When "Earthblood" came out, the way it stirred the imagination, the wonder of it - I will never forget it. And all those Retief yarns!
None of them can ever be replaced. SF has been a vast wasteland for some time but for the old guard. With just about all of them gone, the SF I knew is dead, and the world is poorer for it.
It was a dark and stormy night. CNN Eashington Bureau Chief Frank (call sign "Cool Man") Sesno was driving in his luxurious freshly washed and waxed air conditioned Chevrolet, with aplomb and supreme confidence and competence in his ability to control the intricate machinery, only a distant soothing exhaust burble and the softly playing jazz on the transistor radio to disturb the spellbinding silence of the awesome night, in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, birthplace of frontiersman Daniel Boone, John Barrymore, brother of Lionel, who played the evil Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" (but also the beloved Captain in "Captains Courageous"), comedian Bill Cosby, and renowned actor James Stewart, state bird Ruffed Grouse, state flower Mountain Laurel, state motto "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence", home of the 76ers, Phillies, Flyers, Penguins, Pirates, and Steelers, 2nd state to ratify the US Constitution, admitted to statehood 12 December 1787, when the strangest event of his not uneventful life suddenly and unexpectedly occurred.
CD-Rs and CD-RWs contain no aluminum. Only mass-produced stamped CDs contain aluminum. So archives made to CD-R or CD-RW are not vulnerable to this particular form of attack.
Having said that, I don't claim they're invulnerable to any attack forever. The secret to reliable and long lived archives is live archives. You regenerate the archived material before deterioration is expected, and you keep on regenerating it.
Well, Mr. Anonymous Coward, you're a bit confused. The Zeppelin NT has been successfully built and tested and has achieved type certification and is about to go into serial production.
I guess I CAN afford to go to space then
on
Tito In Space
·
· Score: 1
OK, I've got the $39. I demand to be taken to space for one second:-) I might even be able to scrape together enough $ for one minute.
Seriously, it can't be linear. They'd have to allocate so many $ for training and preparation in order to take you for any flight; so many $ for the launch and return; and only after that, so many $ per minute, with the caveat that you just can't bug one minute, because you can't just deorbit on split second demand - there are only certain places you can land.
No matter how efficient the technology becomes the right of people to meet and share is obvious, however selling copyrighted material is illegal.
(IANAL, bla bla)
It may be "obvious" that you can "share" things, but that does not necessarily make it generally legal.
For example, in the US, you can borrow your friend's CD and copy it legally for your own personal use. But if he performs the coping and gives you the copy, even for no consideration (i.e., even if he doesn't make money on the deal), that is against the law.
Similarly, if I lend or give you my copy of a book that is copyright, that is legal. If I copy it first, and lend or give you that copy ("share" it), that is illegal.
I'm not sure about your country (Canada), but I am sure that few laws are obvious.
The law is concerned with more than just whether the "sharer" makes a profit or not.
And as far as sunglasses that block infrared, any "high end" pair should block at least 90% of the infrared spectrum. My prescription Revo's block more than 95%, plus they look sooooo cool.
I think you'll find they block 90+% of UV (ultraviolet) - not IR. It is the UV that is considered harmful to the eyes (and skin).
"... most motherboards don't have [FireWire] on-board. So USB 2.0 would be nice for those of us (ahem, all of us) that have USB ports on our computers.
Surely you jest. Most motherboards don't have USB 2.0 hardware either. In fact I am not aware of a single one that does (a few do in fact have FireWire). USB 2.0 entails new hardware.
...or at least as long as active and caring human society - are no problem.
But you have to get away from the mindset that seeks a "wearever" medium, everlasting standards, and indefinitely available hardware. That is the naive approach.
The word is "living archives". The archivists' work is never done.
The approach that works is just to regenerate all data from media that is wearing out, obsolescent media, and obsolescent standards - before it is in danger of being lost. This must be a constant process of renewal. Since the data is digital, and anyone with the slightest imagination would store redundant copies in physically separated locations, the process is lossless.
So when 3.5" diskettes become well established, and 5.25" diskettes start looking like orphans, you redub everything from 5.25" to 3.5". Then the same thing when CDs overtake 3.5" diskettes. And on and on (I seriously doubt CDs are forever in any sense of the word).
The trick is to know when the time is right each time. I won't minimize the problem. But the watchword is "be conservative".
"Federal RICO statutes... have _very_ harsh penalties, as they were created and used to imprison and confiscate the ill-gotten assets of Mafia families and drug-running conspiracies."
Whoah! I am scared. Look how successful the wars against organized crime and drug running have been - NOT.
The balloon is only 1% or less full of helium when launched. There's only a tiny bubble of helium in it. The helium expands as the balloon rises into lower density air until it is 100% full at full altitude.
It's only a drop in the bucket of annual helium production of (1997) some 100,000,000 cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) in the US alone (the US produces the bulk of the world's helium).
More correctly, Einstein's rules work in the real world. Newton's laws, which are based on his observations of many years ago, hold true in a particular subset of the real world, where nothing is traveling quickly relative (no pun intended) to the speed of light.
Close, but no cigar. Newton's "laws" are an approximation of the truth. Einstein's theories are a better approximation. We don't know if a still better approximation will be developed in the future.
Newtonian physics is a better approximation the farther speeds are restricted below light speed, but there is no cutoff. As long as things are moving at all, there is some relativity effect.
Absolutely right. "Components" is a pretty broad term. In fact, a car can be made by assembling only three things in the right way: protons, neutrons, and electrons:-) (OK, maybe some other elementary particles thrown in, too, but I think you could make it work with only those three).
In fact, anything can be made by assembling these particles the right way. Computers, people, tennis shoes, Einstein's brain, the entire earth and everything in it.
But I bet no one here can do it. Not even assemble a pencil from particles. And you'd have top wait a long time for it to happen spontaneously.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Sulphur is not added. It is naturally present in all petroleum products. It is actually removed from diesel fuel in current European, and in near-future US, diesel fuel - just as it is removed from gasoline.
Current US sulphur levels in diesel fuel are 500 ppm. In Europe I think it is currently 50 ppm or so. In the US, it is headed to 15 ppm in a few years.
Far better diesels which meet stringent emission regulations can be realized with lower sulphur fuel. In Europe they can buy diesels with almost twice the hp as the one I can buy in the US at present. Hopefully the US will get in line with Europe with the new sulphur regulations.
I tend to agree that fear of asbestos has reached irrational levels, but not for the reason you state. Rust particles if inhaled in large quantities might harm you, but not by giving you cancer.
The rap is that asbestos particles inhaled even in tiny concentrations can cause cancer. This is sort of true.
The surprise is that the form of asbestos most used for insulation is not the form that is highly carcinogenic. Something to do with the size of the particles created if pulverized.
This is a little like the furor over particulates in exhaust emissions. Guess what? The particles in diesel exhaust emissions is not of a size which is very carcinogenic. Particulates in gasoline engine exhaust are much finer, and more carcinogenic. It is stupid to just measure the quantity; you have to assess the qualities as well. But that is too hard for knee-jerk environmentalists (as which I class the EPA). Sigh.
Lead and MTBE are both noxious gasoline additives used to increase octane rating, which allows higher compression ratios, which are more efficient. Ratios as high as 11:1 or so are feasible this way.
Since it is stupid to use a gasoline engine in the first place, it is pointless to spew EITHER of these into the environment.
My car has a turbo diesel engine. It has a compression ratio of 19.5:1, and gets about 50% higher mpg than a gasoline engine of similar performance in the same car. And only ordinary #2 diesel fuel is needed, with no additives whatsoever beyond a modicum (2 oz per 10 gal) of anti-gel when it gets really cold.
This modern diesel engine makes next to no smoke, emits practically no aromatic hydrocarbons, and has levels of other pollutants comparable to gasoline engines. Believe it. It pulls way more torque at lower rpm than a gasoline engine. Its fuel requires less energy to refine than gasoline, and there are no evaporative emissions. Or it will happily and efficiently burn bio-diesel when/if available.
If the choice is between gasoline and diesel, all cars except maybe a few super high performance models should be diesels. In the long run there may be other choices, but this is vast improvement we could make instantly.
Your suggestion is intellectually sound as far as it goes, and I am tempted by it, but unfortunately it contains a recursive fallacy - a fallacy very similar to that contained in the drunk driving law.
Let us say for the sake of argument that we can all agree on a defined figure, say 1%, a difference below which is deemed statistically insignificant. This means if the vote is 49.099% to 49.000% (the remainder voting for other parties), we call for the drawing by lot.
What if the vote is 49.10000001% to 49.0%? We only missed the criterion by a statistically insigificant 0.00000001%! This is too close! Perhaps there will be riots if we do not make an exception to the defined figure and and draw by lot in this one special case. But we want to say we are ruled by laws - how can we arbitrarily bend them for the special case? On the other hand, how can we possibly come up with a law which anticipates this special case - and an infinite number of other possible special cases - and deals with it in an acceptable manner?
You see, we have only put off the problem to the next level. The recursion extends forever.
I consider this very similar to the drunk driving criterion. If your blood alcohol level is 0.07999%, you are OK; if it is 0.08001% you are subject to arrest (0.08000% I'm not sure which - as if a physical quantity can ever in actuality be an exact number:-). But the difference represents a meaningless quantitative distinction.
This is ever the problem with trying to arrive at precisely defined formulae. It's a quandary. We don't want to have discretion reach the level of fast and loose, but neither do we want arbitrariness to reach the level of absurdity and eliminate the possibility of adapting to nuances of individual case.
I'm afraid I don't have the answer, and it gives me no pleasure to point out the fallacy.
The numbers are very easy to calculate. 22,000 miles, times 4, divided by 186,000 miles per second; that is 473 mS just for time of flight.
The service should shine for big downloads, but be rather poor for highly "chatty" stuff, with many request-response pairs. Loading web pages with many small objects would be rather disappointing, I should think. Checking POP3 email, if there are many small messages, would be pretty poor.
Slashdot Mirror
When "Earthblood" came out, the way it stirred the imagination, the wonder of it - I will never forget it. And all those Retief yarns!
None of them can ever be replaced. SF has been a vast wasteland for some time but for the old guard. With just about all of them gone, the SF I knew is dead, and the world is poorer for it.
It was a dark and stormy night. CNN Eashington Bureau Chief Frank (call sign "Cool Man") Sesno was driving in his luxurious freshly washed and waxed air conditioned Chevrolet, with aplomb and supreme confidence and competence in his ability to control the intricate machinery, only a distant soothing exhaust burble and the softly playing jazz on the transistor radio to disturb the spellbinding silence of the awesome night, in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, birthplace of frontiersman Daniel Boone, John Barrymore, brother of Lionel, who played the evil Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" (but also the beloved Captain in "Captains Courageous"), comedian Bill Cosby, and renowned actor James Stewart, state bird Ruffed Grouse, state flower Mountain Laurel, state motto "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence", home of the 76ers, Phillies, Flyers, Penguins, Pirates, and Steelers, 2nd state to ratify the US Constitution, admitted to statehood 12 December 1787, when the strangest event of his not uneventful life suddenly and unexpectedly occurred.
(-1, derivative)
CD-Rs and CD-RWs contain no aluminum. Only mass-produced stamped CDs contain aluminum. So archives made to CD-R or CD-RW are not vulnerable to this particular form of attack.
Having said that, I don't claim they're invulnerable to any attack forever. The secret to reliable and long lived archives is live archives. You regenerate the archived material before deterioration is expected, and you keep on regenerating it.
Well, Mr. Anonymous Coward, you're a bit confused. The Zeppelin NT has been successfully built and tested and has achieved type certification and is about to go into serial production.
OK, I've got the $39. I demand to be taken to space for one second :-) I might even be able to scrape together enough $ for one minute.
Seriously, it can't be linear. They'd have to allocate so many $ for training and preparation in order to take you for any flight; so many $ for the launch and return; and only after that, so many $ per minute, with the caveat that you just can't bug one minute, because you can't just deorbit on split second demand - there are only certain places you can land.
No matter how efficient the technology becomes the right of people to meet and share is obvious, however selling copyrighted material is illegal.
(IANAL, bla bla)
It may be "obvious" that you can "share" things, but that does not necessarily make it generally legal.
For example, in the US, you can borrow your friend's CD and copy it legally for your own personal use. But if he performs the coping and gives you the copy, even for no consideration (i.e., even if he doesn't make money on the deal), that is against the law.
Similarly, if I lend or give you my copy of a book that is copyright, that is legal. If I copy it first, and lend or give you that copy ("share" it), that is illegal.
I'm not sure about your country (Canada), but I am sure that few laws are obvious.
The law is concerned with more than just whether the "sharer" makes a profit or not.
And as far as sunglasses that block infrared, any "high end" pair should block at least 90% of the infrared spectrum. My prescription Revo's block more than 95%, plus they look sooooo cool.
I think you'll find they block 90+% of UV (ultraviolet) - not IR. It is the UV that is considered harmful to the eyes (and skin).
Pin hole glasses would work, but you wouldn't be able to see a whole lot unless it was quite bright in the store (which it generally is).
But hardly any USB _2.0_ devices. There are lots of FireWire devices - and not just video devices, either. Hard drives, CDRs, DVD-RAMs, etc, etc.
"... most motherboards don't have [FireWire] on-board. So USB 2.0 would be nice for those of us (ahem, all of us) that have USB ports on our computers.
Surely you jest. Most motherboards don't have USB 2.0 hardware either. In fact I am not aware of a single one that does (a few do in fact have FireWire). USB 2.0 entails new hardware.
"Uhm the F-14 TOmcat is listed at 3.5."
Not in any authoritative place; that's for sure. The F-14 actual maximum speed is Mach 2.38.
See: F-14 Specs
Duh. A Supersonic Combustion Ramjet is a kind of Ramjet, as its name makes plain.
...or at least as long as active and caring human society - are no problem.
But you have to get away from the mindset that seeks a "wearever" medium, everlasting standards, and indefinitely available hardware. That is the naive approach.
The word is "living archives". The archivists' work is never done.
The approach that works is just to regenerate all data from media that is wearing out, obsolescent media, and obsolescent standards - before it is in danger of being lost. This must be a constant process of renewal. Since the data is digital, and anyone with the slightest imagination would store redundant copies in physically separated locations, the process is lossless.
So when 3.5" diskettes become well established, and 5.25" diskettes start looking like orphans, you redub everything from 5.25" to 3.5". Then the same thing when CDs overtake 3.5" diskettes. And on and on (I seriously doubt CDs are forever in any sense of the word).
The trick is to know when the time is right each time. I won't minimize the problem. But the watchword is "be conservative".
the existing record for a production [jet] craft is about mach 2.1).
Eh? Hello??? The SR-71 speed is more like Mach 3.0 - SUSTAINED - with many fleet hours at that kind of speed. It was a jet (turbojet).
The X-43A is a RAMjet, which is another kettle of fish.
"Federal RICO statutes ... have _very_ harsh penalties, as they were created and used to imprison and confiscate the ill-gotten assets of Mafia families and drug-running conspiracies."
Whoah! I am scared. Look how successful the wars against organized crime and drug running have been - NOT.
The space shuttle is going 18,000 mph on re-entry. He won't be going that fast. 700-900 mph. Big difference.
The balloon is only 1% or less full of helium when launched. There's only a tiny bubble of helium in it. The helium expands as the balloon rises into lower density air until it is 100% full at full altitude.
y /h elium/330398.pdf
It's only a drop in the bucket of annual helium production of (1997) some 100,000,000 cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) in the US alone (the US produces the bulk of the world's helium).
See:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodit
More correctly, Einstein's rules work in the real world. Newton's laws, which are based on his observations of many years ago, hold true in a particular subset of the real world, where nothing is traveling quickly relative (no pun intended) to the speed of light.
Close, but no cigar. Newton's "laws" are an approximation of the truth. Einstein's theories are a better approximation. We don't know if a still better approximation will be developed in the future.
Newtonian physics is a better approximation the farther speeds are restricted below light speed, but there is no cutoff. As long as things are moving at all, there is some relativity effect.
Absolutely right. "Components" is a pretty broad term. In fact, a car can be made by assembling only three things in the right way: protons, neutrons, and electrons :-) (OK, maybe some other elementary particles thrown in, too, but I think you could make it work with only those three).
In fact, anything can be made by assembling these particles the right way. Computers, people, tennis shoes, Einstein's brain, the entire earth and everything in it.
But I bet no one here can do it. Not even assemble a pencil from particles. And you'd have top wait a long time for it to happen spontaneously.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Sulphur is not added. It is naturally present in all petroleum products. It is actually removed from diesel fuel in current European, and in near-future US, diesel fuel - just as it is removed from gasoline.
Current US sulphur levels in diesel fuel are 500 ppm. In Europe I think it is currently 50 ppm or so. In the US, it is headed to 15 ppm in a few years.
Far better diesels which meet stringent emission regulations can be realized with lower sulphur fuel. In Europe they can buy diesels with almost twice the hp as the one I can buy in the US at present. Hopefully the US will get in line with Europe with the new sulphur regulations.
I tend to agree that fear of asbestos has reached irrational levels, but not for the reason you state. Rust particles if inhaled in large quantities might harm you, but not by giving you cancer.
The rap is that asbestos particles inhaled even in tiny concentrations can cause cancer. This is sort of true.
The surprise is that the form of asbestos most used for insulation is not the form that is highly carcinogenic. Something to do with the size of the particles created if pulverized.
This is a little like the furor over particulates in exhaust emissions. Guess what? The particles in diesel exhaust emissions is not of a size which is very carcinogenic. Particulates in gasoline engine exhaust are much finer, and more carcinogenic. It is stupid to just measure the quantity; you have to assess the qualities as well. But that is too hard for knee-jerk environmentalists (as which I class the EPA). Sigh.
Lead and MTBE are both noxious gasoline additives used to increase octane rating, which allows higher compression ratios, which are more efficient. Ratios as high as 11:1 or so are feasible this way.
Since it is stupid to use a gasoline engine in the first place, it is pointless to spew EITHER of these into the environment.
My car has a turbo diesel engine. It has a compression ratio of 19.5:1, and gets about 50% higher mpg than a gasoline engine of similar performance in the same car. And only ordinary #2 diesel fuel is needed, with no additives whatsoever beyond a modicum (2 oz per 10 gal) of anti-gel when it gets really cold.
This modern diesel engine makes next to no smoke, emits practically no aromatic hydrocarbons, and has levels of other pollutants comparable to gasoline engines. Believe it. It pulls way more torque at lower rpm than a gasoline engine. Its fuel requires less energy to refine than gasoline, and there are no evaporative emissions. Or it will happily and efficiently burn bio-diesel when/if available.
If the choice is between gasoline and diesel, all cars except maybe a few super high performance models should be diesels. In the long run there may be other choices, but this is vast improvement we could make instantly.
ISDN is high speed? Har de har har! What a laugh! ISDN is yesterday's idea of high speed. Like a 64K leased line, already! Bwa ha ha!
Your suggestion is intellectually sound as far as it goes, and I am tempted by it, but unfortunately it contains a recursive fallacy - a fallacy very similar to that contained in the drunk driving law.
:-). But the difference represents a meaningless quantitative distinction.
Let us say for the sake of argument that we can all agree on a defined figure, say 1%, a difference below which is deemed statistically insignificant. This means if the vote is 49.099% to 49.000% (the remainder voting for other parties), we call for the drawing by lot.
What if the vote is 49.10000001% to 49.0%? We only missed the criterion by a statistically insigificant 0.00000001%! This is too close! Perhaps there will be riots if we do not make an exception to the defined figure and and draw by lot in this one special case. But we want to say we are ruled by laws - how can we arbitrarily bend them for the special case? On the other hand, how can we possibly come up with a law which anticipates this special case - and an infinite number of other possible special cases - and deals with it in an acceptable manner?
You see, we have only put off the problem to the next level. The recursion extends forever.
I consider this very similar to the drunk driving criterion. If your blood alcohol level is 0.07999%, you are OK; if it is 0.08001% you are subject to arrest (0.08000% I'm not sure which - as if a physical quantity can ever in actuality be an exact number
This is ever the problem with trying to arrive at precisely defined formulae. It's a quandary. We don't want to have discretion reach the level of fast and loose, but neither do we want arbitrariness to reach the level of absurdity and eliminate the possibility of adapting to nuances of individual case.
I'm afraid I don't have the answer, and it gives me no pleasure to point out the fallacy.
The numbers are very easy to calculate. 22,000 miles, times 4, divided by 186,000 miles per second; that is 473 mS just for time of flight.
The service should shine for big downloads, but be rather poor for highly "chatty" stuff, with many request-response pairs. Loading web pages with many small objects would be rather disappointing, I should think. Checking POP3 email, if there are many small messages, would be pretty poor.