From the social skills of most of the programmers' I have seen I'd have to go with "Silence of the Lambs". (After your 10th mountain dew of the morning, I suspect human flesh starts to seem like a good pre-lunch snack!)
Of course reality could never actually be put into a hollywood blockbuster.... far too depressing or freaky (Or both). (Scarily enough I share many attributes with my programmer friends - so thats' why I know it would be EXTRA frightening to accurately portray them in film!)
I can see some scary things happening...
on
Going Cyberpunk
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Knowing this crowd, if you actually had implantable computer chips it wouldn't be long before you would see the following:
1. Somebody running linux and a webserver from their brain. "Pass me the tylenol, my heads' been slashdotted!"
2. DRM the hard way... your vision blanks out whenever you see material you haven't purchased.
3. A beowulf cluster of human brains... of course if you did this in your average marketing department you still wouldn't end up with much....
Hmm... two applications I can think of off the top of my head would be for deep sea divers (monitor core temperature while diving to prevent hypothermia onset), possibly medical uses to monitor patients on a semi-permanent basis as well. (Problem with current choices is they mean you either have to stick something in an uncomfortable spot or measure surface temperature... which doesn't tell you what the core body temp is)
Does this mean that the paper my EULA is written on will have it's own EULA? (Which will have its' own EULA... so on and so on... ok I have to lay down now, my brain hurts.)
You're right! And furthermore paper itself can be used for unsavory applications (Cease and desist letters to overzealously protect copyright, using as kindling to set things on fire, and not to mention what happens if some psychopath decides to use it to give everyone some nasty papercuts!)
Actually... just about everything out there can be used for unsavory applications - it takes a similar set of sensors to monitor a critically ill patient and to build your average lie detector, a knife can be used to cut bread or to threaten another human being. I don't see cheap CPU and (very) short range antennas being the fall of modern civilization as yet.
Not unless they use this in printing money and every time I open my wallet a small electronic voice says "Do you REALLY want to spend your last 60 bucks on a video game and starve til payday?"
What scares me more than marketing a thong, is marketing a thong to GAMERS... I don't need that mental image!
*Goes out to scrub his brain with steel wool*
Err... I don't know about you, but if something horrifies and scares me I rarely ignore it. "Oh look, a 300 lb 7 foot tall man carrying a chainsaw and covered in human blood..... hmm... if I ignore him maybe he'll go away and leave me alone"
The thing you're completely missing here is that the US is a powerhouse in terms of economic, military, and political pull - it is too much of an influence to be ignored.
Many nations DO have genuine issues with the way that US agencies and governments have done things in the past (frequently without adequate consultation or approval from the US public) - when the Chilean government was overthrown with CIA assistance, leading to a brutal dictatorship (ironically a democratically elected government was overthrown because of land reforms and other actions that were seen as "too socialist" and instead a dictatorship was put into place)
Think they had the option to just "ignore" the US?
In the long term a moon base would offer much better prospects than anything in L4 or L5 - presuming the presence of refinable materials of ANY use on the moon (and combined with the fairly recent discoveries that suggested a fair amount of water present) you'd have to ship far less resources out to a lunar base for the following reasons:
1. Shielding - the moon has dirt at the least, and lots of it. Shielding the space station might prove to be a hassle (most shielding solutions require a fair bit of mass, and getting mass into the L4 and L5 is going to be expensive.
2. Ease of transport - yes it's cheaper and easier (by a fair bit) to get things to the L4 and L5 points, but the moon has the potential to have something we can't put into place in the Lagrange points - a linear accelerator. It'd be practical there (unlikely earth) because of the lack of an atmosphere, and because the moon gets a free supply of solar energy - no atmosphere to create clouds to muck things up. (And no atmosphere to create drag to slow things down) So while it costs more to get things there, once you invest in the linear accelerator you would have minimal costs to get things BACK from there.
3. Because of reason 2, it may be easier to build something in the lagrange points AFTER you have a moon presence - especially if as some studies have indicated there IS a substantial water presence on the moon - you could ship shielding mass, any kind of construction materials that could realistically be produced on the moon through the linear accelerator (or even conventional rockets since the cost of launching from the moon would be far less and would not be subject to rockets, presuming you found something you could use for reaction mass - I.E. enough water) - that it would be an ideal supply point for certain materials for any large scale Lagrange station.
4. The lagrange points would probably be the ideal place to build interplanetary vessels - you could build things here that never have to be subject to either planetary gravity or atmosphere and design them to do one job and do it well - get materials from one planet to another. If the moon (I can't remember offhand if it does or doesn't) has any usable radioactives for a fuel or power source even better - on earth if you have one accident with a small amount of radioactive material you get a major environmental disaster. On the moon you get a slightly MORE radioactive lumpy bit of dirt. Without an atmosphere and without the benefit of things like earth's magnetic belts, the moon gets pounded with a vast amount of radiation just from the sun.... A three mile island type accident up there would be hard even to spot.
5. Simple logic - if we even plan to visit any of the other planets in the solar system we need to relearn how to visit the moon first. We've never done more than a weekend trip there basically, and never set up any kind of manned presence... and the social and engineering issues of that would be VERY different from something in orbit. (Space suit design for example... space suits have gotten heavier and are generally designed different for shuttle missions... you don't have to often walk in them in gravity for example.) 1/6th might be low, but its a whole lot more than nothing at all.
Judging from the amount of e-card software/webpage links I get in email (and promptly ignore), I bet that this thing spreads fairly quickly - and there won't be much that can be done about it automatically. It technically isn't a virus doing something without a users consent (So I don't see antivirus companies blocking it ever, despite having some very virus like properties.... not since the user has to agree to have it do what it does!)
Mind you I don't think the company will get any good will out of this, but I (add the usual IANAL) don't see any potential legal challenge in this - instead of exploiting security bugs or software flaws it's strictly using user stupidity against themselves. (And if you outlaw stupidity, half the internet would be gone overnight.... ok maybe far more than half if you include AOL in that bundle of non-working grey matter)
Makes you realize how important it is to read the EULA these days before doing anything - since it seems free software has gone WAY beyond being simply financed by an ad banner.
Oh but for a gigantic jar of ether and a net....
on
Microsoft Vandalizes NYC
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Hmm... makes me wonder as well, would penguins eat butterflies?:)
Slashdot Mirror
From the social skills of most of the programmers' I have seen I'd have to go with "Silence of the Lambs". (After your 10th mountain dew of the morning, I suspect human flesh starts to seem like a good pre-lunch snack!) Of course reality could never actually be put into a hollywood blockbuster.... far too depressing or freaky (Or both). (Scarily enough I share many attributes with my programmer friends - so thats' why I know it would be EXTRA frightening to accurately portray them in film!)
Knowing this crowd, if you actually had implantable computer chips it wouldn't be long before you would see the following: 1. Somebody running linux and a webserver from their brain. "Pass me the tylenol, my heads' been slashdotted!" 2. DRM the hard way... your vision blanks out whenever you see material you haven't purchased. 3. A beowulf cluster of human brains... of course if you did this in your average marketing department you still wouldn't end up with much....
Hmm... two applications I can think of off the top of my head would be for deep sea divers (monitor core temperature while diving to prevent hypothermia onset), possibly medical uses to monitor patients on a semi-permanent basis as well. (Problem with current choices is they mean you either have to stick something in an uncomfortable spot or measure surface temperature... which doesn't tell you what the core body temp is)
Does this mean that the paper my EULA is written on will have it's own EULA? (Which will have its' own EULA... so on and so on... ok I have to lay down now, my brain hurts.)
You're right! And furthermore paper itself can be used for unsavory applications (Cease and desist letters to overzealously protect copyright, using as kindling to set things on fire, and not to mention what happens if some psychopath decides to use it to give everyone some nasty papercuts!)
Actually... just about everything out there can be used for unsavory applications - it takes a similar set of sensors to monitor a critically ill patient and to build your average lie detector, a knife can be used to cut bread or to threaten another human being. I don't see cheap CPU and (very) short range antennas being the fall of modern civilization as yet.
Not unless they use this in printing money and every time I open my wallet a small electronic voice says "Do you REALLY want to spend your last 60 bucks on a video game and starve til payday?"
What scares me more than marketing a thong, is marketing a thong to GAMERS... I don't need that mental image! *Goes out to scrub his brain with steel wool*
Err... I don't know about you, but if something horrifies and scares me I rarely ignore it. "Oh look, a 300 lb 7 foot tall man carrying a chainsaw and covered in human blood..... hmm... if I ignore him maybe he'll go away and leave me alone" The thing you're completely missing here is that the US is a powerhouse in terms of economic, military, and political pull - it is too much of an influence to be ignored. Many nations DO have genuine issues with the way that US agencies and governments have done things in the past (frequently without adequate consultation or approval from the US public) - when the Chilean government was overthrown with CIA assistance, leading to a brutal dictatorship (ironically a democratically elected government was overthrown because of land reforms and other actions that were seen as "too socialist" and instead a dictatorship was put into place) Think they had the option to just "ignore" the US?
In the long term a moon base would offer much better prospects than anything in L4 or L5 - presuming the presence of refinable materials of ANY use on the moon (and combined with the fairly recent discoveries that suggested a fair amount of water present) you'd have to ship far less resources out to a lunar base for the following reasons: 1. Shielding - the moon has dirt at the least, and lots of it. Shielding the space station might prove to be a hassle (most shielding solutions require a fair bit of mass, and getting mass into the L4 and L5 is going to be expensive. 2. Ease of transport - yes it's cheaper and easier (by a fair bit) to get things to the L4 and L5 points, but the moon has the potential to have something we can't put into place in the Lagrange points - a linear accelerator. It'd be practical there (unlikely earth) because of the lack of an atmosphere, and because the moon gets a free supply of solar energy - no atmosphere to create clouds to muck things up. (And no atmosphere to create drag to slow things down) So while it costs more to get things there, once you invest in the linear accelerator you would have minimal costs to get things BACK from there. 3. Because of reason 2, it may be easier to build something in the lagrange points AFTER you have a moon presence - especially if as some studies have indicated there IS a substantial water presence on the moon - you could ship shielding mass, any kind of construction materials that could realistically be produced on the moon through the linear accelerator (or even conventional rockets since the cost of launching from the moon would be far less and would not be subject to rockets, presuming you found something you could use for reaction mass - I.E. enough water) - that it would be an ideal supply point for certain materials for any large scale Lagrange station. 4. The lagrange points would probably be the ideal place to build interplanetary vessels - you could build things here that never have to be subject to either planetary gravity or atmosphere and design them to do one job and do it well - get materials from one planet to another. If the moon (I can't remember offhand if it does or doesn't) has any usable radioactives for a fuel or power source even better - on earth if you have one accident with a small amount of radioactive material you get a major environmental disaster. On the moon you get a slightly MORE radioactive lumpy bit of dirt. Without an atmosphere and without the benefit of things like earth's magnetic belts, the moon gets pounded with a vast amount of radiation just from the sun.... A three mile island type accident up there would be hard even to spot. 5. Simple logic - if we even plan to visit any of the other planets in the solar system we need to relearn how to visit the moon first. We've never done more than a weekend trip there basically, and never set up any kind of manned presence... and the social and engineering issues of that would be VERY different from something in orbit. (Space suit design for example... space suits have gotten heavier and are generally designed different for shuttle missions... you don't have to often walk in them in gravity for example.) 1/6th might be low, but its a whole lot more than nothing at all.
Judging from the amount of e-card software/webpage links I get in email (and promptly ignore), I bet that this thing spreads fairly quickly - and there won't be much that can be done about it automatically. It technically isn't a virus doing something without a users consent (So I don't see antivirus companies blocking it ever, despite having some very virus like properties.... not since the user has to agree to have it do what it does!) Mind you I don't think the company will get any good will out of this, but I (add the usual IANAL) don't see any potential legal challenge in this - instead of exploiting security bugs or software flaws it's strictly using user stupidity against themselves. (And if you outlaw stupidity, half the internet would be gone overnight.... ok maybe far more than half if you include AOL in that bundle of non-working grey matter) Makes you realize how important it is to read the EULA these days before doing anything - since it seems free software has gone WAY beyond being simply financed by an ad banner.
Hmm... makes me wonder as well, would penguins eat butterflies? :)