD, but that's a minor issue. I don't see any reason why this proposal couldn't go ahead immediately. -- Chris Dunham http://www.chamdex.com
Amen. I personally have no problem with anything that Jon Katz has written, yet some people get all hot and bothered over the simple fact that he didn't write Linux from scratch! Put simply, if you don't like what he has to say, you don't have to read it.
I disagree. For instance, I live in Canada, yet my website is hosted in Texas. We should be moving away from the international TLDs, at least in my opinion. I've been talking about more top-level domain names on Slashdot for months. Once again, here's my plan: Rather than simply adding a handful of new TLDs, allow the creation of an unlimited number of them. Before, where you might have had apple.com, you could also have apple.apple. The catch is, you only register the rights to the SECOND-level name, allowing others to have apple.linux or linux.apple. What do others think about this? The only feedback I've ever recieved about my thoughts for domain name reform basically consisted of a good deal of anti-United Nations ranting.:-)
Thank you, you took the words right out of my mouth. The whole "I _LIKE_ being ignorant" mindset is increasingly popular with the advent of computers. I find, however, that just claiming to not be able to give as precise an answer as the FAQ/man page is often enough.
Personally, though, there shouldn't be any need for extensive documentation. There is no reason a powerful operating system should not be able to be easy to use.
I personally haven't seen the movie yet, although I do plan to. It would be fairly easy for them to put a "Director's Cut" track on DVD, though. I personally don't care whether or not they actually have the more illicit content; if it doesn't add that much to the film, there's no real reason to have it, IMO.
I've been thinking for years how cool it'd be to create a global database containing pretty much everything that's ever been created, especially things like this. Like Geocities, only organized.
No, Asimov wrote the three laws when it was assumed that robots would one day soon be able to be constructed easily and cheaply, but those robots would not possess the information required to function. The Three Laws of Robotics were simply a way to ensure that they didn't try to kill everyone, particularly when the world was starting to see technology as a very real threat.
I had a crappy Compaq that needed a CD drive. The mounting rails haven't been made since 1950:-) so I just wedged a few floppy drives between it and the top of the case. -- Chris Dunham http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
Virtually ALL game designers have.plan files. As far as I know, it's the only place they're used still.:-) Check out http://finger.planetquake.com/ for PlanetQuake's game designer.plan file browser. -- Chris Dunham http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
That's simple. Just because Mozilla is open source now doesn't mean it will be open source later. If I was a KDE developer, I would want to rely on as few codebases as possible. -- Chris Dunham http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
Slashdot Mirror
Scientists claimed to have discovered a huge gas giant beyond Pluto, based on gravitational influences observed on the outer planets in our system, but it's an idea that has grown out of favour, so to speak... basically, there are 9 planets and any number of comets and asteroids. You have to remember that there WAS a planet between Mars and Jupiter, but it was shattered billions of years ago, either by a huge cometary impact or by gravitational stresses from Jupiter.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
But that's like saying, "If our solar system contained life, you'd see evidence of that everywhere, from one planet to another. Because we don't, that proves there's no life here." Mars may or may not be a dead planet, but it's certainly not a healthy planet, at least by our standards.
However, you said "If Mars had any life at all don't you think that life would propagate around the planet filling every possible nick and cranny that is habitable just like earth?" Yes, that's how life works. It doesn't just spread out over everything, in every possible set of conditions. If the conditions are not right to support it, life will -- get this -- not survive there. Getting to the point, if Mars contains life, it will almost certainly be bacterial, anerobic, or possibly silicon-based, though we have no idea whether or not the former is even possible. Moreover, it will not exist on the dry, barren surface of Mars. Like you say, it will exist in the nooks and crannies below ground.
--
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
"This is UNIX!"
...and then the usher kicked me out of the theatre.
"No it's not."
"I know UNIX!"
"No, you don't."
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
I think we can all agree that the current .com, .org and .net model is total crap. Commercial sites use .org, nonprofit organizations use .com and nobody knows .net from anything else. My ISP is .on.ca -- Great, it's in Ontario, but what else can we tell about it from that?
My point is, it's too late to structure the net the way it should be. It already has become anarchy. Deregulization of TLD naming conventions will not make the net any more confusing, but it will end the trademark dispute once and for all. No company could possibly buy every single combination. The only factor to consider here is if I want to buy, (yes, buy. This register-for-two-years-and-then-pay-us-again plan needs to be abolished as well) say, microsoft.hi. MS obviously wouldn't be pleased with someone owning a domain containing their name. I really wish the governments of major internet powers :-) could arrange some sort of deal whereby legislation was passed to declare that domain names are not subject to copyrights. A business name could be Amazon.com, but they have no hold over the domain name.
There, that's about it for me...
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Now there may have been a million better ways to get to where we are today, but no-one ever adopted any of them until it was too late. God preserve us from ever being in that situation again. It was not the Golden Age, it was hellish.
Geez, you're right! If the USDoJ breaks up Microsoft, all is lost! Sure, it would be different if we were using technology more advanced than that of 20 years ago, or if we had somehow come up with "standards" or "cross-platform interoperability". I know that whenever I try to copy a file from my Windows machine to my Linux system, I have to first print it out and then retype it on the other. Man, this is going to be HELL!
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
As for the mass extinction 230 million years ago, that, too, has been proven to have been caused primarily by an asteroid impact. There are 5 huge craters in the Northern hemisphere that, when you account for continental drift, line up perfectly, indicating that a large asteroid broke up either by an older collision in space, or upon colliding with our atmosphere.
However, yes, you're correct when you state that the dinosaurs appear to have been on the decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period. It's possible that they were headed for a new evolutionary jump prior to the asteroid impact.
Again, as with the Permian/Turassic extinction, the conditions were already set for a global mass extinction. The fact that an asteroid impacted the earth was purely coincidental. The fact that the two largest mass extinctions have coincided with asteroid impacts doesn't necessarily indicate that they were the sole causes. Both periods were undergoing climactic changes, partially because of continental drift, partially because of the age of the planet. Similar events have happened in the last 10,000 years, with humanity's knack for killing things, as well as during the recent (geologically speaking) ice ages and during the Devonian period. Had a catalyst such as an asteroid impact occurred during any one of those periods, it's likely that much of the plant life would have died out, resulting in the collapse of the food chain, again, leaving only the smaller animals to survive. It wouldn't have happened immediately, but over a period of possibly hundreds of years.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Okay, let's cover some basics: Birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs in the mid-Jurassic period. However, Archaeopteryx was an example of parallel evolution, where species progress along the same course, despite the fact that others have progressed similarly. Species of what could be considered "modern birds" were already well established by the time Archeopteryx arrived on the scene. It's almost certainly the case that all current species of birds share a common avian ancestor, but it was probably not Archeopteryx. Now, it IS possible, albeit unlikely, that some of today's birds are the decendants of Archeopteryx, while others are the decendants of the other, more advanced bird species at the time. Moving on to this news story, however, this is not old news. Although the warm blooded/cold blooded debate has raged on for decades, this discovery of a more advanced, four-chambered heart, similar to that of mammals, certainly gives the warm blooded argument more credibility.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Okay, I'm just going to have to assume that you're a troll. If you're not, you're an idiot for not noticing that David Hyde Pierce and Kelsey Grammar both did voices for characters that were an obvious parody of their characters on Frasier, as was the "subliminal message", as you call it.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
As for your questions, Well, I can't answer your first one, but the second two I think I can field.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Amen. I see no reason whatsoever why this should not and COULD not be done. Sure, it couldn't happen overnight, but it could happen very quickly. Even NSI has no reason to oppose this. (Weird, eh?)
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
... your C server would be a lot busier (serving .com) than your Z server. :-)
Yes, and? I think you're assuming that all 36 servers would be the exact same and have the same bandwidth capacity. That wouldn't be a terribly great idea, because of the problems you cited. So, what do you do? How about making the busier servers faster and increasing their capacity?
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Correct, nobody DOES care about the guidelines. Which is why I'd like to bring up my proposal, which is the complete deregulation of TLDs. Keep the current system so that .edu, .gov, .mil and the country codes remain avaliable only to the organizations they were designed for, but allow everyone else to register anything as a TLD. I could own chameleon.chameleon, whereas someone else could own linux.chameleon. The only possible restriction would be the length of the TLD, but that's a minor issue. I don't see any reason why this proposal couldn't go ahead immediately.
-- Chris Dunham
http://www.chamdex.com
Amen. I personally have no problem with anything that Jon Katz has written, yet some people get all hot and bothered over the simple fact that he didn't write Linux from scratch! Put simply, if you don't like what he has to say, you don't have to read it.
I disagree. For instance, I live in Canada, yet my website is hosted in Texas. We should be moving away from the international TLDs, at least in my opinion. :-)
I've been talking about more top-level domain names on Slashdot for months. Once again, here's my plan:
Rather than simply adding a handful of new TLDs, allow the creation of an unlimited number of them. Before, where you might have had apple.com, you could also have apple.apple. The catch is, you only register the rights to the SECOND-level name, allowing others to have apple.linux or linux.apple.
What do others think about this? The only feedback I've ever recieved about my thoughts for domain name reform basically consisted of a good deal of anti-United Nations ranting.
Personally, though, there shouldn't be any need for extensive documentation. There is no reason a powerful operating system should not be able to be easy to use.
I personally haven't seen the movie yet, although I do plan to. It would be fairly easy for them to put a "Director's Cut" track on DVD, though. I personally don't care whether or not they actually have the more illicit content; if it doesn't add that much to the film, there's no real reason to have it, IMO.
I've been thinking for years how cool it'd be to create a global database containing pretty much everything that's ever been created, especially things like this. Like Geocities, only organized.
I won't mirror it, but I will distribute it locally. :-)
Wouldn't it be so much easier if you were John Carmack? :-) ..not to mention the moderator points! Wow! :-)
No, Asimov wrote the three laws when it was assumed that robots would one day soon be able to be constructed easily and cheaply, but those robots would not possess the information required to function. The Three Laws of Robotics were simply a way to ensure that they didn't try to kill everyone, particularly when the world was starting to see technology as a very real threat.
Uhm, who moderated this as 'funny'? LC's telling the truth.
--
Chris Dunham
http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
I had a crappy Compaq that needed a CD drive. The mounting rails haven't been made since 1950 :-) so I just wedged a few floppy drives between it and the top of the case.
--
Chris Dunham
http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
Virtually ALL game designers have .plan files. As far as I know, it's the only place they're used still. :-) .plan file browser.
Check out http://finger.planetquake.com/ for PlanetQuake's game designer
--
Chris Dunham
http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
"Why reinvent the wheel?" :-)
Because Windows users are still walking around on their legs.
--
Chris Dunham
http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html
That's simple. Just because Mozilla is open source now doesn't mean it will be open source later. If I was a KDE developer, I would want to rely on as few codebases as possible.
--
Chris Dunham
http://www.tetrion.com/~chameleo/index.html