With colonization they may had a high chance of death, but they were travelling places with plenty of fresh air, water, and food. Most of the deaths were due to either disease or disagreements with the locals. Many died of malnutrition.
Social isolation and physical confinement played a part as well.
I don't believe any successful European settlement of North America began with a base as small as twenty. I expect alcohol would become a problem. I expect suicide would become a problem.
The Malaysian National Space Agency (MNSA) and its Department of Islamic Development held a two-day conference in April [of 2006]. They invited 150 scholars, scientists, and astronauts to discuss "Islam and Life in Space."
Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?
If interrupting work to pray is not possible, the astronaut may practice a shorter version of the prayer or combine midday and afternoon prayer times, or the evening and night ones.
The next problem: Where is Mecca?
Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.
The conference went on to discuss a broad range of concerns. To sum up: The rituals of the Islamic faith are meant to focus the believer's attention on his relationship with his God. They are not an exercise in puzzle-logic and they do not require a geometric or technological solution.
Moving on.
In January 2014, former German astronaut Ulrich Walter strongly criticized the project for ethical reasons. Speaking with Berlin's Tagesspiegel, he estimated the probability of reaching Mars alive at only thirty percent, and that of surviving there more than three months at less than twenty percent. He said, "They make their money with that [TV] show. They don't care what happens to those people in space...
Captain John Smith ran a tight ship and had no use for the Virginian colonist whose plans were based on magical thinking and not careful planning, adequate material and financial resources and a rigorous internal discipline.
He published a list of supplies he believed to be the minimum requirements for survival on the frontier: essentially a year's supply of all consumables and durable goods, and allowing for a generous margin of safety.
New France saw one or two supply ships a year, which may give you some idea of the expense. New France, remember, had an economically viable export trade in furs and unflinching support from the crown. Those ships would be coming, hell or high water. Other colonies were less favored.
Smith's budget has no allowance for a healthy communal and social life. Entertainment, education, religion and so on.
No successful American colonial settlement ever began with a base as small as twenty or bound to a space that is at once so physically confined and isolated. I would expect to see alcohol as a problem. I would expect to see suicide as a problem.
The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting.
The horse was a big city crisis.
A 1000-pound horse will defecate from 4 to 13 times per day. On the average, this horse's manure will contain about 31 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons (~ 20 pounds) of urine, totaling up to 50 pounds of manure (not including bedding) per day as excreted.
New York City had 100,000 horses on the streets in 1900. The stench of the manure could be over-powering and flies spread diseases. Dead horses were simply shoved to the sides of streets in summer, as you can see in uncensored photographs of the era. It was simply impossible to clear the carcasses quickly enough.
But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.
Not as much as you might think.
The country was 50% urban by census definition in 1860.
Northern industry, agriculture and transportation prospered mightily during and after the war. The South no longer had a veto over economic development.
The player can discover the temporal anomalies woven into Bioshock Infinite through the music which plays in the background. Which games do you think make the most creative use of music?
Never heard of it. And a science program for the US public is likely to be all flashy pictures and no depth.
The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.
Closed Caption; Collector's edition DVD boxed set of the complete landmark TV series by Carl Sagan; 7 NTSC DVDs - 13 one hour episodes; Fully international edition - DVD region zero, playable everywhere (requires NTSC compatible player and TV); Remastered, restored and enhanced; Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan updates; 7 subtitles languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, English for the hearing impaired); Subtitle science updates; New footage; English soundtrack in AC3 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound; Bonus 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound music and effects track
If you throw known science completely out the window it just becomes laser-pistol fantasy.
To be fair, the phaser or stun gun solves major problems in-story and in production
a) no six-shot limit b) a plausible weapon for use in tightly confined or hazardous environments or in the presence of non-combatants c) a plausible weapon with a range of tactical settings for every situation
d) an easy to build prop that can be effectively combined with simple post-production effects
In the movie business, it is first past the post who wins. Theaters are flooded with copycat productions, everyone knows what is in your bag of tricks --- and you have nothing more to offer.
most of the best SF I've read takes place in settings that are for the most part not so very unlike today, with the story being less about the technology itself than about how humanity is adapting to the impact of that technology, and what the long-term implications are
The problem lies in translating analysis into entertainment.
We're dreaming possible futures here, not just looking for empty entertainment!
Science fiction is not predictive. I'll cast my vote here for entertainment, which is often more perceptive and provocative than the geek's crystal ball.
Hands of Fate, and Far From Home raised $125K for Star Trek Continues.
Modern sci-fi and fantasy fiction begins with the pulp magazines of the twenties and thirties.
There would be films, comic strips, radio and television productions to follow. Vast resources in every media and genre which could be mined, but go untouched. Because Star Trek sucks the life out of everything. Because the geek hasn't had room for a new --- old, or better --- idea on his head since 1964.
From Pixar, we have had The Incredibles and Wall-E.
From Annapurna, Her. From Warner Brothers, Gravity. From Lionsgate, The Hunger Games.
From Disney, we are about to get Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Big Hero 6. Two unexpectedly original and high-risk projects,
3 minutes. 38 seconds.
50 animators
30 hrs to render each frame of the castle.
Tony award winning writer and lyricist.
Tony award winning singer and actress.
Full orchestra plus orchestration, music direction, etc.
At least four new computer programs for animating hair, particle effects, and so on, are on display here.
Script, story and direction.
Concept designs. Set designs. Background art. Textures, Costumes. Props. Lighting...
Post-production, including editing and translation into 43 languages.
Try managing a team this size on the cheap and see where it gets you.
In production two years to seventy-five years depending on how you count every false start in animating "The Snow Queen." When Disney wants to get a character and story on screen it will move heaven and earth to get it done.
The Tonight Show which is nothing more than a guy sitting at a desk talking to people has a staff of over 100.
The key to success in late night television has always been in finding the right mix of guests and hosts and staging the show so they play off each other to the best advantage.
Mainstream TV has has for a long time under-served the sci-fi loving viewers, but with declining production costs there seem to be two potential sources of alternative production/distribution
I've been wondering-how much does each series of post-2005 "Doctor Who" cost to make? A friend told me it cost about 1 million sterling an episode.
The geek will be content with re-staging fifty years of "Trek Wars" on his home made scratch-built sets. But to build a mass popular audience for science fiction and fantasy you need to show them something new --- something memorable ---- and for that you need money and talent in abundance.
Dragons 2
Game of Thrones
Her.
Hunger Games
Frozen
Gravity
The device manufacturers are after all free to implement hardware decoders for open codecs as well, and unlike H.264 they don't even need to pay any royalty fees to do so.
The thirty H.264 licensors are for the globally dominant players in digital video and so are paying royalties to themselves. We are talking pennies or fractions of a penny per unit here for a cartel the size of Mitsubishi.
There is an enterprise cap on H.264 royalties.
There are 1,300 H.264 licensees --- each fabulously wealthy in their own right --- and each with a commitment to H.264 that extends far beyond the web.
Released for distribution through YouTube December 6th. Protected content. 94.7 million views. Should reach 100 million views by mid-week. A plausible guess for all things Frozen on You Tube would be 200-250 million views before Oscar night:
For information only, the raw, unadjusted, uncorrected figures were:
Prefer full MP4 support: 145 Prefer partial MP4 support - viewing only: 4 Prefer partial MP4 support - contributions only: 56
Neutral: 7
Prefer no MP4 support: 309
Total 521
Is the function of a resource like the Wikipedia to serve its larger audience or its ideological purists?
If you know anyone who cannot legally play an MP4 video, I would like to meet them. If you can frame an intelligible argument for refusing MP4 video contributions, I would like to hear it.
All we need to do is to create opportunities for the sadists to torture people in real life, and they will leave our precious internet alone.
I am not convinced that the sadist sees any distinction between his life online and off. That he can control his behavior or knows any other way to behave.
Washing machine, dryers, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, central heating and AC: these are important time and laborsaving devices that were unheard of 100 years ago, but taken for granted today.
In this silent short, ca 1915 produced and distributed by General Electric, a middle class homeowner introduces his neighbor to such new-found conveniences as:
an electric car a central vacuum cleaning system an electric washing machine an electric range and oven an electric toaster and other small kitchen appliances an electric sewing machine and iron electric space heaters
Gensets for rural use became available about the same time. Radio is less than ten years off. The Sears kit homes of 1926 are recognizably modern throughout, though the furnace will most likely burn coal not natural gas.
"They continue to under-promise and over-deliver. And that continues to be their sort of mantra." FireEye expects a loss of 51-56 cents per share for the quarter.
The U.S.. and a bunch of exiles still pissed about losing their wealth from when they were Battista cronies, have a serious hate-on for Cuba.
Cuba is an island ninety miles off the US coast whose primary source of income is tourism. How do you propose to keep Cuba from falling back into orbit with the US?
Venezuela props up the regime, but Venezuela is dead on its feet.
In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country. The shortages included necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour. Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory. Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolas Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which may lead to even more shortages in the future. Venezuela's outlook has also been deemed negative by most bond-rating services. According to a Johns Hopkins University professor, Venezuela had a 297% implied inflation rate for 2013.
Overhead lines are easier and cheaper to string up but can be taken out by vehicle crashes, trees (the main enemy of overheads) and ice. Plus they don't look as nice.
Raised in the country, I always found the poles and overhead lines reassuring and with a kind of rhythm to them.
As for beta boycotts and related matters: the comments posted to Slashdot may be fewer, but, on the whole, appear to me saner and more focused than any I've seen here in quite some time. I intend to enjoy this while I can.
Temperatures are usually reported in degrees Celsius. Please fix this.
Not going to happen when the poster is American and temperatures are in the range of 0 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The extremes demanding extra care and protection, but nothing particularly expensive or exotic.
100 Heat Wave
75 Summer
50 Autumn and Spring
25 Winter
0 Deep Winter
I remember spending hours trying to get one file to actually send to a friends house via ZMODEM
I came to despise the geek's impenetrable jargon and his indifference to the "luser." The thick printed manuals that came with the Delrina's WinFax Internet suite were a treasure and remain readable and entertaining to this day.
Slashdot Mirror
With colonization they may had a high chance of death, but they were travelling places with plenty of fresh air, water, and food. Most of the deaths were due to either disease or disagreements with the locals. Many died of malnutrition.
Social isolation and physical confinement played a part as well.
I don't believe any successful European settlement of North America began with a base as small as twenty. I expect alcohol would become a problem. I expect suicide would become a problem.
The Malaysian National Space Agency (MNSA) and its Department of Islamic Development held a two-day conference in April [of 2006]. They invited 150 scholars, scientists, and astronauts to discuss "Islam and Life in Space."
Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?
If interrupting work to pray is not possible, the astronaut may practice a shorter version of the prayer or combine midday and afternoon prayer times, or the evening and night ones.
The next problem: Where is Mecca?
Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.
How does an Islamic astronaut face Mecca in orbit?
The conference went on to discuss a broad range of concerns. To sum up: The rituals of the Islamic faith are meant to focus the believer's attention on his relationship with his God. They are not an exercise in puzzle-logic and they do not require a geometric or technological solution.
Moving on.
In January 2014, former German astronaut Ulrich Walter strongly criticized the project for ethical reasons. Speaking with Berlin's Tagesspiegel, he estimated the probability of reaching Mars alive at only thirty percent, and that of surviving there more than three months at less than twenty percent. He said, "They make their money with that [TV] show. They don't care what happens to those people in space...
Mars One
Captain John Smith ran a tight ship and had no use for the Virginian colonist whose plans were based on magical thinking and not careful planning, adequate material and financial resources and a rigorous internal discipline.
He published a list of supplies he believed to be the minimum requirements for survival on the frontier: essentially a year's supply of all consumables and durable goods, and allowing for a generous margin of safety.
New France saw one or two supply ships a year, which may give you some idea of the expense. New France, remember, had an economically viable export trade in furs and unflinching support from the crown. Those ships would be coming, hell or high water. Other colonies were less favored.
Smith's budget has no allowance for a healthy communal and social life. Entertainment, education, religion and so on.
No successful American colonial settlement ever began with a base as small as twenty or bound to a space that is at once so physically confined and isolated. I would expect to see alcohol as a problem. I would expect to see suicide as a problem.
The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting.
The horse was a big city crisis.
A 1000-pound horse will defecate from 4 to 13 times per day. On the average, this horse's manure will contain about 31 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons (~ 20 pounds) of urine, totaling up to 50 pounds of manure (not including bedding) per day as excreted.
Stall Waste Production
New York City had 100,000 horses on the streets in 1900. The stench of the manure could be over-powering and flies spread diseases. Dead horses were simply shoved to the sides of streets in summer, as you can see in uncensored photographs of the era. It was simply impossible to clear the carcasses quickly enough.
But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.
Not as much as you might think.
The country was 50% urban by census definition in 1860. Northern industry, agriculture and transportation prospered mightily during and after the war. The South no longer had a veto over economic development.
Cotton production in the South recovered rapidly. COTTON PRODUCTION FACTS STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS.; STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS. 1850-1880
The player can discover the temporal anomalies woven into Bioshock Infinite through the music which plays in the background.
Which games do you think make the most creative use of music?
Sorry Dr. Tyson, I don't watch FOX. Not for a long time. Not planning on starting now either.
Watch it on National Geographic.
Never heard of it. And a science program for the US public is likely to be all flashy pictures and no depth.
The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Closed Caption; Collector's edition DVD boxed set of the complete landmark TV series by Carl Sagan; 7 NTSC DVDs - 13 one hour episodes; Fully international edition - DVD region zero, playable everywhere (requires NTSC compatible player and TV); Remastered, restored and enhanced; Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan updates; 7 subtitles languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, English for the hearing impaired); Subtitle science updates; New footage; English soundtrack in AC3 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound; Bonus 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound music and effects track
Cosmos $88
If you throw known science completely out the window it just becomes laser-pistol fantasy.
To be fair, the phaser or stun gun solves major problems in-story and in production
a) no six-shot limit
b) a plausible weapon for use in tightly confined or hazardous environments or in the presence of non-combatants
c) a plausible weapon with a range of tactical settings for every situation
d) an easy to build prop that can be effectively combined with simple post-production effects
Furthermore, if you want to get really cheap you can just pull a blair witch project...
Blair Witch was released in 1999. Production cost, $500-750,000. The Blair Witch Project
In the movie business, it is first past the post who wins. Theaters are flooded with copycat productions, everyone knows what is in your bag of tricks --- and you have nothing more to offer.
most of the best SF I've read takes place in settings that are for the most part not so very unlike today, with the story being less about the technology itself than about how humanity is adapting to the impact of that technology, and what the long-term implications are
The problem lies in translating analysis into entertainment.
We're dreaming possible futures here, not just looking for empty entertainment!
Science fiction is not predictive. I'll cast my vote here for entertainment, which is often more perceptive and provocative than the geek's crystal ball.
Hands of Fate, and Far From Home raised $125K for Star Trek Continues.
Modern sci-fi and fantasy fiction begins with the pulp magazines of the twenties and thirties.
There would be films, comic strips, radio and television productions to follow. Vast resources in every media and genre which could be mined, but go untouched. Because Star Trek sucks the life out of everything. Because the geek hasn't had room for a new --- old, or better --- idea on his head since 1964.
From Pixar, we have had The Incredibles and Wall-E.
From Annapurna, Her. From Warner Brothers, Gravity. From Lionsgate, The Hunger Games.
From Disney, we are about to get Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Big Hero 6. Two unexpectedly original and high-risk projects,
They don't *HAVE* have to be expensive. The expensive is a side effect of the massive Hollywood egos.
Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel
3 minutes. 38 seconds.
50 animators
30 hrs to render each frame of the castle.
Tony award winning writer and lyricist.
Tony award winning singer and actress.
Full orchestra plus orchestration, music direction, etc.
At least four new computer programs for animating hair, particle effects, and so on, are on display here.
Script, story and direction.
Concept designs. Set designs. Background art. Textures, Costumes. Props. Lighting...
Post-production, including editing and translation into 43 languages.
Try managing a team this size on the cheap and see where it gets you.
In production two years to seventy-five years depending on how you count every false start in animating "The Snow Queen." When Disney wants to get a character and story on screen it will move heaven and earth to get it done.
The Tonight Show which is nothing more than a guy sitting at a desk talking to people has a staff of over 100.
The key to success in late night television has always been in finding the right mix of guests and hosts and staging the show so they play off each other to the best advantage.
Five nights a week.
Mainstream TV has has for a long time under-served the sci-fi loving viewers, but with declining production costs there seem to be two potential sources of alternative production/distribution
I've been wondering-how much does each series of post-2005 "Doctor Who" cost to make? A friend told me it cost about 1 million sterling an episode.
The geek will be content with re-staging fifty years of "Trek Wars" on his home made scratch-built sets. But to build a mass popular audience for science fiction and fantasy you need to show them something new --- something memorable ---- and for that you need money and talent in abundance.
Dragons 2
Game of Thrones
Her.
Hunger Games
Frozen
Gravity
The device manufacturers are after all free to implement hardware decoders for open codecs as well, and unlike H.264 they don't even need to pay any royalty fees to do so.
The thirty H.264 licensors are for the globally dominant players in digital video and so are paying royalties to themselves. We are talking pennies or fractions of a penny per unit here for a cartel the size of Mitsubishi.
There is an enterprise cap on H.264 royalties.
There are 1,300 H.264 licensees --- each fabulously wealthy in their own right --- and each with a commitment to H.264 that extends far beyond the web.
AVC/H.264 Licensees
The numbers game:
Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel
Released for distribution through YouTube December 6th. Protected content. 94.7 million views. Should reach 100 million views by mid-week. A plausible guess for all things Frozen on You Tube would be 200-250 million views before Oscar night:
Let It Go - Frozen - Alex Boye (Africanized Tribal Cover) 6 million views in three days.
Now place yourself in the position of the device manufacturer.
Do you prioritize for the open media of Wikimedia or for H.264 and Disney?
For information only, the raw, unadjusted, uncorrected figures were:
Prefer full MP4 support: 145
Prefer partial MP4 support - viewing only: 4
Prefer partial MP4 support - contributions only: 56
Neutral: 7
Prefer no MP4 support: 309
Total 521
Is the function of a resource like the Wikipedia to serve its larger audience or its ideological purists?
If you know anyone who cannot legally play an MP4 video, I would like to meet them. If you can frame an intelligible argument for refusing MP4 video contributions, I would like to hear it.
All we need to do is to create opportunities for the sadists to torture people in real life, and they will leave our precious internet alone.
I am not convinced that the sadist sees any distinction between his life online and off. That he can control his behavior or knows any other way to behave.
Washing machine, dryers, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, central heating and AC: these are important time and laborsaving devices that were unheard of 100 years ago, but taken for granted today.
In this silent short, ca 1915 produced and distributed by General Electric, a middle class homeowner introduces his neighbor to such new-found conveniences as:
an electric car
a central vacuum cleaning system
an electric washing machine
an electric range and oven
an electric toaster and other small kitchen appliances
an electric sewing machine and iron
electric space heaters
The Home Electrical
Gensets for rural use became available about the same time. Radio is less than ten years off. The Sears kit homes of 1926 are recognizably modern throughout, though the furnace will most likely burn coal not natural gas.
In games where human-like characters are necessary, the uncanny valley can be an even bigger problem than in animated movies
In 3.38 seconds watch Disney bring a character to life. Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel
This is how it's done and you don't need photo realism to do it.
"They continue to under-promise and over-deliver. And that continues to be their sort of mantra."
FireEye expects a loss of 51-56 cents per share for the quarter.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye sees weak revenue, warns on costs Feb 11
95% of all networks are compromised. Is yours secure?
This is the VFW
Robert H. Jordan VFW Post 7125
and this is the VFW: Where the V.F.W. Is Both Tough and Feminine
The U.S.. and a bunch of exiles still pissed about losing their wealth from when they were Battista cronies, have a serious hate-on for Cuba.
Cuba is an island ninety miles off the US coast whose primary source of income is tourism. How do you propose to keep Cuba from falling back into orbit with the US?
Venezuela props up the regime, but Venezuela is dead on its feet.
In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country. The shortages included necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour. Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory. Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolas Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which may lead to even more shortages in the future. Venezuela's outlook has also been deemed negative by most bond-rating services. According to a Johns Hopkins University professor, Venezuela had a 297% implied inflation rate for 2013.
Venezuela
Overhead lines are easier and cheaper to string up but can be taken out by vehicle crashes, trees (the main enemy of overheads) and ice. Plus they don't look as nice.
Raised in the country, I always found the poles and overhead lines reassuring and with a kind of rhythm to them.
Rose City Road
Kids making snowmen is considered geeky
It's considered human.
Storms on this scale test infrastructure to the limits --- and it is interesting to see how and why things break. Burying power lines not always the answer
As for beta boycotts and related matters: the comments posted to Slashdot may be fewer, but, on the whole, appear to me saner and more focused than any I've seen here in quite some time. I intend to enjoy this while I can.
Temperatures are usually reported in degrees Celsius. Please fix this.
Not going to happen when the poster is American and temperatures are in the range of 0 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The extremes demanding extra care and protection, but nothing particularly expensive or exotic.
100 Heat Wave
75 Summer
50 Autumn and Spring
25 Winter
0 Deep Winter
I remember spending hours trying to get one file to actually send to a friends house via ZMODEM
I came to despise the geek's impenetrable jargon and his indifference to the "luser." The thick printed manuals that came with the Delrina's WinFax Internet suite were a treasure and remain readable and entertaining to this day.