The other day my wife said she wants there to be Google Bank. They'd certainly get the online banking thing done right...
Not necessarily... nobody in their right mind would trust the Google File System to anything remotely mission critical (not even Google: last I heard they use Oracle for all their in-house data processing needs.) Banks actually do pretty well keeping track of financial data.
Now having said that, as I look at my credit card's online statement, I see several days of Avis car rental charges for a vehicle that was picked up in San Diego and returned somewhere in Virginia. The problem is I didn't rent the car. Okay, so maybe a Google Bank wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.
Now, had Google been around when John Cameron's first Terminator film came out, I'll bet that Skynet would have sprung forth from a Google AI project gone awry.
Yeah, but it would take over the Enterprise's main computer and force Data to reset himself, with a chastened Wesley ending up being chewed out by Georgi after it's all over, having overlooked the fact that he had accidentally bypassed the matter-antimatter intermix safety protocols and almost blown up the ship.
Wesley Crusher was one of the most annoying and dangerously brilliant Star Trek characters ever. I was soooo glad when he bombed out of Starfleet Academy and went away with the Traveller and we never had to see him again.
Yeah, I pretty much lost any vestigial respect I had for George Lucas when I found out he cast Christensen as Annakin Skywalker. Not that that has anything to do with teleportation, other than I can think of a few places I'd like to beam Lucas to.
I think this would escalate to a whole new level if you teleported someone and failed to erase the original, and the two got together and were told to argue it out who needs to live and who needs to die. They'd both have the same conscious train of thought and would probably both want to live and would both believe they were "the real one" etc.
There was an episode of ST:TNG which dealt with that idea, when a transporter beam was deflected by the oddball atmospherics of a hostile planet and the Riker who was beaming up got doubled... one made it back to the ship, the other ended up trapped on an abandoned research base for ten years until he was rescued by Enterprise. The one that got out was the one that we all came to know, and the dupe started out identical but evolved emotionally in a different way. It was kind of a cool episode, actually.
There are basically two ways that are traditionally thought of for teleportation:
1. Matter Transmission: analyzing the structure of an object, deconstructing it somehow, and transmitting the (vast amount of) energy and information needed to reconstruct the object to a remote location, with all the possible complications that entails (the beam being intercepted, extra copies being made, the transmission being garbled, etc.) I always hear Dr. McCoy's voice when I think about that, "Hell of a way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all across the galaxy!"
2. Opening a portal in space-time, rubber-sheet Universe-style, and simply stepping through to your destination. No disassembly required.
Personally, I prefer #2. It uncomplicates the structure of the tale.
Life isn't pointless unless you let it be so. Sure, there's no overarching Universal principle that governs our lives and controls our destinies, other than the physics involved (ha... thank God for that) but that doesn't mean that our lives have to be meaningless. Frankly, my life has more meaning than it would if I subscribed to all the monomaniacal metaphysical malarkey spewed by the Pope and others like him, more relevance than if I were just a small cog in the God machine. That's because I know that this is it, I have one shot at life, and I can focus on making the most of what I am in the here-and-now. Accepting that the Universe is a vast, unforgiving place with our Earth the only known bright spot shouldn't make one bitter or afraid, it should make one realize the value of what we have. We are special, if nothing else because there's so few of us in so much emptiness, not because we're some Supreme Being's organic pets.
Maybe if people paid more attention to who they are, rather than what they might be after they're dead and buried, the world might be a better place.
And as past experience with Visual Studio.NET has shown, upgrade tools are far less than perfect.
Upgrade tools are bloody useless if you're talking an application of any reasonable size or sophistication. One of the apps I'm responsible for is composed of about a quarter million lines of Visual Studio 6 code, tightly integrated with Win32 (can you say, "unmanaged code"? I knew you could.) Management asked the software engineering staff how long it would take to (ahem) "port" it to.Net.
It was really hard not to laugh out loud. So we did. Laugh, that is.
That and earning a lot of good PR. Most of us don't mind so much when companies make mistakes (we all recognize that, well, sometimes shit happens.) It is when a corporation goes into deny/ignore mode that we get pissed off. This will cost AT&T a bit of cash, sure, but they deserve that for buying crap batteries in the first place. Furthermore, imagine the hot water they'd be in if this started happening again. Somebody upstairs decided not to take the risk.
Seriously, these people should take a computer course before doing these things.
Forget that: these people shouldn't be allowed to make any laws regarding the Internet, or computer technology in general. They're fundamentally incompetent... actually, they're probably incompetent fundamentalists. Either way, they probably shouldn't be allowed to make laws, period. We already have enough of those to go around, and we certainly don't need any more stupid ones.
I agree, the traditional nuclear family is in trouble... but I think you can blame much of that on the economic stress induced by a deteriorating economy. When both parents have to work full-time to maintain a household, there's little time for children.
Besides, who exactly is to blame when a 14 year old posts pictures of her in a tiny thong and lacy bra?
Family/parents, usually. The parents of an underage child are legally responsible for their offspring's actions and behaviors. I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was younger, and frequently it was a reaction to something my parents did. I had great parents, don't get me wrong, and for the most part they kept me on the straight and narrow, but rebelliousness is a part of the teen years.
You forgot 6. Profit!, which is frequently a part of why regulations are put in place. Sometimes the public profits, but usually it's the politicians and whoever paid them off.
Slashdot Mirror
The other day my wife said she wants there to be Google Bank. They'd certainly get the online banking thing done right...
... nobody in their right mind would trust the Google File System to anything remotely mission critical (not even Google: last I heard they use Oracle for all their in-house data processing needs.) Banks actually do pretty well keeping track of financial data.
Not necessarily
Now having said that, as I look at my credit card's online statement, I see several days of Avis car rental charges for a vehicle that was picked up in San Diego and returned somewhere in Virginia. The problem is I didn't rent the car. Okay, so maybe a Google Bank wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.
The tree lives 100 years and then gives a last hurrah with a magnificant burst of flowers and dies. Not a bad way to go at all, eh?
Yah, basically it's Irish.
So using 'white space' will provide better internet services to cows and stuff?
... I fully expect to see wireless-laptop-wielding cows the next time I pass through a rural area.
More likely it will provide some Internet service where there isn't any now.
But yeah
Now, had Google been around when John Cameron's first Terminator film came out, I'll bet that Skynet would have sprung forth from a Google AI project gone awry.
Yeah, but it would take over the Enterprise's main computer and force Data to reset himself, with a chastened Wesley ending up being chewed out by Georgi after it's all over, having overlooked the fact that he had accidentally bypassed the matter-antimatter intermix safety protocols and almost blown up the ship.
Wesley Crusher was one of the most annoying and dangerously brilliant Star Trek characters ever. I was soooo glad when he bombed out of Starfleet Academy and went away with the Traveller and we never had to see him again.
Yeah, I pretty much lost any vestigial respect I had for George Lucas when I found out he cast Christensen as Annakin Skywalker. Not that that has anything to do with teleportation, other than I can think of a few places I'd like to beam Lucas to.
I think this would escalate to a whole new level if you teleported someone and failed to erase the original, and the two got together and were told to argue it out who needs to live and who needs to die. They'd both have the same conscious train of thought and would probably both want to live and would both believe they were "the real one" etc.
... one made it back to the ship, the other ended up trapped on an abandoned research base for ten years until he was rescued by Enterprise. The one that got out was the one that we all came to know, and the dupe started out identical but evolved emotionally in a different way. It was kind of a cool episode, actually.
There was an episode of ST:TNG which dealt with that idea, when a transporter beam was deflected by the oddball atmospherics of a hostile planet and the Riker who was beaming up got doubled
There are basically two ways that are traditionally thought of for teleportation:
1. Matter Transmission: analyzing the structure of an object, deconstructing it somehow, and transmitting the (vast amount of) energy and information needed to reconstruct the object to a remote location, with all the possible complications that entails (the beam being intercepted, extra copies being made, the transmission being garbled, etc.) I always hear Dr. McCoy's voice when I think about that, "Hell of a way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all across the galaxy!"
2. Opening a portal in space-time, rubber-sheet Universe-style, and simply stepping through to your destination. No disassembly required.
Personally, I prefer #2. It uncomplicates the structure of the tale.
I'd like to see a football game played using the powered suits from Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the novel, not the stupid movie.)
I can tell you without an once of hesitation that if I could trade my legs for $20 million, I'd do it in an instant.
... that'll just give the rest of us a leg up on you.
Go ahead
VoxTec's marketing department should be summarily dismissed for coming up with that one.
I'm gonna have to move to Taiwan to get decent broadband.
Assholes, all of them.
Life isn't pointless unless you let it be so. Sure, there's no overarching Universal principle that governs our lives and controls our destinies, other than the physics involved (ha ... thank God for that) but that doesn't mean that our lives have to be meaningless. Frankly, my life has more meaning than it would if I subscribed to all the monomaniacal metaphysical malarkey spewed by the Pope and others like him, more relevance than if I were just a small cog in the God machine. That's because I know that this is it, I have one shot at life, and I can focus on making the most of what I am in the here-and-now. Accepting that the Universe is a vast, unforgiving place with our Earth the only known bright spot shouldn't make one bitter or afraid, it should make one realize the value of what we have. We are special, if nothing else because there's so few of us in so much emptiness, not because we're some Supreme Being's organic pets.
Maybe if people paid more attention to who they are, rather than what they might be after they're dead and buried, the world might be a better place.
Enough of that word. In this context, I can guarantee you that it does not mean what you think it means.
someone ordered laptop batteries, and the order was accidentally filled by the munitions division.
a coalition of cannibal tribes deemed cloned FDA bureaucrats edible.
Microsoft sure knows how to win friends and influence people.
Microsoft has no friends and coerces people.
And as past experience with Visual Studio .NET has shown, upgrade tools are far less than perfect.
.Net.
Upgrade tools are bloody useless if you're talking an application of any reasonable size or sophistication. One of the apps I'm responsible for is composed of about a quarter million lines of Visual Studio 6 code, tightly integrated with Win32 (can you say, "unmanaged code"? I knew you could.) Management asked the software engineering staff how long it would take to (ahem) "port" it to
It was really hard not to laugh out loud. So we did. Laugh, that is.
That and earning a lot of good PR. Most of us don't mind so much when companies make mistakes (we all recognize that, well, sometimes shit happens.) It is when a corporation goes into deny/ignore mode that we get pissed off. This will cost AT&T a bit of cash, sure, but they deserve that for buying crap batteries in the first place. Furthermore, imagine the hot water they'd be in if this started happening again. Somebody upstairs decided not to take the risk.
Smart move.
I wonder if anybody is watching to see what they do with all these batteries?
Probably send them to Iraq. Just let the terrorists steal them to power their equipment.
Seriously, these people should take a computer course before doing these things.
... actually, they're probably incompetent fundamentalists. Either way, they probably shouldn't be allowed to make laws, period. We already have enough of those to go around, and we certainly don't need any more stupid ones.
Forget that: these people shouldn't be allowed to make any laws regarding the Internet, or computer technology in general. They're fundamentally incompetent
I agree, the traditional nuclear family is in trouble ... but I think you can blame much of that on the economic stress induced by a deteriorating economy. When both parents have to work full-time to maintain a household, there's little time for children.
Besides, who exactly is to blame when a 14 year old posts pictures of her in a tiny thong and lacy bra?
Family/parents, usually. The parents of an underage child are legally responsible for their offspring's actions and behaviors. I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was younger, and frequently it was a reaction to something my parents did. I had great parents, don't get me wrong, and for the most part they kept me on the straight and narrow, but rebelliousness is a part of the teen years.
You forgot 6. Profit!, which is frequently a part of why regulations are put in place. Sometimes the public profits, but usually it's the politicians and whoever paid them off.
Yet another argument against data aggregation, I'd say.