He's 13 years old. He probably doesn't even realize that women have *breasts* yet ( most of his classmates are probably just starting to develop theirs).
Also, his idealism (or should I say naivete?) is really just his parents' opinion at this point. In a couple years he'll decide for himself what to believe. At which point he'll probably realize that looking at naked women is not actually as bad as he was told it was....(at least that's how it worked for me--now 21 yrs)
The way I would see a mitochondrial virus would be a capsule in a capsule virus.
Viruses consist of a protein coat, and DNA/RNA inside, that they inject into cells. A mitochondrial virus might consist of a protein outer coating that injects a protein-coated DNA section, that could then infect the mitochondria.
I can't say I've ever heard of any, but since mitochondria are more genetically between species than even cells are, could a mitochondrial virus be engineered to destroy all life on earth? (or do I not need to worry about this...)
Tricklen' down (tribute to the dot-com era) Unspent money from above =>into capitalist machinery =>$ for booze and babes, and debt ne'er to repay
Yes that sucked =D.
on a serious note, unspent money of the wealthy does not have the same affects as spend money. Unspent money is typically invested in stocks and bonds and such. When done on a large scale lots of investments make money more available for people to borrow. This may seem like a good thing, but it can make it too easy to borrow. This was the case during the 'roaring twenties,' and lead up to the great depression. It probably also had a hand in our latest economic downturn.
Spent money doesn't create debt, and it stimulates the economy.
I might be wrong about this though (in a "blame the lender" for lending money they won't get back sort of way), but at this hour I can't fault my logic (or read it for that matter...).
Others may disagree, but I hold that there is no such thing as objectionable information. This is NOT limited to "my favorite information," but includes the items listed: child porn, virus/worm/hacking tool/source code/instructions, stolen "intellectual property".
My reasoning is that information harms no one. Information did not steal money from you, have sex with your wife, or photograph your nephews, nude. Since every one of those acts was committed by a person, let the person stand to blame. I don't see why just because it's "the internet" people think things should be treated differently. People commit crimes, so...punish the people.
In response to my assertion people have tried to point out that information does harm people. There are cases of people exposed to information on traumatic events developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but these are entirely beside the point because the information wasn't really free. These people were forced (as part of their job) to be exposed to this information.
Another common response mentions kiddie-porn. They say that because people demand it (by downloading it), more poor children are molested (Won't someone think of the children!). Another theory is that, since there is so much of it around (funny how I haven't seen any) it makes those that see it more likely to molest children.
All of these cases break down into one thing: where is harm caused? Harm was caused by the molesters.
If we keep pushing back our rights to do things because people who harmed others, eventually I won't be able to eat my peanut butter sandwich (because butter knives are dangerous, and peanut butter sandwiches were eaten during the childhood of %80 of convicted rapists--numbers taken from OOMA [Out Of My Ass].), and that won't make me happy. I am fairly confident that I would like to eat peanut butter sandwiches. I would like to feed [my non-rapist] children peanut butter sandwiches.
So for the love of god Would someone think of the children!(who probably like PB+J too)...
___
sorry about that....I can only be serious for so long.....
Anyway I just don't like censorship. I like for me to decide what I find objectionable, and not let anyone else decide for me--let me be free to decide not free from decision.
I'm not saying that laws about intellectual property are bad, just that they should be limited to cases where a clear harm has been wrought.
"I still dont understand their desire to destroy linux, if it wasnt for linux, caldera would never have had the capital to purchase SCO and start this lunacy.."
You seem to understand more than you think. If it weren't for linux you see, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now, would they?
What better reason do they need to want to destroy linux?
Disclaimer: I am not professor of EE (just undergrad)
Quote:"The steady rise in the speed of bipolar transistors has relied largely on the vertical scaling of the epitaxial layer structure to reduce the carrier transit time,"
Translation: bipolar transistors (BJTs) have gotten faster because they made them thinner (less distance for electrons to travel)
Quote: "However, this comes at the cost of increasing the base-collector capacitance. To compensate for this unwanted effect, we have employed lateral scaling of both the emitter and the collector."
Translation: Speed gained by making the transistor thinner was offset by the effects of increased capacitance (capacitance is proportional to area/separation, and they decreased the separation), so they made it skinnier as well (lowering the area) to lower the capacitance.
Summary: They made the transistor smaller, so it goes faster.
Anyway, based on the parent's comments, these are just BJT's (Bipolar Junction Transistors), which are fine for high speed stuff, but aren't used in computer processors or any of the stuff you would commonly think of using transistors in. BJT's have horrendous power consumption because they always use power constantly, while CMOS (which has replaced it) only uses power when it changes state.
This means that these advances will be great for communications and signal processing, but won't affect most of the electronic devices we know and love.
Last time I went to hotmale.com it was an Aryan dating service. (listings of straight men without pictures, guaranteed white, "for the purity of the race" with contact info--it's been about 6 years since I saw the site (It was a dare at school))
Assuming fixed demand, the price of oil would rise as the supply diminished.
This statement is true in economics, however in economics "supply" is defined differently than the parent implies.
The economical supply is the amount of oil (being sold/ready to sell) on the market (which is continuing to increase, and has actually grown by a factor of 6 in the last 50 years, despite a "diminishing supply").
In short, the world's supply of oil and the market's supply are NOT the same thing. The market's supply is measured in barrel's per year and the world's supply is measured in barrels.
The market's supply is actually based on the costs of production (and not on limits of raw materials). In the long term, the market's supply will increase if the market is favorable (selling products for a profit) and decrease if the market is unfavorable (making a loss) as competitors enter and exit the market or companies expand or contract production. Current market (and government-legislated) conditions for the oil market are favorable, so supply is increasing.
At some point, the limited raw materials for the oil market will raise costs such that supply will fall. For oil (as a raw material), when it occurs, this will progress rapidly (making oil unaffordable to most within a period of 2-3 years I speculate) due to the incredible inertia of everything that runs off of it (since oil is an inelastic good, no matter what the cost, in the short term demand will remain constant regardless of price). This rapidity means that there will not be time for alternatives to take its place without incredible economic consequences (unless everyone has spent time preparing for it.....it's probably like Y2K that way).
People may keep cars 2-3 years (unless you're like me=8-10yrs) but large industries are based off of oil, and would take decades for them to make a smooth transition.
Other, noneconomic factors also will keep the oil prices artificially low:
Political Pressure: Some governments (read US) are in the habit of pressuring other countries to keep prices low. This is remarkably akin to convincing someone to give you a dollar by pointing a gun to his head. He probably won't be worried about whether it's his last dollar at this point either.
These devices are chips that can be programmed to perform a certain function. They used to mainly be used for prototyping, but recently are being used for all kinds of things (even processors) because they allow you to produce small numbers (even just 1) of a chip cheaply and quickly, without having th rely on the economies of scale that you get with the hardwired chips.
The specific application the grand-parent was probably referring to was Digital Signal Processing(DSP). This is a common application for FPGAs (don't ask me why....IANA-EE (yet)). DSPs are used to (suprise) process signals digitally. This could include (de)compression, (un)encrypting, filtering, and/or frequency modulation in hardware.
I haven't had my DSP classes yet, so I may be a little off, but that's the general gist of it...
Activities like this may not extend mankind's knowledge about solar power, but they are useful.
Parent made an excellent point, apparently without realizing it:
"all it does is give universities with lots of money the ability to build super lite cars that run on solor power"
Activities like this give aspiring engineers of various disciplines an opportunity to work on a large project. In engineering fields, work experience on large projects is invaluable.
Also, activities like this expose many of the people who would be designing the cars/power plants/??? of the future to solar power.
In that sense, these activities are more important than the X-prize (or "S-Prize"), because it exposes people to these technologies, making them more comfortable using them in the future. It doesn't matter if you have a 98% efficient solar panel costing $1/MW, if no one in design is willing to risk using it.
As the parent implied, solar tech is not ready yet, but I maintain that in preparation for the future when the technology IS ready, activities like these are needed to allow for more rapid adoption.
If this level of inefficiency were present in any other system, it would not be tolerated.
I think you underestimate the laziness of EVERYONE involved.
Example:
Light bulbs: how much energy is wasted? (around 70-90%)
Maybe that's not a fair example, because maybe that doesn't fit your definition of system.
how about this one: users who actually use those photo editing programs that come with digital cameras/scanners. I'm not sure if they've gotten better recently, but the ones that came with my parent's stuff was trash. As far as inefficiency, they use > 100 MB of RAM and cause the swapfile to pass 1GB editing a "small" full color 300x150 image at 360dpi. Yet they still use this software because it works...most of the time, and don't mind having to reboot after every image (but they still complain to me...)...
The fact is most people don't really care about efficiency as long as something works.
Why don't you send out a mixed source/binary package: The binary part can be the core of your program and contain all your IP. The source part can be an interface layer to the rest of the system (aliases for library calls, or equivalent implementations for missing functions, etc...basically a wrapper layer between the system and the program).
During the installation the source part can be compiled and (statically/dynamically) linked to the binary part. The source package doesn't have to be GPL (since, if it linking it to your binary would force the binary to be GPL), but it could still use some other open source license. That way you can mitigate the disadvantages of a binary distribution without having to use a full source distribution.
Also, if many companies were doing this, it might be a good idea to open source these compatability layers so that every company that makes something for linux isn't duplicating the effort. (though this is kind of what libraries are supposed to do....)
Another alternative is to *trust* your customers: You could have a full source package, but under a proprietary license (not GPL). Just because the source is available doesn't mean that the customers have full reign over your IP, or even are more likely to pirate it: I have the full "source" for several books, but that doesn't cause me to violate the IP of those authors.
I really doubt that PHB's will go for the full-source approach though, as they tend to be paranoid about such things...which is why I suggested the first thing.......first....
Can you imagine having a CD like that? You set it to repeat and get annoyed every time the CD goes to the beginning by some stupid advertisement for artists that you probably don't even like. This isn't as much as a problem for movies, because how often do you set a movie to repeat? (Am I the only one that gets outraged that there are advertisements on a DVD that I *PAID* for? )
As far as multimedia content, I don't buy DVDs for "multimedia content", I buy them for the movie. Putting more extra stuff on them won't make be buy the cd, especially if I don't like the songs on the CD. It's really just extra junk that you might look at once, but doesn't really add any value.
Music and Movies are entirely different media, what works for one may not work for the other.
And finally: Brilliant Idea # 1024: Lower cd prices and produce something worth buying.
What if it were more closely integrated into the filesystem so that the different metadata categories could be navigated as if they were directories, with files listed multiple places in the tree (wherever they fit in. Instead of doing a clumsy select * from volume, you could just browse the categories and subcategories (which could be dynamically generated or specified--or some combination of the two)
I already use something like this for my anime (I have a bash script that indexes everything and uses symlinks to list all my files). I have them by in categories of series name, fansubbing group, and whether I have burned them off onto cd yet.
I don't see anything wrong with replacing the traditional filesystem with something more relational as long as it's done intelligently.
Other posts I read claimed that the heirarchial (sp?) filesystem model will last forever because people think hierarchially. They gave an example of 1 person telling the other where to find something. They claimed that the person described the location hierarchially: at Standford, in dorm room ##, on the desk, next to the computer.
Really that description isn't really that hierarchial. It's more of a meld of hierarchial and relational. First of people may describe that position in different ways: instead of beside the computer it may be "next to my stack of warez cds" or 5m north-west of the room entrance. In addition the description is in relation to other objects--"next to my computer", "on top of my desk"
Really this is just the intersection of that metadata.
What is really needed for relational systems of data storage to take off is a better way to view the data (I like my filesystem idea personally). Until then there's no way this will ever be widely used. But when it does it will be one of those "how did I ever do anything without this" things..
Re:Useful for Remote Server Administration
on
Who Needs XFree86?
·
· Score: 1
Is there something like screen only for X-windows? Wine is always crashing my Xsession, and it'd be nice if all my processes don't die when X dies.
The demo played pretty well for a few minutes, and attempt to play (it's pretty different than any other game I've played--now how do you get your heroes to protect you? They always just walked AROUND the demon that is destroying my castle....), and then crashed with a stacktrace...
It was incredibly stable until it died though. (and then of course X-windows decided that it wanted to stay in 640x480 mode....gr...)
The game was a little interesting, but the demo seemed a little too limited for me to judge whether to buy it or not...
Actually trips to Mars do provide social/human services as well. When they spend billions of dollars to build some widget to go out into space, they are not sending those billions of dollars into ether. Those billions of dollars go to pay the paychecks of people (like the guy on 32nd and Main under a box), and stimulate the economy.
Currently countries (like the US) use military action to bolster the economy in times of crisis. The government also can't just give money away to help the poor and jobless. They have to spend it somewhere, and I personally would rather it be on space exploration than war here there and everywhere....
The problem people have with cookies is that they can be used invade your privacy. Sites like doubleclick and other ad agencies place cookies alongside their banner ads to better allow targetted advertising. The problem is not that the cookies are a security threat, but that they invade your privacy. Also many sites will not function if you refuse the cookies...even if all those cookies are doing is setting about 50 times (in 50 different cookies).
This used to be a big issue for me about 2 years ago (yeah....I was *probably* being paranoid) when I didn't want *anyone* to know what I was doing online.....
I think internet appliances will take off. Here are some examples:
what about setting all the clocks in the house from one room?
what about starting the coffee maker from the comfort of your own bed (or maybe setting to wait another 30 minutes...)
Just because these appliances can be accessed from across the globe doesn't mean they have to be.
This could be a new way to start the car to warm up on a cold day, turn on the tv with your internet enabled sofa (since who can keep track of a remote anyway).
Left the iron on? Internet enabled electrical sockets will fix that!
Slashdot Mirror
He's 13 years old. He probably doesn't even realize that women have *breasts* yet ( most of his classmates are probably just starting to develop theirs).
Also, his idealism (or should I say naivete?) is really just his parents' opinion at this point. In a couple years he'll decide for himself what to believe. At which point he'll probably realize that looking at naked women is not actually as bad as he was told it was....(at least that's how it worked for me--now 21 yrs)
Are there any mitochondrial viruses?
The way I would see a mitochondrial virus would be a capsule in a capsule virus.
Viruses consist of a protein coat, and DNA/RNA inside, that they inject into cells. A mitochondrial virus might consist of a protein outer coating that injects a protein-coated DNA section, that could then infect the mitochondria.
I can't say I've ever heard of any, but since mitochondria are more genetically between species than even cells are, could a mitochondrial virus be engineered to destroy all life on earth? (or do I not need to worry about this...)
And now, a poem:
Tricklen' down (tribute to the dot-com era)
Unspent money from above
=>into capitalist machinery
=>$ for booze and babes, and debt ne'er to repay
Yes that sucked =D.
on a serious note, unspent money of the wealthy does not have the same affects as spend money. Unspent money is typically invested in stocks and bonds and such. When done on a large scale lots of investments make money more available for people to borrow. This may seem like a good thing, but it can make it too easy to borrow. This was the case during the 'roaring twenties,' and lead up to the great depression. It probably also had a hand in our latest economic downturn.
Spent money doesn't create debt, and it stimulates the economy.
I might be wrong about this though (in a "blame the lender" for lending money they won't get back sort of way), but at this hour I can't fault my logic (or read it for that matter...).
Others may disagree, but I hold that there is no such thing as objectionable information. This is NOT limited to "my favorite information," but includes the items listed: child porn, virus/worm/hacking tool/source code/instructions, stolen "intellectual property".
My reasoning is that information harms no one. Information did not steal money from you, have sex with your wife, or photograph your nephews, nude. Since every one of those acts was committed by a person, let the person stand to blame. I don't see why just because it's "the internet" people think things should be treated differently. People commit crimes, so...punish the people.
In response to my assertion people have tried to point out that information does harm people. There are cases of people exposed to information on traumatic events developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but these are entirely beside the point because the information wasn't really free. These people were forced (as part of their job) to be exposed to this information.
Another common response mentions kiddie-porn. They say that because people demand it (by downloading it), more poor children are molested (Won't someone think of the children!). Another theory is that, since there is so much of it around (funny how I haven't seen any) it makes those that see it more likely to molest children.
All of these cases break down into one thing: where is harm caused? Harm was caused by the molesters.
If we keep pushing back our rights to do things because people who harmed others, eventually I won't be able to eat my peanut butter sandwich (because butter knives are dangerous, and peanut butter sandwiches were eaten during the childhood of %80 of convicted rapists--numbers taken from OOMA [Out Of My Ass].), and that won't make me happy. I am fairly confident that I would like to eat peanut butter sandwiches. I would like to feed [my non-rapist] children peanut butter sandwiches.
So for the love of god Would someone think of the children! (who probably like PB+J too)...
___
sorry about that....I can only be serious for so long.....
Anyway I just don't like censorship. I like for me to decide what I find objectionable, and not let anyone else decide for me--let me be free to decide not free from decision.
I'm not saying that laws about intellectual property are bad, just that they should be limited to cases where a clear harm has been wrought.
I seem to have left out the / tags from my post.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
"I still dont understand their desire to destroy linux, if it wasnt for linux, caldera would never have had the capital to purchase SCO and start this lunacy.."
You seem to understand more than you think. If it weren't for linux you see, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now, would they?
What better reason do they need to want to destroy linux?
Disclaimer: I am not professor of EE (just undergrad)
Quote:"The steady rise in the speed of bipolar transistors has relied largely on the vertical scaling of the epitaxial layer structure to reduce the carrier transit time,"
Translation: bipolar transistors (BJTs) have gotten faster because they made them thinner (less distance for electrons to travel)
Quote: "However, this comes at the cost of increasing the base-collector capacitance. To compensate for this unwanted effect, we have employed lateral scaling of both the emitter and the collector."
Translation: Speed gained by making the transistor thinner was offset by the effects of increased capacitance (capacitance is proportional to area/separation, and they decreased the separation), so they made it skinnier as well (lowering the area) to lower the capacitance.
Summary: They made the transistor smaller, so it goes faster.
Anyway, based on the parent's comments, these are just BJT's (Bipolar Junction Transistors), which are fine for high speed stuff, but aren't used in computer processors or any of the stuff you would commonly think of using transistors in. BJT's have horrendous power consumption because they always use power constantly, while CMOS (which has replaced it) only uses power when it changes state.
This means that these advances will be great for communications and signal processing, but won't affect most of the electronic devices we know and love.
Last time I went to hotmale.com it was an Aryan dating service. (listings of straight men without pictures, guaranteed white, "for the purity of the race" with contact info--it's been about 6 years since I saw the site (It was a dare at school))
The economical supply is the amount of oil (being sold/ready to sell) on the market (which is continuing to increase, and has actually grown by a factor of 6 in the last 50 years, despite a "diminishing supply").
In short, the world's supply of oil and the market's supply are NOT the same thing. The market's supply is measured in barrel's per year and the world's supply is measured in barrels.
The market's supply is actually based on the costs of production (and not on limits of raw materials). In the long term, the market's supply will increase if the market is favorable (selling products for a profit) and decrease if the market is unfavorable (making a loss) as competitors enter and exit the market or companies expand or contract production. Current market (and government-legislated) conditions for the oil market are favorable, so supply is increasing.
At some point, the limited raw materials for the oil market will raise costs such that supply will fall. For oil (as a raw material), when it occurs, this will progress rapidly (making oil unaffordable to most within a period of 2-3 years I speculate) due to the incredible inertia of everything that runs off of it (since oil is an inelastic good, no matter what the cost, in the short term demand will remain constant regardless of price). This rapidity means that there will not be time for alternatives to take its place without incredible economic consequences (unless everyone has spent time preparing for it.....it's probably like Y2K that way).
People may keep cars 2-3 years (unless you're like me=8-10yrs) but large industries are based off of oil, and would take decades for them to make a smooth transition.
Other, noneconomic factors also will keep the oil prices artificially low:
Political Pressure: Some governments (read US) are in the habit of pressuring other countries to keep prices low. This is remarkably akin to convincing someone to give you a dollar by pointing a gun to his head. He probably won't be worried about whether it's his last dollar at this point either.
I thought that the parent was referring to FPGAs or Field Programmable Gate Arrays
These devices are chips that can be programmed to perform a certain function. They used to mainly be used for prototyping, but recently are being used for all kinds of things (even processors) because they allow you to produce small numbers (even just 1) of a chip cheaply and quickly, without having th rely on the economies of scale that you get with the hardwired chips.
The specific application the grand-parent was probably referring to was Digital Signal Processing (DSP). This is a common application for FPGAs (don't ask me why....IANA-EE (yet)). DSPs are used to (suprise) process signals digitally. This could include (de)compression, (un)encrypting, filtering, and/or frequency modulation in hardware.
I haven't had my DSP classes yet, so I may be a little off, but that's the general gist of it...
Parent made an excellent point, apparently without realizing it:
Activities like this give aspiring engineers of various disciplines an opportunity to work on a large project. In engineering fields, work experience on large projects is invaluable.
Also, activities like this expose many of the people who would be designing the cars/power plants/??? of the future to solar power.
In that sense, these activities are more important than the X-prize (or "S-Prize"), because it exposes people to these technologies, making them more comfortable using them in the future. It doesn't matter if you have a 98% efficient solar panel costing $1/MW, if no one in design is willing to risk using it.
As the parent implied, solar tech is not ready yet, but I maintain that in preparation for the future when the technology IS ready, activities like these are needed to allow for more rapid adoption.
I think you underestimate the laziness of EVERYONE involved.
Example:
Light bulbs: how much energy is wasted? (around 70-90%)
Maybe that's not a fair example, because maybe that doesn't fit your definition of system.
how about this one: users who actually use those photo editing programs that come with digital cameras/scanners. I'm not sure if they've gotten better recently, but the ones that came with my parent's stuff was trash. As far as inefficiency, they use > 100 MB of RAM and cause the swapfile to pass 1GB editing a "small" full color 300x150 image at 360dpi.
Yet they still use this software because it works...most of the time, and don't mind having to reboot after every image (but they still complain to me...)...
The fact is most people don't really care about efficiency as long as something works.
Yeah..we all know what such flexibility did for "Press any key to continue" messages....
Isn't Redhat suing SCO because of the statements/threats/FUD that SCO has been spouting have damaged their business?
Couldn't SCO use this news to have the suit dismissed because a company posting record earnings probably hasn't suffered too badly from bad publicity.
Anybody have a clue about this?
Why don't you send out a mixed source/binary package:
The binary part can be the core of your program and contain all your IP.
The source part can be an interface layer to the rest of the system (aliases for library calls, or equivalent implementations for missing functions, etc...basically a wrapper layer between the system and the program).
During the installation the source part can be compiled and (statically/dynamically) linked to the binary part. The source package doesn't have to be GPL (since, if it linking it to your binary would force the binary to be GPL), but it could still use some other open source license.
That way you can mitigate the disadvantages of a binary distribution without having to use a full source distribution.
Also, if many companies were doing this, it might be a good idea to open source these compatability layers so that every company that makes something for linux isn't duplicating the effort. (though this is kind of what libraries are supposed to do....)
Another alternative is to *trust* your customers:
You could have a full source package, but under a proprietary license (not GPL). Just because the source is available doesn't mean that the customers have full reign over your IP, or even are more likely to pirate it: I have the full "source" for several books, but that doesn't cause me to violate the IP of those authors.
I really doubt that PHB's will go for the full-source approach though, as they tend to be paranoid about such things...which is why I suggested the first thing.......first....
Can you imagine having a CD like that?
You set it to repeat and get annoyed every time the CD goes to the beginning by some stupid advertisement for artists that you probably don't even like.
This isn't as much as a problem for movies, because how often do you set a movie to repeat? (Am I the only one that gets outraged that there are advertisements on a DVD that I *PAID* for? )
As far as multimedia content, I don't buy DVDs for "multimedia content", I buy them for the movie. Putting more extra stuff on them won't make be buy the cd, especially if I don't like the songs on the CD. It's really just extra junk that you might look at once, but doesn't really add any value.
Music and Movies are entirely different media, what works for one may not work for the other.
And finally:
Brilliant Idea # 1024: Lower cd prices and produce something worth buying.
I relational system doesn't need to be like that.
What if it were more closely integrated into the filesystem so that the different metadata categories could be navigated as if they were directories, with files listed multiple places in the tree (wherever they fit in. Instead of doing a clumsy select * from volume, you could just browse the categories and subcategories (which could be dynamically generated or specified--or some combination of the two)
I already use something like this for my anime (I have a bash script that indexes everything and uses symlinks to list all my files). I have them by in categories of series name, fansubbing group, and whether I have burned them off onto cd yet.
I don't see anything wrong with replacing the traditional filesystem with something more relational as long as it's done intelligently.
Other posts I read claimed that the heirarchial (sp?) filesystem model will last forever because people think hierarchially. They gave an example of 1 person telling the other where to find something. They claimed that the person described the location hierarchially: at Standford, in dorm room ##, on the desk, next to the computer.
Really that description isn't really that hierarchial. It's more of a meld of hierarchial and relational. First of people may describe that position in different ways: instead of beside the computer it may be "next to my stack of warez cds" or 5m north-west of the room entrance. In addition the description is in relation to other objects--"next to my computer", "on top of my desk"
Really this is just the intersection of that metadata.
What is really needed for relational systems of data storage to take off is a better way to view the data (I like my filesystem idea personally). Until then there's no way this will ever be widely used. But when it does it will be one of those "how did I ever do anything without this" things..
Is there something like screen only for X-windows? Wine is always crashing my Xsession, and it'd be nice if all my processes don't die when X dies.
I guess he's right.....the radio wave version is a Maser.
The biggest problem I could see is that all the air in between would deflect the beam....
Solution: put up the equivalent of fiber-optics.
The demo played pretty well for a few minutes, and attempt to play (it's pretty different than any other game I've played--now how do you get your heroes to protect you? They always just walked AROUND the demon that is destroying my castle....), and then crashed with a stacktrace...
It was incredibly stable until it died though. (and then of course X-windows decided that it wanted to stay in 640x480 mode....gr...)
The game was a little interesting, but the demo seemed a little too limited for me to judge whether to buy it or not...
Actually trips to Mars do provide social/human services as well. When they spend billions of dollars to build some widget to go out into space, they are not sending those billions of dollars into ether. Those billions of dollars go to pay the paychecks of people (like the guy on 32nd and Main under a box), and stimulate the economy.
Currently countries (like the US) use military action to bolster the economy in times of crisis. The government also can't just give money away to help the poor and jobless. They have to spend it somewhere, and I personally would rather it be on space exploration than war here there and everywhere....
The problem people have with cookies is that they can be used invade your privacy. Sites like doubleclick and other ad agencies place cookies alongside their banner ads to better allow targetted advertising. The problem is not that the cookies are a security threat, but that they invade your privacy. Also many sites will not function if you refuse the cookies...even if all those cookies are doing is setting about 50 times (in 50 different cookies).
This used to be a big issue for me about 2 years ago (yeah....I was *probably* being paranoid) when I didn't want *anyone* to know what I was doing online.....
I think internet appliances will take off. Here are some examples:
what about setting all the clocks in the house from one room?
what about starting the coffee maker from the comfort of your own bed (or maybe setting to wait another 30 minutes...)
Just because these appliances can be accessed from across the globe doesn't mean they have to be.
This could be a new way to start the car to warm up on a cold day, turn on the tv with your internet enabled sofa (since who can keep track of a remote anyway).
Left the iron on? Internet enabled electrical sockets will fix that!
etc.
...And where can I get a beowulf cluster of them?
Just don't call it a "Blimp"...(call it a dirgible or.......something else)
Here's a helpful business model:
1. Build a big blimp to serve as an overland cruiseliner
2. Use savvy marketing to avoid "blimp" stigma
3. ???
4. Profit!