Remember, it's not a matter of getting NASA moving again. It's a matter of getting the Congress and the President moving again. If NASA had the bucks, they'd be ecstatic to build and operate a Mars manned mission! But they get very, very few bucks these days, and that's largely thanks to the Congress (and the President to a lesser extent, though I think the Executive has conditioned itself to diminishing returns from Congress since the end of the Space Race and just doesn't bother asking for much).
Congress needs to catch the space religion. A Chinese astronaut on the moon would be the best way to do that.
Nothing against the Chinese of course, just writing this from my USA standpoint. I wish them the best of luck, and the more countries exploring space, the better.
Its nothing short of American FUD I'm afraid - The council of Europe cannot make any laws in member states at all, and I find it hard to believe that any of the countries will make a law of this...
But the amrican media strikes once again with an absolutely silly story!
(Sorry sensible americans - This is in no way an attempt to troll - but I just feel a bit aggrevated when american media starts to write about silly laws in europe with your current amount of lawyers:))
Yeah, and we had assurances from Belgium that we had nothing to worry about when their parliament passed their ridiculous universal prosecution law. And what's it been used to do since? To file harrassing court proceedings against US government officials. I'm afraid that there's little reason to trust the Europeans not to try to extend this outside of their own jurisdiction.
I disagree with you, and I am telling you so. That is what this law would allow everyone to do. If it were face to face, or a phone call, our discussion would be private. But if you go on the Internet, and make it public, then I should (and will) have the right to reply in public, in the same way (so that it is intelligible). I don't see your point - do you want to say bad things about people, and for them to have no right to rebutt your comments? What is distressing about giving people freedom to give thier point of view?
What's distressing? I'm distressed because they've always had their point of view in the first place and thus there is no reason for this law. Nothing is preventing you from starting your own web page or blog to make your point of view known. You have exactly as much freedom of speech to make your views known as the fellow who said something unkind about you on the Internet.
That's what leaves me scratching my head - do you really think that you're being deprived of your freedom of speech just because you can't reply on his own venue? If anyone's freedom of speech is being curtailed, it's the person making the original statement - now he is no longer to free to say what he pleases, he is compelled by law with the armed might of the state backing it up to include another's remarks in his own.
So typisch Europaisch...
I disagree. Speech without response is not speech. There is a reason why there are laws that restrict speech; you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You cannot make baseless claims against another (it's called libel or slander or somesuch;)).
You've got your examples all wrong. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire is against the law not because people aren't allowed to respond (which they could) but because given the special circumstances such an act could lead to a panic and thus injuries or death.
Similarly, slander and libel have nothing to do with whether someone is allowed to reply to the slanderous or libelous comments. They are untrue claims made with malicious intent to destroy another person's reputation. Having a right of reply would mean nothing - if I print a false story about you saying you are a child molester, your little letter of reply "No I'm not" is irrelevant - the damage to your reputation is done. That's why these acts are crimes and are properly dealt with in court.
These laws I think are just further examples of the sort of meaningless, bien-pensant crap that is peddled in European politics today: they don't really do anything of value, they make the leftist elite feel good about themselves, and above all, they provide more fodder for the gargantuan bureaucracy who gets to pick up the mission to make sure that everyone complies with it.
By the way, the same thing happened in the US when television was introduced. In fact, if you look at geographic location, you'll see that crime went up in each as soon as television became available. So like, TV would come online in New York, and crime would go up. TV would become available in California, and crime would go up, etc. Although I'm sure that what happened in Bhutan was much worse given the quality of the programming today compared to what was played in the US in the 1940s and 50s.
Do you have anything to back that up? Because that sounds very hokey to me. The great leaps in crime in US society didn't occur until the mid- to late 60s, and TV had been around for quite some time by then.
And, of course, "well, crime went up after TVs went in" just doesn't cut the analytical mustard. Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc fallacy.
Oh, and by the way, I do play some FPS games, but I am not going to claim that because I don't want those games to have an effect on me, that they don't. The possibility does exist.
I see... so, have you been feeling inexplicable urges to have a shooting spree at your school/church/ place of work?
As a former employee, I can tell you that they build a LOT of other things than ICBMs and the like. Just about all of the launch systems, spacecraft (from little the first little Mars Rover to the Space Shuttle), C4I systems, jet aircraft, even automated highway toll collecting systems. LM is a vast company.
I share your puzzlement over US cell phone carriers to an extent, but your statement about how cell phone usage hasn't changed culture in the US as it supposedly has in Europe puzzles me. Having lived significant amounts of time in both places (US and Europe, Germany to be precise, and there until the end of 2002), I found cell phone usage in the US population, at least where I live, to be about the same as in Germany. And there as here, a lot of people I know are doing away with landline phones at their residences entirely and relying solely on cell phones.
So maybe you can point out to me what cultural changes there are on your side of the lake that I've missed?
I think BT is just starting to hit it's stride.
I do, too. I chalked this up to the absurdly short attention span in the media these days... if a promising technology that got hyped a few times in a tech magazine somewhere doesn't alter the face of telecommunications as we know it in 3 months, it's declared "dead." It's ridiculous, really. BT has definite uses and purposes that are not efficiently met by other technologies, and to declare it a failure after so short a time is rubbish.
Yes, it would be a US version of the G36.
I don't know what happened to the G11. IIRC, the weapon was slated to be fielded by the German military just before Reunification, but that event changed priorities and effectively killed off the program. The costs of deploying such a weapon would be considerable, especially considering the unique and hard to manufacture ammunition, so without a major adopter, it probably died on the vine.
It's too bad, as from all accounts it was a superlative weapon. I am sure the technologies created in the G11 program will find their way into future weapons.
You never had a jam firing with an M16? There's no way. There's no way, especially when you consider the condition of the rifles that are used in boot camp/basic training/whatever you want to call it.
Was basic training the only time you fired an M16? There's your problem right there... the condition of rifles in Basic Training units is complete crap, they're used a zillion times by a zillion different soldiers who rotate in, use them, beat them up, then they move on to other units. You can't compare the weapons in basic with the stuff you get issued when you arrive at your unit.
When I went to basic (1987), we still old M16A1 rifles and wore steel pot helmets, though the Army had since moved on to M16A2 and Kevlar helmets.
Bullshit. THe OICW is many times more complex, and includes a shortbarrelled HK G96 that itself would be comparably expensive to the M16.
On the other hand, the army recently put together a totally different development program for a lightweight M4 replacement that will probably be better than the M16, and around the same cost.
Actually, that's the G36.
The M4 replacement is IIRC the M8 lightweight combat rifle, and it is actually the rifle from the XM29 without the 20mm cannon and fancy sights and rangefinder.
The script said this wouldn't happen, so the referees allowed the game to continue as if the landing was successful.
That's probably not quite how the matter was dealt with.
When the military, or at least the US military, does one of these exercises, there is a list of training objectives for that exercise that participating units need to meet. During the flow of the exercise, if the BLUFOR (training units) gets creamed unexpectedly by the OPFOR (bad guys) or else something else goes badly, it is noted, and then the exercise moves on so that the units can train the other tasks they have to do. At the end of the exercise, an After-Action Review (AAR) is conducted, where all flaws, failures and mistakes come out in the wash, often brutally so. At the end of all this, the units are sent home with a package of training objectives for the coming year or 6 months, with recommendations on what to correct and what to reinforce.
In all the wargames I've participated in, I can't remember "winning" a single one. They are designed specifically so that a BLUFOR win is very rare, because you learn more by losing.
I have no idea what exercise you are referring to, but in US-run exercises that's how it goes.
Go back and read his statement again, this time for comprehension. The average Western infantry soldier today carries loads between 75-120 lbs. One of Objective Force Warrior's goals is to reduce the load to 50 lbs.
Right now our "overweight grunts" aren't having too much trouble with 12 year old with AK-47's, so I'm not exactly sure what your point is.
That's a good point - high-tech isn't worth it on the battlefield in the long run. Arm the troops with spears, damn the technology and full speed ahead!
Which is exactly the problem: the M16 wasn't designed to be used in battlefield conditions. A little sand here, or lack of lube there, and you've got a glorified bayonet.
The M16 is a classic example of textbook engineering - it is a very well designed, very accurate rifle. But unlike the soviet and chinese counterparts, it has no tolerance for dirt; without proper lubrication, it jams. Compound this with the fact that the Army doesn't issue field cleaning kits, and that CLP (lube) is distributed at the platoon level (if at all), and you've got a recipe for battlefield failure. Granted, the AK47 and Kalishnikov rifles aren't accurate past 400 meters, but the average soldier couldn't hit anything beyond 150 meters with any appreciable accuracy anyway. Contrary to popular belief, firefights don't consist of a bunch of soldiers picking off the enemy from 1000 meters. In short, having a reliable, albeit inaccurate weapon is much more useful than having an accurate weapon that jams at the wrong time.
You are way overstating the case. Yes, the original marks of the M16 in the Vietnam era had a lot of problems, but those were worked out in the A1 and especially A2 versions of the rifle. You need to clean and lubricate your weapon but this is true of all weapons. The current M16 is no different than most other modern battle rifles in reliability. A military that doesn't train its troops to maintain their equipment is a poor military and probably has other problems beyond dirty weapons.
I don't know what platoons you were in, but in the units I was in, every soldier got a little bottle of CLP, and as much of that and patches as he could ask for. Soldiers who use magazines as hammers need to be corrected of that habit, maybe some extra duty or a statement of charges will do the trick. Never use a tool for something other than what it was intended to do.
The Palms are a bit low on storage but other PDAs can store a lot more. I've got two novels on my PPC at the moment, Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear and Dreamcatcher by Stephen King and they are 442kb and 639kb respectively. I could carry about 10 or so in the built-in storage without crowding out other data I need, but if I would need to carry more, I could always put them on an SD media storage chip or CF card. They're cheap these days; a 64 MB SD chip is about $30. So that's about 30 novels right there.
I think the same thing as you about the dedicated reader devices, but I've started using the reader software that comes with my Pocket PC and now I actually prefer that to reading from a paperback. It's convenient since I usually have the thing with me most places I go, it's smaller than a paperback and you don't have to turn pages or worry about your bookmark falling out. I can navigate through the book pretty quickly with the directional pad, even faster than turning a page physically. And I can carry quite a few books with me, as most novels clock in at about 500 - 700 kb.
I think it's a big waste to invest in a dedicated reader (that costs significantly more than my Pocket PC btw), but having that functionality in my PPC is just great.
On the original subject, I think a universal format would be a good idea. Between Pocket PC and Palm, there are many PDA users and if publishers could reach a significant fraction of them, they'd probably get a good return on investment with eBooks. Having multiple formats (Palm, MS Reader and Adobe, probably more that I don't know of) complicates this though. I am a little frustrated since I've come across books I'd like to purchase but are for a different formate than what I use (and I don't want to run multiple eBook readers on my PPC, for various reasons). Having a universal format would be great.
When a student complains to the faculty about one member in particular, it can have far-reaching consquences. When the student writes a cogent letter to the dean of the school, it can make a big difference. But do you want to revoke tenure for someone who isn't teaching well? No, you want him to teach better. Ignoring his students? Make him pay attention. Violating some student-faculty handbook rue? Make him honor it
Ok, how? How do you make him pay attention if he doesn't want to? How do make him honor rules if he doesn't want to? What far-reaching consequences are there? What big differences are made?
Some guys, like Urban Terror, allow some players to spectate, or to spectate after they die, and this can allow one to look over someone's shoulder and determine, to a pretty good accuracy, if their play seems skillfully good, or unreasonable. Wallhackers, for instance, are generally brutally obvious.
That is very useful, unfortunately this mechanism can also be used to the advantage of cheaters. If dead players spectating can talk to their team, they can observe enemy players' movements and report them to still living teammates. Some servers disable dead spectating for this reason.
Most online games I've played have been ruined by hackers
Yeah, I agree totally. They've really poisoned the well; it's such a common phenomenon that pretty much every game I've played in online in the last year or two there has been at least one accusation of cheating. Anyone who plays well or just has a good day becomes suspect, and it really sucks playing online in that sort of atmosphere.
The Internet has been a really depressing revelation on what people can be when they think no one's watching. From cheaters in online gaming to virus writers and crackers, all that anonymity hasn't yielded a very flattering portrait of people. And will in turn produce an internet in the future that is much more intensively monitored and controlled.
Well, this is beyond the means for your school, but I think there is a business opportunity for someone here in the offing.
The National Security Agency (NSA) instituted a program some years ago by which they decided to get some money and reuseability out of the obsolete pieces of equipment they were required to destroy (due to classification issues) rather than give to DRMO to be resold to the public.
The NSA has to destroy a lot of circuit boards and electronic devices like hard drives and they have to do so thoroughly. Many of these devices as we all know contain valuable precious and industrial metals like gold, platinum, and so forth. So, they built an industrial plant that could extract as much useful material as possible from the destroyed equipment, and they would resell that to the public for a profit. They also do this with the pulp that comes from the destruction of paper documents and such. What can't be reused is disposed of in accordance with environmental regulations.
This program has turned out to be so successful that the NSA actually turns a significant profit (to the tune of several million dollars a year) and sends this profit back into the Federal Treasury.
I am sure that this could become a viable business in the civilian world for some smart entrepreneurs out there.
I see. So the Nietzsche clown is a genius and the 2500-year old religion is nothing more than granola-types answering dumb questions? How can you put so much effort into one philosopher (and one book) yet not get the overriding thesis of that same philosopher/book?
Because that's probably all he's read.
Most Michigan businesses (and probably most government offices) use NAT or proxy servers for their internet connections. I believe a zealous prosecutor could interpret proxy servers as hiding the specifics of the computer that is making the requests for connections.
Yep. And "most government offices" includes Federal government, like say the Department of the Navy, for whom I'm contracting. We routinely use VPN and NAT; in fact we need VPN for personnel on travel to connect to our network and do certain mission essential tasks. I can only imagine the scene when some state AG and the ISP he's working for decides to take down the Navy.
You know that neither the legislators nor the AGs have any clue what VPNs are or what NAT is, which is why they agree to this crap in the first place. These lawmakers and lawyers are the typical sort of people who hardly know where to begin when turning on their PCs yet they are making laws governing technology they know nothing about. Telcos/ISPs just shove a proposal under their noses, tell them it'll be good for the state, and they sign and try to pass it.
I was thinking about this last night before bed and I thought, "Well, it'll get appealed and some judge will finally shoot the damn thing down once it comes out just how ignorant this legislation is," which I think will probably happen, but that is problematic in its own right. Legislatures firing off ill-considered laws only to have those laws thrown out in judicial review is a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common. The net result of this is that the democratic process is delegitimized thanks to incompetent legislators and people come to rely on unelected wise men to see that society still functions. I don't think that legislators take their jobs seriously anymore - they just try to see what the courts will let them get away with.
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Remember, it's not a matter of getting NASA moving again. It's a matter of getting the Congress and the President moving again. If NASA had the bucks, they'd be ecstatic to build and operate a Mars manned mission! But they get very, very few bucks these days, and that's largely thanks to the Congress (and the President to a lesser extent, though I think the Executive has conditioned itself to diminishing returns from Congress since the end of the Space Race and just doesn't bother asking for much).
Congress needs to catch the space religion. A Chinese astronaut on the moon would be the best way to do that.
Nothing against the Chinese of course, just writing this from my USA standpoint. I wish them the best of luck, and the more countries exploring space, the better.
Its nothing short of American FUD I'm afraid - The council of Europe cannot make any laws in member states at all, and I find it hard to believe that any of the countries will make a law of this... :))
But the amrican media strikes once again with an absolutely silly story!
(Sorry sensible americans - This is in no way an attempt to troll - but I just feel a bit aggrevated when american media starts to write about silly laws in europe with your current amount of lawyers
Yeah, and we had assurances from Belgium that we had nothing to worry about when their parliament passed their ridiculous universal prosecution law. And what's it been used to do since? To file harrassing court proceedings against US government officials. I'm afraid that there's little reason to trust the Europeans not to try to extend this outside of their own jurisdiction.
I disagree with you, and I am telling you so. That is what this law would allow everyone to do. If it were face to face, or a phone call, our discussion would be private. But if you go on the Internet, and make it public, then I should (and will) have the right to reply in public, in the same way (so that it is intelligible). I don't see your point - do you want to say bad things about people, and for them to have no right to rebutt your comments? What is distressing about giving people freedom to give thier point of view?
What's distressing? I'm distressed because they've always had their point of view in the first place and thus there is no reason for this law. Nothing is preventing you from starting your own web page or blog to make your point of view known. You have exactly as much freedom of speech to make your views known as the fellow who said something unkind about you on the Internet.
That's what leaves me scratching my head - do you really think that you're being deprived of your freedom of speech just because you can't reply on his own venue? If anyone's freedom of speech is being curtailed, it's the person making the original statement - now he is no longer to free to say what he pleases, he is compelled by law with the armed might of the state backing it up to include another's remarks in his own.
So typisch Europaisch...
I disagree. Speech without response is not speech. There is a reason why there are laws that restrict speech; you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You cannot make baseless claims against another (it's called libel or slander or somesuch ;)).
You've got your examples all wrong. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire is against the law not because people aren't allowed to respond (which they could) but because given the special circumstances such an act could lead to a panic and thus injuries or death.
Similarly, slander and libel have nothing to do with whether someone is allowed to reply to the slanderous or libelous comments. They are untrue claims made with malicious intent to destroy another person's reputation. Having a right of reply would mean nothing - if I print a false story about you saying you are a child molester, your little letter of reply "No I'm not" is irrelevant - the damage to your reputation is done. That's why these acts are crimes and are properly dealt with in court.
These laws I think are just further examples of the sort of meaningless, bien-pensant crap that is peddled in European politics today: they don't really do anything of value, they make the leftist elite feel good about themselves, and above all, they provide more fodder for the gargantuan bureaucracy who gets to pick up the mission to make sure that everyone complies with it.
By the way, the same thing happened in the US when television was introduced. In fact, if you look at geographic location, you'll see that crime went up in each as soon as television became available. So like, TV would come online in New York, and crime would go up. TV would become available in California, and crime would go up, etc. Although I'm sure that what happened in Bhutan was much worse given the quality of the programming today compared to what was played in the US in the 1940s and 50s.
Do you have anything to back that up? Because that sounds very hokey to me. The great leaps in crime in US society didn't occur until the mid- to late 60s, and TV had been around for quite some time by then.
And, of course, "well, crime went up after TVs went in" just doesn't cut the analytical mustard. Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc fallacy.
Oh, and by the way, I do play some FPS games, but I am not going to claim that because I don't want those games to have an effect on me, that they don't. The possibility does exist.
I see... so, have you been feeling inexplicable urges to have a shooting spree at your school/church/ place of work?
As a former employee, I can tell you that they build a LOT of other things than ICBMs and the like. Just about all of the launch systems, spacecraft (from little the first little Mars Rover to the Space Shuttle), C4I systems, jet aircraft, even automated highway toll collecting systems. LM is a vast company.
I share your puzzlement over US cell phone carriers to an extent, but your statement about how cell phone usage hasn't changed culture in the US as it supposedly has in Europe puzzles me. Having lived significant amounts of time in both places (US and Europe, Germany to be precise, and there until the end of 2002), I found cell phone usage in the US population, at least where I live, to be about the same as in Germany. And there as here, a lot of people I know are doing away with landline phones at their residences entirely and relying solely on cell phones.
So maybe you can point out to me what cultural changes there are on your side of the lake that I've missed?
I think BT is just starting to hit it's stride.
I do, too. I chalked this up to the absurdly short attention span in the media these days... if a promising technology that got hyped a few times in a tech magazine somewhere doesn't alter the face of telecommunications as we know it in 3 months, it's declared "dead." It's ridiculous, really. BT has definite uses and purposes that are not efficiently met by other technologies, and to declare it a failure after so short a time is rubbish.
Yes, it would be a US version of the G36.
I don't know what happened to the G11. IIRC, the weapon was slated to be fielded by the German military just before Reunification, but that event changed priorities and effectively killed off the program. The costs of deploying such a weapon would be considerable, especially considering the unique and hard to manufacture ammunition, so without a major adopter, it probably died on the vine.
It's too bad, as from all accounts it was a superlative weapon. I am sure the technologies created in the G11 program will find their way into future weapons.
You never had a jam firing with an M16? There's no way. There's no way, especially when you consider the condition of the rifles that are used in boot camp/basic training/whatever you want to call it.
Was basic training the only time you fired an M16? There's your problem right there... the condition of rifles in Basic Training units is complete crap, they're used a zillion times by a zillion different soldiers who rotate in, use them, beat them up, then they move on to other units. You can't compare the weapons in basic with the stuff you get issued when you arrive at your unit.
When I went to basic (1987), we still old M16A1 rifles and wore steel pot helmets, though the Army had since moved on to M16A2 and Kevlar helmets.
Bullshit. THe OICW is many times more complex, and includes a shortbarrelled HK G96 that itself would be comparably expensive to the M16. On the other hand, the army recently put together a totally different development program for a lightweight M4 replacement that will probably be better than the M16, and around the same cost.
Actually, that's the G36.
The M4 replacement is IIRC the M8 lightweight combat rifle, and it is actually the rifle from the XM29 without the 20mm cannon and fancy sights and rangefinder.
The script said this wouldn't happen, so the referees allowed the game to continue as if the landing was successful.
That's probably not quite how the matter was dealt with.
When the military, or at least the US military, does one of these exercises, there is a list of training objectives for that exercise that participating units need to meet. During the flow of the exercise, if the BLUFOR (training units) gets creamed unexpectedly by the OPFOR (bad guys) or else something else goes badly, it is noted, and then the exercise moves on so that the units can train the other tasks they have to do. At the end of the exercise, an After-Action Review (AAR) is conducted, where all flaws, failures and mistakes come out in the wash, often brutally so. At the end of all this, the units are sent home with a package of training objectives for the coming year or 6 months, with recommendations on what to correct and what to reinforce.
In all the wargames I've participated in, I can't remember "winning" a single one. They are designed specifically so that a BLUFOR win is very rare, because you learn more by losing.
I have no idea what exercise you are referring to, but in US-run exercises that's how it goes.
Go back and read his statement again, this time for comprehension. The average Western infantry soldier today carries loads between 75-120 lbs. One of Objective Force Warrior's goals is to reduce the load to 50 lbs.
Right now our "overweight grunts" aren't having too much trouble with 12 year old with AK-47's, so I'm not exactly sure what your point is.
That's a good point - high-tech isn't worth it on the battlefield in the long run. Arm the troops with spears, damn the technology and full speed ahead!
Which is exactly the problem: the M16 wasn't designed to be used in battlefield conditions. A little sand here, or lack of lube there, and you've got a glorified bayonet. The M16 is a classic example of textbook engineering - it is a very well designed, very accurate rifle. But unlike the soviet and chinese counterparts, it has no tolerance for dirt; without proper lubrication, it jams. Compound this with the fact that the Army doesn't issue field cleaning kits, and that CLP (lube) is distributed at the platoon level (if at all), and you've got a recipe for battlefield failure. Granted, the AK47 and Kalishnikov rifles aren't accurate past 400 meters, but the average soldier couldn't hit anything beyond 150 meters with any appreciable accuracy anyway. Contrary to popular belief, firefights don't consist of a bunch of soldiers picking off the enemy from 1000 meters. In short, having a reliable, albeit inaccurate weapon is much more useful than having an accurate weapon that jams at the wrong time.
You are way overstating the case. Yes, the original marks of the M16 in the Vietnam era had a lot of problems, but those were worked out in the A1 and especially A2 versions of the rifle. You need to clean and lubricate your weapon but this is true of all weapons. The current M16 is no different than most other modern battle rifles in reliability. A military that doesn't train its troops to maintain their equipment is a poor military and probably has other problems beyond dirty weapons.
I don't know what platoons you were in, but in the units I was in, every soldier got a little bottle of CLP, and as much of that and patches as he could ask for. Soldiers who use magazines as hammers need to be corrected of that habit, maybe some extra duty or a statement of charges will do the trick. Never use a tool for something other than what it was intended to do.
The Palms are a bit low on storage but other PDAs can store a lot more. I've got two novels on my PPC at the moment, Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear and Dreamcatcher by Stephen King and they are 442kb and 639kb respectively. I could carry about 10 or so in the built-in storage without crowding out other data I need, but if I would need to carry more, I could always put them on an SD media storage chip or CF card. They're cheap these days; a 64 MB SD chip is about $30. So that's about 30 novels right there.
I think the same thing as you about the dedicated reader devices, but I've started using the reader software that comes with my Pocket PC and now I actually prefer that to reading from a paperback. It's convenient since I usually have the thing with me most places I go, it's smaller than a paperback and you don't have to turn pages or worry about your bookmark falling out. I can navigate through the book pretty quickly with the directional pad, even faster than turning a page physically. And I can carry quite a few books with me, as most novels clock in at about 500 - 700 kb.
I think it's a big waste to invest in a dedicated reader (that costs significantly more than my Pocket PC btw), but having that functionality in my PPC is just great.
On the original subject, I think a universal format would be a good idea. Between Pocket PC and Palm, there are many PDA users and if publishers could reach a significant fraction of them, they'd probably get a good return on investment with eBooks. Having multiple formats (Palm, MS Reader and Adobe, probably more that I don't know of) complicates this though. I am a little frustrated since I've come across books I'd like to purchase but are for a different formate than what I use (and I don't want to run multiple eBook readers on my PPC, for various reasons). Having a universal format would be great.
When a student complains to the faculty about one member in particular, it can have far-reaching consquences. When the student writes a cogent letter to the dean of the school, it can make a big difference. But do you want to revoke tenure for someone who isn't teaching well? No, you want him to teach better. Ignoring his students? Make him pay attention. Violating some student-faculty handbook rue? Make him honor it
Ok, how? How do you make him pay attention if he doesn't want to? How do make him honor rules if he doesn't want to? What far-reaching consequences are there? What big differences are made?
You keep you in there, don't you?
Some guys, like Urban Terror, allow some players to spectate, or to spectate after they die, and this can allow one to look over someone's shoulder and determine, to a pretty good accuracy, if their play seems skillfully good, or unreasonable. Wallhackers, for instance, are generally brutally obvious.
That is very useful, unfortunately this mechanism can also be used to the advantage of cheaters. If dead players spectating can talk to their team, they can observe enemy players' movements and report them to still living teammates. Some servers disable dead spectating for this reason.
Most online games I've played have been ruined by hackers
Yeah, I agree totally. They've really poisoned the well; it's such a common phenomenon that pretty much every game I've played in online in the last year or two there has been at least one accusation of cheating. Anyone who plays well or just has a good day becomes suspect, and it really sucks playing online in that sort of atmosphere.
The Internet has been a really depressing revelation on what people can be when they think no one's watching. From cheaters in online gaming to virus writers and crackers, all that anonymity hasn't yielded a very flattering portrait of people. And will in turn produce an internet in the future that is much more intensively monitored and controlled.
Well, this is beyond the means for your school, but I think there is a business opportunity for someone here in the offing.
The National Security Agency (NSA) instituted a program some years ago by which they decided to get some money and reuseability out of the obsolete pieces of equipment they were required to destroy (due to classification issues) rather than give to DRMO to be resold to the public.
The NSA has to destroy a lot of circuit boards and electronic devices like hard drives and they have to do so thoroughly. Many of these devices as we all know contain valuable precious and industrial metals like gold, platinum, and so forth. So, they built an industrial plant that could extract as much useful material as possible from the destroyed equipment, and they would resell that to the public for a profit. They also do this with the pulp that comes from the destruction of paper documents and such. What can't be reused is disposed of in accordance with environmental regulations.
This program has turned out to be so successful that the NSA actually turns a significant profit (to the tune of several million dollars a year) and sends this profit back into the Federal Treasury.
I am sure that this could become a viable business in the civilian world for some smart entrepreneurs out there.
I see. So the Nietzsche clown is a genius and the 2500-year old religion is nothing more than granola-types answering dumb questions? How can you put so much effort into one philosopher (and one book) yet not get the overriding thesis of that same philosopher/book?
Because that's probably all he's read.
... as long as you have a nice, fat paycheck headed your way on a regular basis?
Most Michigan businesses (and probably most government offices) use NAT or proxy servers for their internet connections. I believe a zealous prosecutor could interpret proxy servers as hiding the specifics of the computer that is making the requests for connections.
Yep. And "most government offices" includes Federal government, like say the Department of the Navy, for whom I'm contracting. We routinely use VPN and NAT; in fact we need VPN for personnel on travel to connect to our network and do certain mission essential tasks. I can only imagine the scene when some state AG and the ISP he's working for decides to take down the Navy.
You know that neither the legislators nor the AGs have any clue what VPNs are or what NAT is, which is why they agree to this crap in the first place. These lawmakers and lawyers are the typical sort of people who hardly know where to begin when turning on their PCs yet they are making laws governing technology they know nothing about. Telcos/ISPs just shove a proposal under their noses, tell them it'll be good for the state, and they sign and try to pass it.
I was thinking about this last night before bed and I thought, "Well, it'll get appealed and some judge will finally shoot the damn thing down once it comes out just how ignorant this legislation is," which I think will probably happen, but that is problematic in its own right. Legislatures firing off ill-considered laws only to have those laws thrown out in judicial review is a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common. The net result of this is that the democratic process is delegitimized thanks to incompetent legislators and people come to rely on unelected wise men to see that society still functions. I don't think that legislators take their jobs seriously anymore - they just try to see what the courts will let them get away with.