Little tiny hunter-killer robots flying around to check an see if anyone is using third party ink cartridges!
But I knew would day this come. I shall now put Operation Omicron Particles into play.
Now, I must hurry to Bangladesh to activate the sleeper cells of the Holy Order of Templar Knights Guarding The Sacred Ink Wells (Of Power), then over to Tibet to consult with the Secret High Bold Font Lama (Of Power), and then to Japan to have a third testicle (Of Power) surgically installed.
Don't ask. Just. Don't. Ask.
Wish me well, and fight this new Epson pestilence (Of Power)!
Maybe I'm still not used to the editors deliberately allowing sensational headlines.
Hang out at ZDNet. You'll get used to it. You'll also get used to headlines that have no scientifically measureable relation to the stories beneath them.
Wait... only reading the headlines is what lazy people do. That's why 99.9% of humanity lives in near complete ignorance.
To be too lazy to even read headlines you have to be, like, in a vegetative state or something. Headlines are your least concern. Somewhere there's a family member looking to pull the plug on you.
There's actually still work being done on this to this day. CalTrans has gotten a small train of disconnected, unmanned cars to follow a leader car driven by a human (in a straight line), but the problem was the same as the others: dangerous when something goes wrong, which it will.
There's also the liability question, of course. Might just have to take it all to "no fault" insurance.
There's your flying car. I think a couple of the early prototypes *were* converted cars.
The autogyro was cool. If you've ever seen the old archival footage of them, they were almost crash proof. Your engine could drop out of the vehicle, and you could still pull off a safe landing.
It's long past time to knuckle down and get seriously pragmatic and practical about moving into space. No more billion dollar carnival shows, please. I *know* it would cool and neat and gollygeewhiz, but we need to move past that.
Why do some think it is so important to follow up the Apollo boondoggle with a Mars boondoggle? No thanks. These big time, one shot spectaculars just so a few folks in portable ecosystems can galavant around another world are what got us into this rut in the first place. It actually winds up making space look distant and elitist, like space is only for the chosen few astronauts. Trust me, I've had the oppurtunity to talk to the public in general about space, and that's the underlying attitude. A big Mars shot would only please a handful of fanatics. Many of you also overlook a lot of the difficulties in a Mars trip. Some of you act like it's not much more than a quick trip up to LEO.
We need to build solid steps into space. A good orbital space station actually IS the proper step right now.
Build a large, solid, modular, easily expandable platform in LEO. Then start placing things at MEO and move out to LaGrange points with zero-g industries- including, eventually, tourism. Leave GEO to the commsats unless someone grows the balls and obtains the funding to build a space elevator.
Unfortunately, and I agree with the Mars crowd on this, the ISS ain't it.:-( There was a guy many years back, when the ISS was still in planning, who proposed a modular approach to space stations. The modules could be mass manufactured on the ground, and then shipped up to space with big dumb boosters and basically just bolted together. It was almost like Tinker Toys, but was a brilliant idea. We'd have an enormous platform up there now, with shuttle *bays* instead of just docking ports.
Therefore a logical decommissioning date would be just after the new scope is up and checks out functionally.
Has anyone thought about automating this stuff? Make these things modular so unmanned robots can do the servicing and updating. Embed little marker tags into the craft so an approaching repair-bot can find its way around, like those robots that follow colored lines on the floor.
It eats up ALL the carbon dioxide. All the trees and plants suffocate and die,
Of course, the microbe would presumably die as well, and much more quickly than the plants, while the CO2 is replenished by mammal activity.
but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.
Well, if they can create a microbe that can transmute a carbon and two oxygens into hydrogen, color *me* impressed.
Hmm... would that require or release energy? Forget about going up in flames, the atmosphere might undergo spontaneous nuclear fission.:-o Hey, wasn't that in Battlefield Earth?:-P
How about a microbe than can split water into hydrogen and oxygen?
No, that's the *other* Iron Man! I mean the Tony Stark Iron Man, not the Black Sabbath Iron Man. I have a dim memory of some supervillian cutting Iron Man off from the sun, and the suit being solar powered, or something.
Man, I know both of those. How old and sad am I?:-(
I know. I was refuting the idea that the ecosystem is a *closed* system becuase it's driven by sunlight, which comes from an external source.
I mean, it's even what gives Superman his powers.:-)
And Ironman.
And Birdman.:-D
Now we could work hard to adapt all life on Earth to be able to live off the heat and minerals from deep sea volcanic vents, but you wouldn't like the night life.
This is a common misunderstanding of the moon. No place on the moon is ever permanently in the shade (excepting something like a cave of course). This comes from the mishandled use of the phrase "dark side of the moon".
This is a common misunderstanding of what is meant by permanent shading on the moon. Note the phrase "polar ice" is key here.
In the polar regions, the sun is very low in the sky and there are places in deep craters where the sunlight, at any point in the Lunar day, never reaches.
It's the same as on the Earth. The bottom of a deep canyon near the south pole would never receive direct sunlight. The sun never moves above a certain altitude in the sky. Heck, the tilt of the Earth's axis give the poles permanent night (well, twilight) for six months. Not sure what the Moon's tilt is offhand, but that's a side issue.
You must be more than six feet away, but less than 14,874.24 gnat's eyes. You have to be taller than 1.67 meters but shorter than 1.632 hands. You weight must be under 180 pounds unless you have an abnormally low body mass index in which case you must be heavier than 11 stone.
For perfect, optimal performance, your name must be Jim, Sally or Skeeter. Red hair will cause slightly better reception than brown hair, and you blondies are just SOL.
I went browsing for a new phone last week. Everytime I found a form factor I liked with a nice display or whatever, it always have some friggin' blasted camera function or voice recorder.
Enough with the added features. Where I work, if I walk in with a phone that contains recording devices of any kind beyong phone number storage, many burly men in black suits will wrestle me to the ground and pummel me into submission while tossing my phone into an incinerator. On the second offense, *I* get tossed in after the phone.
How about a solid, reliable phone that just makes really, really, really good, clear calls? To many of the current generation have that "disposable" feel to them.
Ppl are always spinning this RFID thing the wrong way.
Terrorism, new viruses (the biological kind), economic chaos, SUVs, the continuing existence of "Friends" and unusual solar flare behavior simply aren't enough for many people. They must worry that the fact they bought Pop Tarts is being recordrd in a vast alien data vault buried beneath, oh, I dunno... Mt. Shasta? That's a mountain that figures into many conspiracy theories. And this database will be used to, oh, I dunno... steal their socks? Yeah. Socks.
It's simply not enough for them to be concerned that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are allowed to continue making films. They have far more concern to go around than to only worry that Britney Spears felt the need to kiss some old hag on TeeVee. It's, like, epmathy, or something.
CASPIAN is founded by Katherine Albrecht, a privacy spook (with an agenda to become famous) that has long fought against barcodes and supermarket discount shopping cards.
Once again proving that Western civilization has far too much leisure time.
Slashdot Mirror
But I knew would day this come. I shall now put Operation Omicron Particles into play.
Now, I must hurry to Bangladesh to activate the sleeper cells of the Holy Order of Templar Knights Guarding The Sacred Ink Wells (Of Power), then over to Tibet to consult with the Secret High Bold Font Lama (Of Power), and then to Japan to have a third testicle (Of Power) surgically installed.
Don't ask. Just. Don't. Ask.
Wish me well, and fight this new Epson pestilence (Of Power)!
...well, someone had better kill it before it collapses the fragile idea that is this universe into a singularity of nothingness.
*Every* company wishes it was Microsoft.
Hang out at ZDNet. You'll get used to it. You'll also get used to headlines that have no scientifically measureable relation to the stories beneath them.
Or is this Steve "O, he of the fetid monkey dance" Ballmer?
Wait... only reading the headlines is what lazy people do. That's why 99.9% of humanity lives in near complete ignorance.
To be too lazy to even read headlines you have to be, like, in a vegetative state or something. Headlines are your least concern. Somewhere there's a family member looking to pull the plug on you.
There's also the liability question, of course. Might just have to take it all to "no fault" insurance.
There's your flying car. I think a couple of the early prototypes *were* converted cars.
The autogyro was cool. If you've ever seen the old archival footage of them, they were almost crash proof. Your engine could drop out of the vehicle, and you could still pull off a safe landing.
It's long past time to knuckle down and get seriously pragmatic and practical about moving into space. No more billion dollar carnival shows, please. I *know* it would cool and neat and gollygeewhiz, but we need to move past that.
Why do some think it is so important to follow up the Apollo boondoggle with a Mars boondoggle? No thanks. These big time, one shot spectaculars just so a few folks in portable ecosystems can galavant around another world are what got us into this rut in the first place. It actually winds up making space look distant and elitist, like space is only for the chosen few astronauts. Trust me, I've had the oppurtunity to talk to the public in general about space, and that's the underlying attitude. A big Mars shot would only please a handful of fanatics. Many of you also overlook a lot of the difficulties in a Mars trip. Some of you act like it's not much more than a quick trip up to LEO.
We need to build solid steps into space. A good orbital space station actually IS the proper step right now.
Build a large, solid, modular, easily expandable platform in LEO. Then start placing things at MEO and move out to LaGrange points with zero-g industries- including, eventually, tourism. Leave GEO to the commsats unless someone grows the balls and obtains the funding to build a space elevator.
Unfortunately, and I agree with the Mars crowd on this, the ISS ain't it. :-( There was a guy many years back, when the ISS was still in planning, who proposed a modular approach to space stations. The modules could be mass manufactured on the ground, and then shipped up to space with big dumb boosters and basically just bolted together. It was almost like Tinker Toys, but was a brilliant idea. We'd have an enormous platform up there now, with shuttle *bays* instead of just docking ports.
Ah, it's depressing. :(
Or develop some multi-billion dollar, space-qualified gimbal mounting.
Nah, the attitude/orbital requirements for the scope and the station are just too different.
Plus the vibrations from the space station everytime someone sneezes or touches anything would probably ruin your images.
Therefore a logical decommissioning date would be just after the new scope is up and checks out functionally.
Has anyone thought about automating this stuff? Make these things modular so unmanned robots can do the servicing and updating. Embed little marker tags into the craft so an approaching repair-bot can find its way around, like those robots that follow colored lines on the floor.
Link
Of course, the microbe would presumably die as well, and much more quickly than the plants, while the CO2 is replenished by mammal activity.
but that might not happen before the atmosphere goes up in flames since that carbon dioxide is being turned into hydrogen.
Well, if they can create a microbe that can transmute a carbon and two oxygens into hydrogen, color *me* impressed.
Hmm... would that require or release energy? Forget about going up in flames, the atmosphere might undergo spontaneous nuclear fission. :-o Hey, wasn't that in Battlefield Earth? :-P
How about a microbe than can split water into hydrogen and oxygen?
Man, I know both of those. How old and sad am I? :-(
No, that's a different kind of ICE.
Bizarros says, "Typos am fun." (-:
I mean, it's even what gives Superman his powers. :-)
And Ironman.
And Birdman. :-D
Now we could work hard to adapt all life on Earth to be able to live off the heat and minerals from deep sea volcanic vents, but you wouldn't like the night life.
This is a common misunderstanding of what is meant by permanent shading on the moon. Note the phrase "polar ice" is key here.
In the polar regions, the sun is very low in the sky and there are places in deep craters where the sunlight, at any point in the Lunar day, never reaches.
It's the same as on the Earth. The bottom of a deep canyon near the south pole would never receive direct sunlight. The sun never moves above a certain altitude in the sky. Heck, the tilt of the Earth's axis give the poles permanent night (well, twilight) for six months. Not sure what the Moon's tilt is offhand, but that's a side issue.
Say WHAT?
(although we get tonnes of stuff from space every day)...
Yeah, like, uh, sunlight?
You know... that bright stuff without which 99.9% of this ecosystem could not exist?
For perfect, optimal performance, your name must be Jim, Sally or Skeeter. Red hair will cause slightly better reception than brown hair, and you blondies are just SOL.
Anyone remember quadraphonic sound?
I'll take the #12, the MOON Goo Gai Pan. Hee hee!
As Tom Cullen said in The Stand, "M-O-0-N. That spell's Chinese! Laws, yes!"
Hey, can you achieve proper Feng Shui in a cratered environment?
Just as long as the Indians don't beat them to it. Man, then even the vacuum would smell like curry.
Actually, there are areas of my work where even cell phones are banned. Many are actually shielded in room sized Faraday cages.
Because. It's. Not. Allowed. To. Be. There. In. The. First. Place.
Security, don't ya know.
How about a solid, reliable phone that just makes really, really, really good, clear calls? To many of the current generation have that "disposable" feel to them.
Terrorism, new viruses (the biological kind), economic chaos, SUVs, the continuing existence of "Friends" and unusual solar flare behavior simply aren't enough for many people. They must worry that the fact they bought Pop Tarts is being recordrd in a vast alien data vault buried beneath, oh, I dunno... Mt. Shasta? That's a mountain that figures into many conspiracy theories. And this database will be used to, oh, I dunno... steal their socks? Yeah. Socks.
It's simply not enough for them to be concerned that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are allowed to continue making films. They have far more concern to go around than to only worry that Britney Spears felt the need to kiss some old hag on TeeVee. It's, like, epmathy, or something.
Once again proving that Western civilization has far too much leisure time.