It had nothing to do with space not being cool or the failure of space technology or because they upset the observations of the world's 5 radio astronomers or anything like that.
They were way too damn expensive. The calls, (when I was assigned to evaluate the service) was something on the order of $6 US (plus long distance). Which really came down to about 8-10 dollars a minute. That was down by more than half from when they first announced the service. The phones themselves had come down quite a bit and were about comparable to some of the more expensive cell phones. There were units in the thousand plus range, but most of the Kyrocea line were around $250-500 us.
The phone, while big and bulky, wasn't too bad in size. The voice quality was pretty good, not great, it was essentially cell phone quality. It was hard to aquire a signal lock when inside, but out in the clear it worked like a phone. It didn't work too well in a car, but an external antenna would have helped, and cell phones don't work too well in my car either.
The system worked. But it cost too damn much. Nobody rich enough to afford them was going to buy them because they didn't get that rich by blowing $500/hour on phone calls. Nobody else could afford them. They were so expensive the only justification I could come up with for using one was for calls that go something like "I'm in the jungle and a blue, red, and green snake just bit me, what do I do?" Had they been cheaper, I could easily see calls like "I'm in the jungle and it's beautiful here, I wish you could see it!"
There's a price point there somewhere, and I'm betting it's somewhere around twice what people would pay for a cell phone, not 15 times. Then people would be able to buy them when they were doing things where cell coverage is questionable, not just totally unavailable.
Lowering the cost of launch services is the key to getting costs low enough to reach this price point. Reusable launch vehicles are the way to do this. The problem is, too many people are making too much money throwing away perfectly good rockets to bother coming up with a cheaper, more effective way.
The argument I've always seen for the labeling of software (and music, etc.) when it's first proposed is that it will simply be a tool for parents to decide what to buy for their children. The reasonable person then says "well, that's reasonable" and they go ahead and do it.
Now, apparently, the game ratings need to be followed by the store clerks, who, quite often, wouldn't be old enough to buy the games themselves.
What? Where did that come from? Is it a voluntary bit of information or a hard and fast rule? Are they looking to provide parents some control over their children, or are they trying to control everyone?
I can tell you that the first time someone cards me when trying to buy a video game, I'm going to kill everyone in the store. I'll kill all the children in the store TWICE.
So in order to protect the children from my violent rampage, lawmakers best not make it a legal requirement to check ID for the purchace of a video game. Think of the children!
10 Parents should be allowed to terminate the lives of their children.
Of course, the act of doing so would indicate that the parents are completely batshit insane and should then subsequently be locked up for the rest of their lives.
But they should still be allowed to do it in the first place. But you can't have people who do things like that running around on the streets, they're obviously psychopaths and represent a danger to society. goto 10
Just about everyone I know who has been curious about linux goes out and buys a book- not the o'reilly books they probably should, but a book that also includes linux on cd, stuck in a little transparent envelope to the back cover. That's usually "Special Edition: Using Linux" or "Using Linux", both from Que, which is an imprint of Macmillan. Sams is also an imprint of Macmillan, and also has Linux books. Macmillan themselves has linux books. I'm assuming they all use Mandrake.
So how many "boxes", as this article talks about, are actually strange information containment mechanisims called "books"?
When you take that into consideration, of course they sell that many- they can sell linux in barens & noble and waldenbooks, instantly bringing up the number of point-of-sale locations by an order of magnitude. Think about how many bookstores there are compared to computer stores savy enough to carry any linux distributions.
Not that I have any problem with more sales of any version of Linux. I'm not knocking Macmillan, just the idiotic article. Someone else called it already- a new trend "slashtrolling", writting articles designed to get on slashdot to attract all those slashdot eyeballs.
*obDisclaimer-- I have worked as an independent contractor for Macmillan in the past.
In fact, I seem to recall at some point being told that's why h2g2 was set up in the first place, to collect info for an actual Hitchhiker's Guide.
Plus, that's where the article says it's going to come from.
But I'm confused by the line "Later versions could include GSM devices allowing the device to offer its user detailed information related to his location at that moment." Am I incorrect in thinking that GSM is a cell phone standard, and they actually meant GPS instead of GSM? I suppose you could get locality information from GSM, but that leaves out about the 98% of the planet not covered by GSM compatible phone systems. I can see GSM being useful to download updates, though, assuming you have GSM compatible provider in your area.
"One of Dr. Ratey's patients, Aaron,... couldn't empathize at all. Never having known what empathy was, when others understood him, he felt they had invaded his mind."
Obviously, Aaron is a Nexus-5 or 6. He should be retired at once.
I'm not sure that this guy is actually looking for internet addicition with this survey. The rest of his site had little to do with addicition, and more to do with relationship problems that involve the internet (read as: "the internet stole my husband!").
So I think what he's really looking for is data to back up his assesment that the internet causes people to get horny and be more likely to cheat on their significant others.
Which, of course, is as much of a crock as internet addiction. If the relationship is so weak that sitting for hours typing one handed is more exciting than actual physical contact there's something else going wrong, something that can't be blamed on a global collection of computer networks.
But of course, it's much easier to make people feel better by blaming something they can't control than by actually getting them to admit that it's their own damn fault.
I don't know, I included my palm III and newton 2100 in the count. I mean, I have laptops that run less software than those two.
I didn't, however, include my Lego RCX bricks in that count.
Of course, I'm sure they meant what you said, but I just liked the idea of putting down "14" and having them wonder "what the hell is one person doing with 14 computers? He must be a serious addict."
Though most of those are either in storage or on loan to friends and relatives.
I think most people are missing the major point here- they're trying to patent a time travel machine!
From the patent- "A digital replacement for an analog audio tape recorder can record audio programming digitally in a faster than real time format..."
So, if you're recording a song faster than it's being played, before the song is finished you'll be able to play it back and hear how it ends!
But think of the possibilites! You could record yourself reading off stock market prices and play them back before you're done, and then use that to become the world's greatest day trader!
We'd need to overhaul most languages to add a new tense- the future playback - in order to talk about things that are happening in the future but we're listening to now.
There are probably a few laws that are so totally boneheaded that all geeks would have little to no difficulty being against them.
But I wouldn't count on that.
My experience is that most geeks I know belong to the Contrarian political party - they're against whatever is being foisted upon them, regardless of the system involved. Most geeks are experts at arguing, it doesn't matter what, or if they believe in it or not. They'll always be able to come up with arguments against any viewpoint.
Take this posting as an example.
For another completely fictional example, given three geeks (Abe, Bob and Carl) and the issue of the ten commandments in classroms.
Abe: We should be against it! It's stupid and violates the separation of church and state.
Bob: Well, I agree with you, but it might have a calming effect on twitchy students. I'm for it!
Carl: You're both on crack! We should be posting randomly selected sayings from the I Ching.
Abe: No! Bits from the Tao of Pooh!
Bob: How about the things Bart writes on the board at the begining of "The Simpons"?
Carl: Speaking of which, did you see Futurama?
Abe: When is that on? They keep moving it around...
And so on and so forth, so you see, politics and geeks don't really mix. The end.
Yeah! Those Stupid Ignorant Judgemental Americans over at the BBC must die for writing an article like this!
Well, you know what "Bob" says to do with people who can't take a joke.
Actually, I'm letting the French off the hook for this one, they don't seem to be actually proposing that anyone actually use their meridian for anything.
Plus, they're going to suffer enough after I nuke Switzerland off the face of the Earth in order to destroy the Swatch Group for coming up with yet another system of time. I figure the fallout will contaminate most of Europe for several thousand years. A bit extreme, I know, but an example must be set, you can't have everyone running around inventing new time systems, it's already hard enough to know what time it is.
I'm terrible with names, and have pretty much illegible handwriting, so a PDA with something like grafitti is considerably more useful to me than a paper notebook. Not to mention the ability to search the entire database, try doing that with a random collection of post-its stuck insde a day runner.
As for computers improving productivity, check out this article from the LA times.
180k pixels puts this somewhere just below NTSC resolution. For reference, a 1024x768 monitor has 786,432 pixels next to this things 180000. Ntsc is around 512x384, or about 197k pixels.
Not particularly impressive, esp. for 900 clams.
I'm sure many others will point out that there are lots of headset type of displays out there better than this.
In fact, the nice thing about this type of article is that you wind up with a list of lots of URLs to similar products.
Holy cow, this is cool! The simplicty is frightening!
I HATE graffiti, and my handwriting stinks so bad that I can't even read it, much less a computer. Grafitti is so darn slow, it just can't keep up with my thoughts, and after using it for a couple of years, I still need to check the cheat sheet for obscure punctuation and the like.
But this, man. I spent about five minutes puzzling over it, and had was writing at a reasonable speed not much thereafter.
This would actually make pda's useful for me. Now if only they had a Newton version...
I think part of the current problem with the backlash is that millions of geeks everywhere stood up and said "I know what it's like, but I wouldn't in a million years kill someone.". Those in power only hear what they want to hear. They heard "I know what it's like", but the "I wouldn't in a million years kill someone." just flew right past them.
We know what the abuse is like, but we're healthy. 99.999% of us survive the abuse and move on with our lives. We are not the shooters in Colorado. We may dress like they did, we may listen to the same music, watch the same movies, but we don't kill people. That's the main difference. The very fact that we can have compassion for the shooters as well as the victims is what makes us different from the kids that kill.
We now have two goals. We need to point out as obvious the fact that there is a difference from the kids that are out there and not trying to kill everyone from those that have. That's a short term goal. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other way, and the backlash will subside. At that point we move on to the next agenda.
The long term goal is to raise awareness of peer abuse and the damage it causes. Those who don't go through it don't realize what it's like. They think that it's just a fact of life, and that everyone experiences it. That is not correct. It should be taken just as seriously, and dealt with the in the same manner, as racial or sexual harrasment.
I'm not sure if peer abuse prevention would have stoped the shootings in Littleton from happening, but it is clear that those events have brought to the surface the need to do something about it. Perhaps for the geeks out there, this can be something good that comes from the high price of this tragedy.
I have a good paying job, drive a nice shiny new car, and am dating a beautiful woman.
I also spend a great deal of time hacking Lego Mindstorms, mucking with the linux kernel, playing games and making mods, reading sci-fi and fantasy novels. I've gone to see The Matrix twice and have already set enough money aside in quicken to see The Phantom Menace ten times. (it's a budget item next to "legos":-)
I am very much a geek. I am also very happy. A thousand billion times happier than I was ever in junior high and high school. A billion times happier than I ever thought I could have been when I was in those hell holes.
I don't think of it as having "won", though. To have won, I would have to believe that my former tormentors have terrible lives. I don't believe that for a second. Just because I'm successful doesn't mean they've become Al Bundy.
But the most basic factor is that I don't care. If they're living in a trailer park or in a mansion, if they're happy or sad, rich or poor, I don't care. I can't even remember most of their names any more. Since that time, I've gone through so much more, been so many places, done so many things that the small part of my life that was spent in those days seems pretty insignificant at this point of my life.
But the recent events in Littleton have dredged back up memories of fierce hatred and frustration, and seeing the talking heads on tv saying how the things that these kids turned to for a sense of belonging -- the same things I turned to when I was their age ten years ago -- are the source of the evil that they commited, it brings back the frustration. But the anger is distant, pushed out of the way by my contentment.
Slashdot Mirror
It had nothing to do with space not being cool or the failure of space technology or because they upset the observations of the world's 5 radio astronomers or anything like that.
They were way too damn expensive. The calls, (when I was assigned to evaluate the service) was something on the order of $6 US (plus long distance). Which really came down to about 8-10 dollars a minute. That was down by more than half from when they first announced the service. The phones themselves had come down quite a bit and were about comparable to some of the more expensive cell phones. There were units in the thousand plus range, but most of the Kyrocea line were around $250-500 us.
The phone, while big and bulky, wasn't too bad in size. The voice quality was pretty good, not great, it was essentially cell phone quality. It was hard to aquire a signal lock when inside, but out in the clear it worked like a phone. It didn't work too well in a car, but an external antenna would have helped, and cell phones don't work too well in my car either.
The system worked. But it cost too damn much. Nobody rich enough to afford them was going to buy them because they didn't get that rich by blowing $500/hour on phone calls. Nobody else could afford them. They were so expensive the only justification I could come up with for using one was for calls that go something like "I'm in the jungle and a blue, red, and green snake just bit me, what do I do?" Had they been cheaper, I could easily see calls like "I'm in the jungle and it's beautiful here, I wish you could see it!"
There's a price point there somewhere, and I'm betting it's somewhere around twice what people would pay for a cell phone, not 15 times. Then people would be able to buy them when they were doing things where cell coverage is questionable, not just totally unavailable.
Lowering the cost of launch services is the key to getting costs low enough to reach this price point. Reusable launch vehicles are the way to do this. The problem is, too many people are making too much money throwing away perfectly good rockets to bother coming up with a cheaper, more effective way.
But they can't break the law of the slashdot effect!
The site is down.
The USGS upgraded the Hector Mines Quake to a 7.1 after reviewing more data.
If you felt it, even a little, go to this questionaire and fill out the form.
-Lung
The argument I've always seen for the labeling of software (and music, etc.) when it's first proposed is that it will simply be a tool for parents to decide what to buy for their children. The reasonable person then says "well, that's reasonable" and they go ahead and do it.
Now, apparently, the game ratings need to be followed by the store clerks, who, quite often, wouldn't be old enough to buy the games themselves.
What? Where did that come from? Is it a voluntary bit of information or a hard and fast rule? Are they looking to provide parents some control over their children, or are they trying to control everyone?
I can tell you that the first time someone cards me when trying to buy a video game, I'm going to kill everyone in the store. I'll kill all the children in the store TWICE.
So in order to protect the children from my violent rampage, lawmakers best not make it a legal requirement to check ID for the purchace of a video game. Think of the children!
-LF
Please note: This article contains sarcasm.
When I read it I must've had a touch of dislexia, because it looked like "Gateway to Hell Cobalt Qubes"--
I don't know what that means, though.
-Lung
Hey, you already posted that one for an earlier flatscreen article!
That's worse than reposting articles!
-Lung
10
Parents should be allowed to terminate the lives of their children.
Of course, the act of doing so would indicate that the parents are completely batshit insane and should then subsequently be locked up for the rest of their lives.
But they should still be allowed to do it in the first place. But you can't have people who do things like that running around on the streets, they're obviously psychopaths and represent a danger to society.
goto 10
Just about everyone I know who has been curious about linux goes out and buys a book- not the o'reilly books they probably should, but a book that also includes linux on cd, stuck in a little transparent envelope to the back cover. That's usually "Special Edition: Using Linux" or "Using Linux", both from Que, which is an imprint of Macmillan. Sams is also an imprint of Macmillan, and also has Linux books. Macmillan themselves has linux books. I'm assuming they all use Mandrake.
So how many "boxes", as this article talks about, are actually strange information containment mechanisims called "books"?
When you take that into consideration, of course they sell that many- they can sell linux in barens & noble and waldenbooks, instantly bringing up the number of point-of-sale locations by an order of magnitude. Think about how many bookstores there are compared to computer stores savy enough to carry any linux distributions.
Not that I have any problem with more sales of any version of Linux. I'm not knocking Macmillan, just the idiotic article. Someone else called it already- a new trend "slashtrolling", writting articles designed to get on slashdot to attract all those slashdot eyeballs.
*obDisclaimer-- I have worked as an independent contractor for Macmillan in the past.
I'm assuming that the content is going to come from http://www.h2g2.com/.
In fact, I seem to recall at some point being told that's why h2g2 was set up in the first place, to collect info for an actual Hitchhiker's Guide.
Plus, that's where the article says it's going to come from.
But I'm confused by the line "Later versions could include GSM devices allowing the device to offer its user detailed information related to his location at that moment."
Am I incorrect in thinking that GSM is a cell phone standard, and they actually meant GPS instead of GSM? I suppose you could get locality information from GSM, but that leaves out about the 98% of the planet not covered by GSM compatible phone systems. I can see GSM being useful to download updates, though, assuming you have GSM compatible provider in your area.
Now I'm just rambling.
"One of Dr. Ratey's patients, Aaron, ... couldn't empathize at all. Never having known what empathy was, when others understood him, he felt they had invaded his mind."
Obviously, Aaron is a Nexus-5 or 6. He should be retired at once.
I'm not sure that this guy is actually looking for internet addicition with this survey. The rest of his site had little to do with addicition, and more to do with relationship problems that involve the internet (read as: "the internet stole my husband!").
So I think what he's really looking for is data to back up his assesment that the internet causes people to get horny and be more likely to cheat on their significant others.
Which, of course, is as much of a crock as internet addiction. If the relationship is so weak that sitting for hours typing one handed is more exciting than actual physical contact there's something else going wrong, something that can't be blamed on a global collection of computer networks.
But of course, it's much easier to make people feel better by blaming something they can't control than by actually getting them to admit that it's their own damn fault.
I don't know, I included my palm III and newton 2100 in the count. I mean, I have laptops that run less software than those two.
I didn't, however, include my Lego RCX bricks in that count.
Of course, I'm sure they meant what you said, but I just liked the idea of putting down "14" and having them wonder "what the hell is one person doing with 14 computers? He must be a serious addict."
Though most of those are either in storage or on loan to friends and relatives.
Okay, there is supposed to be a "voice=sting" tag around "I will kill him!"
They showed up in the preview!
<like this>
Gahhhh! Clicking on preview converts & lt;'s into
the actual char in the comment editor!!
Grrrr. Not my day.
I really, really like the term "militantly ignorant".
You win the cool phrase of the day!
You are right on. I sat there thinking- this is in wired news? How does ~30 raving lunatics classify as "news" anywhere?
Wired news was, at one time, a reasonable news source. Now it's worse than my local FOX affiliate. How sad.
I think WN should be declared a ghost site, in a zombified undead state.
-Lungo
Halfway into a rant about how Jon was wrong and it's okay to sell more than one thing at a site, I got spam from Jeff Bezos.
DEATH TO AMAZON.COM!!!!!
I WILL KILL HIM!!!
Okay, that may be premature, we'll see if they play nice and remove me.
But how will he eat? And breathe? And other science facts?
I think most people are missing the major point here- they're trying to patent a time travel machine!
From the patent-
"A digital replacement for an analog audio tape recorder can record audio programming digitally in a faster than real time format..."
So, if you're recording a song faster than it's being played, before the song is finished you'll be able to play it back and hear how it ends!
But think of the possibilites! You could record yourself reading off stock market prices and play them back before you're done, and then use that to become the world's greatest day trader!
We'd need to overhaul most languages to add a new tense- the future playback - in order to talk about things that are happening in the future but we're listening to now.
It's making my head swim. I'd better go lie down.
There are probably a few laws that are so totally boneheaded that all geeks would have little to no difficulty being against them.
But I wouldn't count on that.
My experience is that most geeks I know belong to the Contrarian political party - they're against whatever is being foisted upon them, regardless of the system involved. Most geeks are experts at arguing, it doesn't matter what, or if they believe in it or not. They'll always be able to come up with arguments against any viewpoint.
Take this posting as an example.
For another completely fictional example, given three geeks (Abe, Bob and Carl) and the issue of the ten commandments in classroms.
Abe: We should be against it! It's stupid and violates the separation of church and state.
Bob: Well, I agree with you, but it might have a calming effect on twitchy students. I'm for it!
Carl: You're both on crack! We should be posting randomly selected sayings from the I Ching.
Abe: No! Bits from the Tao of Pooh!
Bob: How about the things Bart writes on the board at the begining of "The Simpons"?
Carl: Speaking of which, did you see Futurama?
Abe: When is that on? They keep moving it around...
And so on and so forth, so you see, politics and geeks don't really mix. The end.
Yeah! Those Stupid Ignorant Judgemental Americans over at the BBC must die for writing an article like this!
Well, you know what "Bob" says to do with people who can't take a joke.
Actually, I'm letting the French off the hook for this one, they don't seem to be actually proposing that anyone actually use their meridian for anything.
Plus, they're going to suffer enough after I nuke Switzerland off the face of the Earth in order to destroy the Swatch Group for coming up with yet another system of time. I figure the fallout will contaminate most of Europe for several thousand years. A bit extreme, I know, but an example must be set, you can't have everyone running around inventing new time systems, it's already hard enough to know what time it is.
When I'm not wasting time posting to /., anyway.
I'm terrible with names, and have pretty much illegible handwriting, so a PDA with something like grafitti is considerably more useful to me than a paper notebook. Not to mention the ability to search the entire database, try doing that with a random collection of post-its stuck insde a day runner.
As for computers improving productivity, check out this article from the LA times.
I don't know how long that URL is going to work.
180k pixels puts this somewhere just below NTSC resolution. For reference, a 1024x768 monitor has 786,432 pixels next to this things 180000. Ntsc is around 512x384, or about 197k pixels.
Not particularly impressive, esp. for 900 clams.
I'm sure many others will point out that there are lots of headset type of displays out there better than this.
In fact, the nice thing about this type of article is that you wind up with a list of lots of URLs to similar products.
Really.
It looks like a repackaged laptop minus portability.
Why not just get a laptop?
It's not a particularly cutting edge design, so it doesn't even have that going for it.
My assesment- it's not worth any more of my time.
Holy cow, this is cool! The simplicty is frightening!
I HATE graffiti, and my handwriting stinks so bad that I can't even read it, much less a computer. Grafitti is so darn slow, it just can't keep up with my thoughts, and after using it for a couple of years, I still need to check the cheat sheet for obscure punctuation and the like.
But this, man. I spent about five minutes puzzling over it, and had was writing at a reasonable speed not much thereafter.
This would actually make pda's useful for me. Now if only they had a Newton version...
-LF
I think part of the current problem with the backlash is that millions of geeks everywhere stood up and said "I know what it's like, but I wouldn't in a million years kill someone.". Those in power only hear what they want to hear. They heard "I know what it's like", but the "I wouldn't in a million years kill someone." just flew right past them.
We know what the abuse is like, but we're healthy. 99.999% of us survive the abuse and move on with our lives. We are not the shooters in Colorado. We may dress like they did, we may listen to the same music, watch the same movies, but we don't kill people. That's the main difference. The very fact that we can have compassion for the shooters as well as the victims is what makes us different from the kids that kill.
We now have two goals. We need to point out as obvious the fact that there is a difference from the kids that are out there and not trying to kill everyone from those that have. That's a short term goal. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other way, and the backlash will subside. At that point we move on to the next agenda.
The long term goal is to raise awareness of peer abuse and the damage it causes. Those who don't go through it don't realize what it's like. They think that it's just a fact of life, and that everyone experiences it. That is not correct. It should be taken just as seriously, and dealt with the in the same manner, as racial or sexual harrasment.
I'm not sure if peer abuse prevention would have stoped the shootings in Littleton from happening, but it is clear that those events have brought to the surface the need to do something about it. Perhaps for the geeks out there, this can be something good that comes from the high price of this tragedy.
I have a good paying job, drive a nice shiny new car, and am dating a beautiful woman.
:-)
I also spend a great deal of time hacking Lego Mindstorms, mucking with the linux kernel, playing games and making mods, reading sci-fi and fantasy novels. I've gone to see The Matrix twice and have already set enough money aside in quicken to see The Phantom Menace ten times. (it's a budget item next to "legos"
I am very much a geek. I am also very happy. A thousand billion times happier than I was ever in junior high and high school. A billion times happier than I ever thought I could have been when I was in those hell holes.
I don't think of it as having "won", though. To have won, I would have to believe that my former tormentors have terrible lives. I don't believe that for a second. Just because I'm successful doesn't mean they've become Al Bundy.
But the most basic factor is that I don't care. If they're living in a trailer park or in a mansion, if they're happy or sad, rich or poor, I don't care. I can't even remember most of their names any more. Since that time, I've gone through so much more, been so many places, done so many things that the small part of my life that was spent in those days seems pretty insignificant at this point of my life.
But the recent events in Littleton have dredged back up memories of fierce hatred and frustration, and seeing the talking heads on tv saying how the things that these kids turned to for a sense of belonging -- the same things I turned to when I was their age ten years ago -- are the source of the evil that they commited, it brings back the frustration. But the anger is distant, pushed out of the way by my contentment.