You know, the parent post ISN'T offtopic; it's a funny and relevant paraphrasing of a South Park bit about irrational defense of legal claims.
Actually, I think that post sums up SCO's position much better than any argument I've seen appear so far in the endless series of SCO topics to appear on Slashdot.
It amazes me that the orbit could be calculated with that accuracy and precision at all... there are so many gravitational influences in the neighbourhood that I'd have thought it impossible. Anything beyond a two-body problem is a problem, right?
Just one more thought on virtual wars - while it's unlikely to ever be used as a method of resolving conflict in the real world, that's because of people, not the technology.
If the US military can get a computer to accurately simulate everything going on in a huge nuke blast, they can build a game server(farm) that could effectively handle a couple of million troops and their equipment.
Actually, there's no real reason this couldn't be done right now. Build a MMOFPS environment, and add models and behaviours for each side's equipment... you would need to limit the number of players and equipment to match a nation's real-world counterparts as well.
You could host the servers in neutral country, monitored by a neutral agency, and have that agency collect and destroy the real-world analog of anything destroyed virtually, along with some other form of payment for troops killed virtually. After all, we don't want those pesky Suicide Booths from the old Star Trek, do we?
Given that the original had really horrid episode plots, could the new show not have taken the original characters and motivations and simply written fresh (hopefully less campy) scripts?
If you don't want the original characters and motivations, why keep the franchise name at all, when that could only hope to draw in the fans who are pissed that you didn't keep the original characters and motivations?
Honestly, the whole "Cylons are trying to wipe us out, let's run to the lost planet Earth for help while having space dogfights" thing combined with the "We're a bunch of human rabble held together against our own infighting by a wise leader" was a fine platform for a sci-fi series. Watching Starbuck raise a baby with the help of a befriended Cylon, on the other hand, makes me ill... and yes, there was such an episode in the original series.
I, and the vast majority of 'Net users, shouldn't have to spend extra money or time to deal with spam flooding our mailboxes and overall bandwidth because a small percentage of 'Net users are idiots, being fed on by a few human shitpiles.
Slap the idiots, shoot the shitpiles.
Maybe what we need is software to track outbound traffic responding to spam (and capture it to prove it isn't automated)... Maybe the spam is sent from other countries, but most of the respondents are in the USA or Europe where you can get at them. Pass a law, fine the lawbreakers, or at least publicise their attempt to get a bigger penis!
Perhaps we DO send spies and sabateurs... and we've just been so good at it you haven't noticed yet! Hmm... on second thought, maybe we've been so bad at it you haven't noticed yet.
Actually, it is. Forgive me for not recalling the link, and possibly being wrong about the nation involved, but I believe Japan has provided a small rotating cylinder for the ISS to perform low-G experiments.
It might not sound too high-tech, but I believe it took some excellent and delicate engineering to keep the thing perfectly balanced while allowing internal objects to move about freely.
Quite a bit is already known about using rotating rings to produce AG, including the fact that it takes a very long radius to reduce motion sickness in humans to irrelevant levels... requiring devices that are not practical for us to build at this time.
I buy used DVDs at around $10-$15 Canadian, or the price of two to three rentals. So, if I watch the movie more than three times before the media fails, I've saved money, right?
Re:VR FPS & invisibility
on
Human Pac Man
·
· Score: 1
OK - now YOU try and pay the insurance premiums!!!:)
VR FPS & invisibility
on
Human Pac Man
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Actually, if you did immersive VR instead of mere augmentation, you could simply 'erase' an invisible player from other players views of the arena.
You'd have to have a cutoff - like you become visible if you're within five feet or so to avoid running into 'invisible' people. I also imagine you'd want the VR walls to line up pretty closely with the real ones to avoid toe-stubbing.
Should the government tell parents how to raise their kids? No.
Should parents spend enough time with their kids to have as strong a social group as the kids have with their peers? Yes.
DO parents, on average, spend enough time with their kids? Probably not.
Should *I* have to deal with the problems caused by a percentage of kids improperly raised? Definitely not.
The only solution I've seen so far is the government passing legislation every time a significant problem crops up. It isn't fixing the problem, but it bandaids the symptoms enough that I can walk to my local corner store without getting mugged by a teen with a knife.
On the other hand, as expressed in another comment - a kid fragging is a kid who is having harmless fun and not bothering me. I say, let them play games.
Got a beef with your local video store? Walk in with that portable display, and then have the store clerks, management, owners, etc all charged because they've recorded you via CCTV.
The best bit is the provision that would allow you to restrain them pending the arrival of the police. You may not be an employee of the facility, but you're the copyright holder on your video, right?
I'm not aware of any technology that can harness the mechanical energy of the heart to generate electricity. However, there is a fuel cell that runs on blood, so I suppose you could have a recording device implanted and body-powered; hopefully the fuel cell has been designed to shut off if your blood doesn't have enough stored energy remaining - after all, you need some TO LIVE. The storage medium and data extraction are still going to be a bitch.
I don't know about you, but if store security (nevermind a janitor) tried to lay hands on me or otherwise restrain me, I'd assault them quite violently and worry about the charges later. I might do worse if they tried to grab my wife. I'm certain this would happen the first time it was tried on someone who is a member of a 'militia', or even has such leanings.
I'm pretty sure this law won't pass, even in the current legislative environment in the States, but I'm comforted by the fact that I'm north of the border.
That's actually an interesting senario, the bigot 'towel' remarks notwithstanding. Thor's Hammer, right? Orbital crowbars. Instead of a normal satellite, just put up the maximum payload consisting of a sphere of heat-resistant ceramic and a deorbiting thruster.
However, I don't doubt for a moment that the satellite comes with a non-negotiable maintenance clause that makes sure you don't get control of the thruster systems.
I suspect that you'd have no problem at all putting whatever you wanted on your satelite web server. Of course, after you started hosting mpegs of necrobeastialpedophilia whoever was linking the satelite to land lines would STOP, and you'd have cops at your door wondering where those images were generated.
It's kind of like ransom - the biggest problem isn't the crime, its trying to collect.
If we didn't have such patent protections, we WOULD still be folding toilet paper as you describe - however, some bright soul invented the 'wrap it around a tube that is easy to load into a dispenser' and now we have ROLLS of toilet paper instead of STACKS!
Vision's already been done, decades ago. They're still working on getting it to a good resolution and smaller package. Right now, I think it's a big whopping cable into your head, a large computer on your waist, and a clunky pair of camera glasses.
... but it moves. And if you count Earthshine as illumination enough to irritate you (and I'm sure it would bother most astronomers), then there probably periods when either the Earth or the sun are in your sky no matter where on the lunar surface you plant yourself. That's what deep craters are for!
I loved the original trilogy when I was a kid. I can still watch it, but it seems so 'thin' to me now.
I went to see SW:TPM with high hopes. 1)An extended pod race to advertise a video game. 2)Jar-jar - need I say more?
I went to see SW:AotC because my wife made me. Follow the bouncing Yoda!
I will NOT be seeing the next bit of crap to be extracted from a toilet and thrown up on the big screen, and I'm not going to make any effort to see these cartoons.
Obviously, you don't order and consume a 'super-sized' beverage that is at least twice the maximum human bladder capacity in the first hour of the film.
I missed the penultimate 15 minute segment of Lotr:FotR because I DID. I also discovered that when sufficiently motivated, I can be back in my seat in a time that would shame an Indy pit crew.
Well, I've read a few of the many (probably billions) of deconstructions of LotR, and I'm pretty sure that one large hunk of theme in the story is how the Industrial Revolution is evil and the end of good times for mankind. Even if Tolkien didn't mean it as instructional - it was definitely a theme of the times and it sure as hell looks like one of the larger foundation blocks for the story.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, the parent post ISN'T offtopic; it's a funny and relevant paraphrasing of a South Park bit about irrational defense of legal claims.
Actually, I think that post sums up SCO's position much better than any argument I've seen appear so far in the endless series of SCO topics to appear on Slashdot.
It amazes me that the orbit could be calculated with that accuracy and precision at all... there are so many gravitational influences in the neighbourhood that I'd have thought it impossible. Anything beyond a two-body problem is a problem, right?
Just one more thought on virtual wars - while it's unlikely to ever be used as a method of resolving conflict in the real world, that's because of people, not the technology.
If the US military can get a computer to accurately simulate everything going on in a huge nuke blast, they can build a game server(farm) that could effectively handle a couple of million troops and their equipment.
Actually, there's no real reason this couldn't be done right now. Build a MMOFPS environment, and add models and behaviours for each side's equipment... you would need to limit the number of players and equipment to match a nation's real-world counterparts as well.
You could host the servers in neutral country, monitored by a neutral agency, and have that agency collect and destroy the real-world analog of anything destroyed virtually, along with some other form of payment for troops killed virtually. After all, we don't want those pesky Suicide Booths from the old Star Trek, do we?
Honestly, the whole "Cylons are trying to wipe us out, let's run to the lost planet Earth for help while having space dogfights" thing combined with the "We're a bunch of human rabble held together against our own infighting by a wise leader" was a fine platform for a sci-fi series. Watching Starbuck raise a baby with the help of a befriended Cylon, on the other hand, makes me ill... and yes, there was such an episode in the original series.
I, and the vast majority of 'Net users, shouldn't have to spend extra money or time to deal with spam flooding our mailboxes and overall bandwidth because a small percentage of 'Net users are idiots, being fed on by a few human shitpiles.
Slap the idiots, shoot the shitpiles.
Maybe what we need is software to track outbound traffic responding to spam (and capture it to prove it isn't automated)... Maybe the spam is sent from other countries, but most of the respondents are in the USA or Europe where you can get at them. Pass a law, fine the lawbreakers, or at least publicise their attempt to get a bigger penis!
Perhaps we DO send spies and sabateurs... and we've just been so good at it you haven't noticed yet! Hmm... on second thought, maybe we've been so bad at it you haven't noticed yet.
Actually, it is. Forgive me for not recalling the link, and possibly being wrong about the nation involved, but I believe Japan has provided a small rotating cylinder for the ISS to perform low-G experiments.
It might not sound too high-tech, but I believe it took some excellent and delicate engineering to keep the thing perfectly balanced while allowing internal objects to move about freely.
Quite a bit is already known about using rotating rings to produce AG, including the fact that it takes a very long radius to reduce motion sickness in humans to irrelevant levels... requiring devices that are not practical for us to build at this time.
I have no idea what it would cost, but it would blow LaserQuest away if you could actually get it to work for 20 players at a time.
I buy used DVDs at around $10-$15 Canadian, or the price of two to three rentals. So, if I watch the movie more than three times before the media fails, I've saved money, right?
OK - now YOU try and pay the insurance premiums!!! :)
Actually, if you did immersive VR instead of mere augmentation, you could simply 'erase' an invisible player from other players views of the arena.
You'd have to have a cutoff - like you become visible if you're within five feet or so to avoid running into 'invisible' people. I also imagine you'd want the VR walls to line up pretty closely with the real ones to avoid toe-stubbing.
The only solution I've seen so far is the government passing legislation every time a significant problem crops up. It isn't fixing the problem, but it bandaids the symptoms enough that I can walk to my local corner store without getting mugged by a teen with a knife.
On the other hand, as expressed in another comment - a kid fragging is a kid who is having harmless fun and not bothering me. I say, let them play games.
Got a beef with your local video store? Walk in with that portable display, and then have the store clerks, management, owners, etc all charged because they've recorded you via CCTV.
The best bit is the provision that would allow you to restrain them pending the arrival of the police. You may not be an employee of the facility, but you're the copyright holder on your video, right?
I'm not aware of any technology that can harness the mechanical energy of the heart to generate electricity. However, there is a fuel cell that runs on blood, so I suppose you could have a recording device implanted and body-powered; hopefully the fuel cell has been designed to shut off if your blood doesn't have enough stored energy remaining - after all, you need some TO LIVE. The storage medium and data extraction are still going to be a bitch.
I don't know about you, but if store security (nevermind a janitor) tried to lay hands on me or otherwise restrain me, I'd assault them quite violently and worry about the charges later. I might do worse if they tried to grab my wife. I'm certain this would happen the first time it was tried on someone who is a member of a 'militia', or even has such leanings.
I'm pretty sure this law won't pass, even in the current legislative environment in the States, but I'm comforted by the fact that I'm north of the border.
That's actually an interesting senario, the bigot 'towel' remarks notwithstanding. Thor's Hammer, right? Orbital crowbars. Instead of a normal satellite, just put up the maximum payload consisting of a sphere of heat-resistant ceramic and a deorbiting thruster.
However, I don't doubt for a moment that the satellite comes with a non-negotiable maintenance clause that makes sure you don't get control of the thruster systems.
I suspect that you'd have no problem at all putting whatever you wanted on your satelite web server. Of course, after you started hosting mpegs of necrobeastialpedophilia whoever was linking the satelite to land lines would STOP, and you'd have cops at your door wondering where those images were generated.
It's kind of like ransom - the biggest problem isn't the crime, its trying to collect.
If we didn't have such patent protections, we WOULD still be folding toilet paper as you describe - however, some bright soul invented the 'wrap it around a tube that is easy to load into a dispenser' and now we have ROLLS of toilet paper instead of STACKS!
*Insert BIG smiley here*
Jonadab, meet hyperbole.
Vision's already been done, decades ago. They're still working on getting it to a good resolution and smaller package. Right now, I think it's a big whopping cable into your head, a large computer on your waist, and a clunky pair of camera glasses.
... but it moves. And if you count Earthshine as illumination enough to irritate you (and I'm sure it would bother most astronomers), then there probably periods when either the Earth or the sun are in your sky no matter where on the lunar surface you plant yourself. That's what deep craters are for!
Well, mod this flamebait if you will...
I loved the original trilogy when I was a kid. I can still watch it, but it seems so 'thin' to me now.
I went to see SW:TPM with high hopes. 1)An extended pod race to advertise a video game. 2)Jar-jar - need I say more?
I went to see SW:AotC because my wife made me. Follow the bouncing Yoda!
I will NOT be seeing the next bit of crap to be extracted from a toilet and thrown up on the big screen, and I'm not going to make any effort to see these cartoons.
Obviously, you don't order and consume a 'super-sized' beverage that is at least twice the maximum human bladder capacity in the first hour of the film.
I missed the penultimate 15 minute segment of Lotr:FotR because I DID. I also discovered that when sufficiently motivated, I can be back in my seat in a time that would shame an Indy pit crew.
Well, I've read a few of the many (probably billions) of deconstructions of LotR, and I'm pretty sure that one large hunk of theme in the story is how the Industrial Revolution is evil and the end of good times for mankind. Even if Tolkien didn't mean it as instructional - it was definitely a theme of the times and it sure as hell looks like one of the larger foundation blocks for the story.