I wonder what that thing is just to the lower-left of the heat shield. When I first saw it, the picture was shrunk by my browser, so it looked like a plastic water bottle. On zooming to full size, it looked like some kind of metal spring.
Nothing... The nuclear-powered satellites and space probes sent up so far have all their nuclear material in a hardened box designed to survive reentry and crashing.
The space shuttle Colombia apparently had a similar box (although I believe it contained something else like data recorders) that survived and was recovered intact after Colombia broke up during reentry.
This reminds me of the latest Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe, where someone came up with the idea of P2P music sharing from car to car.
There would always be a server car or two cruising through the tunnels, sharing files with other cars. Then any car could listen to any music they chose, and could delete it all off their car before they got to any police checkpoint.
I believe that they found remains of about seven individuals, and it was more than just skulls.
They also compared the bones to those of human children, as well as adults who were dwarfed because of a disease, and concluded that these were adults who were naturally small.
Things like this go through peer review, and there are plenty of others who question the findings. So far it hasn't been debunked, but scientists still don't have enough data to be absolutely confident.
And it seems that he is likely unhappy talking about computers and the Net, when there are more mundane social affairs occurring with which he would rather be involved.
I guess now that he's moved on, you could call him "Happy Gillmor".:)
Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of.
In my opinion, visa programs for the U.S. aren't all that generous, and visas tend to be grudgingly given. I thought my experience getting a visa for a European country (even though I am a U.S. citizen) was difficult until I talked to some people in the U.S. who described their experience trying to get a visa for the U.S.
As for other countries being generous to Americans, I think it varies from country to country. I know that it's a piece of cake to go work in India: far, far easier than it is to work in the U.S. I did some research, and found out that all you need to work in India is a job offer. That's it.
In Afghanistan, all you need to do is find transportation to the country.:)
As I recall, ancient Egypt was wetter than it is nowadays. I believe there used to be more grassland where desert is today. It's hard for me to imagine.
Those climate must have had some serious ramifications on the lives of humans, but since there are almost no records from that time, we'll never know the extent of it.
I'm in complete agreement. How can he predict doom and gloom when we are the only sentient species we know of? Sure disasters happen: I could be hit by a meteor or an ebola-infected monkey could bite me while typing this - but it's not likely.
Somehow humanity has managed to survive as long as it has without being wiped out by some catastrophic event.
All the millenia humans have existed, we were blissfully unaware of any danger from space. Now that we are aware, something is going to happen any day now?
Come on people! Just because you fear it doesn't mean it's more likely it will happen. I'm not terribly worried about catastrophic meteor impacts are anything like that.
Sure, it might be nice to have something in case a nasty rock comes along, but it's a low priority thing in my opinion.
Yiddish is actually a Germanic language. I know German, and I've found myself understanding some bits Yiddish the few times I've heard it. From what I hear, it's mostly Germanic with a good portion of Hebrew thrown in.
Sometimes it just seems like the leaders of some government are just childlike and whiny. OK, so some people don't see Taiwan as part of China: get over it you bunch of babies.
Are they really that incapable of being exposed to a different view of the world? It's not like a stupid video game representing Taiwan as its own country is going to make China break up or something. Taiwan really *is* an independent country, whether the People's Republic of China likes it or not. These are the realities people: stop sticking your heads in the sand.
I hate the stupid ultrasensitive crap that some governments (or even societies) get all upset about. Pretty much every country has some minor stupid thing they get all uptight about.
Argentina get all pissy about the Falkland Islands, which are hardly worth the trouble.
The United States seems to spit fire if anyone talks about it stifling democracy in other countries or waging war for reasons other than "freedom", or burning flags (which causes harm to so many people!).
India and Pakistan stop thinking rationally every time the subject of Kashmir comes up.
Turkey frothes at the mouth every time the Kurds are mentioned.
Some things just aren't as important as people seem to think they are. It's time to grow up, it's time to calm down.
True, Pentium II chips are still overkill for some uses: simple web terminal, print server, file server, etc. There's nothing like a cheap/free computer to install Linux on, eh? That's what I'm doing right now: I have a Pentium MMX 200 computer that I'm planning to put Linux on and use it as an email/chatting/web-browsing computer.
There are still a lot of people, however, who are getting rid of their Pentium II computers and can't find anyone to buy them. There's just not a big demand for them anymore. That was just what I was referring to: there is still a demand, but it's much less than the supply.
I think that although there would be changes in the short-term, extremely long lived people would result in the stagnation of society in the long run.
Once people live beyond 40, they tend to cling to the ideas they already possess and don't much like change. Society progresses when the old fogeys in power die off and younger people with newer ideas take their place.
I predict that in a long-lived society, old ideas would stay around and change would be minimal. The only way for change would be for the younger people to be far more numerous than the older people.
I forgot to mention that anal rapings don't actually occur regularly there, as guards will usually hear and stop it if the prisoner yells for help. It still does happen on occasion, and so do the inevitable lawsuits.
There is, however, plenty of voluntary homosexual activity there, especially between cellmates.
My girlfriend works in a California prison, and although they get coddled a lot, it's still not a place you would want to be in.
Indeed, there are a lot of nice things like TV in their cells (which the prisoners have to purchase with their own money, not the state's), free medical care (there are lots of lawsuits when medical care is lacking), and free education.
There are, however, lots of disadvantages: You of course can't go anywhere, the food is pretty crappy, there isn't much of it: just enough to keep them nourished. Ramen is so valued that it is like a currency (they trade in "soups"), and inmates will buy drugs (when they get smuggled into the prison) with ramen.
So in addition to being hungry a lot, the inmates are overcrowded, live in buildings that are usually too hot, and since there are so few showers, only get to shower once a week. Apparently they smell like sewers, sweating constantly in the hot buildings.
The worst part of prison life is that since they don't have a lot do, they are constantly trying to think of ways to kill each other. A lot of them have some insane drive to kill each other, and they'll make weapons out of virtually anything. In a recent stabbing, the weapon was a sharpened light switch cover plate that was covertly removed from a wall. No matter how hard they try to deprive the inmates of weapon material, they always manage to get their hands on something.
Their intense desire to kill each other is absolutely bizarre to me. Absolutely nothing (not even the death penalty) will deter some of them from trying to kill their fellow inmates. They form gangs that fight against each other, and any inmates refusing to join gangs will be killed by anyone in a gang.
Indeed the prison system does everything they can to prevent it, but unless they lock them all in solitary confinement, it still manages to happen.
So in addition to living conditions that aren't fun, one constantly has to watch out for murderous fellow inmates with a desire to kill.
They may get coddled in some respects, but it's still a very unpleasant place to live.
The maximum FPS (frames per second) for Half-Life 2, Farcry, and Doom 3 at varying resolutions.
There's no way I would buy a server that can't get above 40 FPS on Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024! It you can't trust it to play your favorite shooter without choking, how could you trust it to support the essential functions of you company?
I think that giving robots to old people is a terrible solution!
Not only do we have to worry about them pushing old people down the stairs, but they are almost guaranteed to terrorize the elderly and consume their medicine for fuel!
For any of those who are wondering about this, the parent post is a SimCity reference (at least SimCity 2000, since I haven't played any later versions).
"Llama" was the medium game speed, and "Cheetah" was the fast game speed. One usually went to Cheetah when there wasn't much to do at the moment, and all you wanted to do was to wait for time to pass.
I think the slowest game speed was "Turtle" or something like that.
If keystroke logging isn't wiretapping, maybe this opens a whole can of worms whereby spyware becomes legal.
Just because the judge rules it isn't wiretapping doesn't mean it is legal. The judge just ruled that anyone involved with keystroke logging can't be convicted of wiretapping.
The guy who was covertly keystroke logging will probably be charged with something else. There are plenty of things other than "wiretapping" you can charge someone with.
It's true: at least the jet-skiing part. The U.S. army has some stupid commercial on TV that makes look like all they do in the army is mess with cool stuff with technology, learning skills, and playing sports.
Of course they never show any of the miserable stuff (cleaning toilets, boot camp, etc.) or people being shot at or coffins or anything. I can't say I feel all that sorry for people who join the army and end up in Iraq. Sure it's a bummer they're in a nasty place getting shot at, but they did voluntarily join and knew what the job involved. Armies do occasionally get involved in fighting after all.
Interestingly enough, I've lived in California for most of my life and I've never experienced a single earthquake. So it's not like everywhere in California is having earthquakes all the time.
I wouldn't mind experiencing a mild one just to see what it feels like.
The only problem is that Americans like their cars and hate high gas prices. There would probably be a huge backlash against any politicians that tried to significantly increase gas taxes.
Recently, Californians were so angry at yearly car tax (which in my opinion wasn't that bad) that they cut it so that it's now a third of what it used to be. Making gas significantly more expensive would be political suicide, especially since car is the only reasonable form of transportation for a lot of people in California.
When I lived in Europe, I wasn't even interested in having a car because public transportation got me everywhere. In California where I live now, not having a car would make things difficult. Everything here is designed around the automobile: you even have to drive a ways to get to a food store because they are all clustered in large shopping centers surrounded by huge parking lots.
In Europe where I lived (southern Germany), there was *always* at least a food store within walking distance and other stores could be reached by a long walk or a short bus/train ride. I sure liked that.
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I wonder what that thing is just to the lower-left of the heat shield. When I first saw it, the picture was shrunk by my browser, so it looked like a plastic water bottle. On zooming to full size, it looked like some kind of metal spring.
Oh, I just noticed a second one off to the right.
I wonder what it was used for.
Nothing... The nuclear-powered satellites and space probes sent up so far have all their nuclear material in a hardened box designed to survive reentry and crashing.
The space shuttle Colombia apparently had a similar box (although I believe it contained something else like data recorders) that survived and was recovered intact after Colombia broke up during reentry.
Not only spam and porn, but P2P music as well.
This reminds me of the latest Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe, where someone came up with the idea of P2P music sharing from car to car.
There would always be a server car or two cruising through the tunnels, sharing files with other cars. Then any car could listen to any music they chose, and could delete it all off their car before they got to any police checkpoint.
At least that's how I recall it
It looks like the T1000 won't be appearing any time soon: at least not until Skynet comes online.
I believe that they found remains of about seven individuals, and it was more than just skulls.
They also compared the bones to those of human children, as well as adults who were dwarfed because of a disease, and concluded that these were adults who were naturally small.
Things like this go through peer review, and there are plenty of others who question the findings. So far it hasn't been debunked, but scientists still don't have enough data to be absolutely confident.
And it seems that he is likely unhappy talking about computers and the Net, when there are more mundane social affairs occurring with which he would rather be involved.
I guess now that he's moved on, you could call him "Happy Gillmor". :)
Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of.
In my opinion, visa programs for the U.S. aren't all that generous, and visas tend to be grudgingly given. I thought my experience getting a visa for a European country (even though I am a U.S. citizen) was difficult until I talked to some people in the U.S. who described their experience trying to get a visa for the U.S.
As for other countries being generous to Americans, I think it varies from country to country. I know that it's a piece of cake to go work in India: far, far easier than it is to work in the U.S. I did some research, and found out that all you need to work in India is a job offer. That's it.
In Afghanistan, all you need to do is find transportation to the country.
As I recall, ancient Egypt was wetter than it is nowadays. I believe there used to be more grassland where desert is today. It's hard for me to imagine.
Those climate must have had some serious ramifications on the lives of humans, but since there are almost no records from that time, we'll never know the extent of it.
I'm in complete agreement. How can he predict doom and gloom when we are the only sentient species we know of? Sure disasters happen: I could be hit by a meteor or an ebola-infected monkey could bite me while typing this - but it's not likely.
Somehow humanity has managed to survive as long as it has without being wiped out by some catastrophic event.
All the millenia humans have existed, we were blissfully unaware of any danger from space. Now that we are aware, something is going to happen any day now?
Come on people! Just because you fear it doesn't mean it's more likely it will happen. I'm not terribly worried about catastrophic meteor impacts are anything like that.
Sure, it might be nice to have something in case a nasty rock comes along, but it's a low priority thing in my opinion.
Yiddish is actually a Germanic language. I know German, and I've found myself understanding some bits Yiddish the few times I've heard it. From what I hear, it's mostly Germanic with a good portion of Hebrew thrown in.
Wikipedia has an interesting article on Yiddish.
Sometimes it just seems like the leaders of some government are just childlike and whiny. OK, so some people don't see Taiwan as part of China: get over it you bunch of babies.
Are they really that incapable of being exposed to a different view of the world? It's not like a stupid video game representing Taiwan as its own country is going to make China break up or something. Taiwan really *is* an independent country, whether the People's Republic of China likes it or not. These are the realities people: stop sticking your heads in the sand.
I hate the stupid ultrasensitive crap that some governments (or even societies) get all upset about. Pretty much every country has some minor stupid thing they get all uptight about.
Argentina get all pissy about the Falkland Islands, which are hardly worth the trouble.
The United States seems to spit fire if anyone talks about it stifling democracy in other countries or waging war for reasons other than "freedom", or burning flags (which causes harm to so many people!).
India and Pakistan stop thinking rationally every time the subject of Kashmir comes up.
Turkey frothes at the mouth every time the Kurds are mentioned.
Some things just aren't as important as people seem to think they are. It's time to grow up, it's time to calm down.
True, Pentium II chips are still overkill for some uses: simple web terminal, print server, file server, etc. There's nothing like a cheap/free computer to install Linux on, eh? That's what I'm doing right now: I have a Pentium MMX 200 computer that I'm planning to put Linux on and use it as an email/chatting/web-browsing computer.
There are still a lot of people, however, who are getting rid of their Pentium II computers and can't find anyone to buy them. There's just not a big demand for them anymore. That was just what I was referring to: there is still a demand, but it's much less than the supply.
I'm hardly going to miss the Pentium II. I didn't even know that Intel was still producing the things!
They're so old technology-wise that I just figured they had stopped making the Pentium II a long time ago.
I'm sure there will still be plenty to be found in the used chip market and in older computers that nobody wants.
I think that although there would be changes in the short-term, extremely long lived people would result in the stagnation of society in the long run.
Once people live beyond 40, they tend to cling to the ideas they already possess and don't much like change. Society progresses when the old fogeys in power die off and younger people with newer ideas take their place.
I predict that in a long-lived society, old ideas would stay around and change would be minimal. The only way for change would be for the younger people to be far more numerous than the older people.
I forgot to mention that anal rapings don't actually occur regularly there, as guards will usually hear and stop it if the prisoner yells for help. It still does happen on occasion, and so do the inevitable lawsuits.
There is, however, plenty of voluntary homosexual activity there, especially between cellmates.
My girlfriend works in a California prison, and although they get coddled a lot, it's still not a place you would want to be in.
Indeed, there are a lot of nice things like TV in their cells (which the prisoners have to purchase with their own money, not the state's), free medical care (there are lots of lawsuits when medical care is lacking), and free education.
There are, however, lots of disadvantages:
You of course can't go anywhere, the food is pretty crappy, there isn't much of it: just enough to keep them nourished. Ramen is so valued that it is like a currency (they trade in "soups"), and inmates will buy drugs (when they get smuggled into the prison) with ramen.
So in addition to being hungry a lot, the inmates are overcrowded, live in buildings that are usually too hot, and since there are so few showers, only get to shower once a week. Apparently they smell like sewers, sweating constantly in the hot buildings.
The worst part of prison life is that since they don't have a lot do, they are constantly trying to think of ways to kill each other. A lot of them have some insane drive to kill each other, and they'll make weapons out of virtually anything. In a recent stabbing, the weapon was a sharpened light switch cover plate that was covertly removed from a wall. No matter how hard they try to deprive the inmates of weapon material, they always manage to get their hands on something.
Their intense desire to kill each other is absolutely bizarre to me. Absolutely nothing (not even the death penalty) will deter some of them from trying to kill their fellow inmates. They form gangs that fight against each other, and any inmates refusing to join gangs will be killed by anyone in a gang.
Indeed the prison system does everything they can to prevent it, but unless they lock them all in solitary confinement, it still manages to happen.
So in addition to living conditions that aren't fun, one constantly has to watch out for murderous fellow inmates with a desire to kill.
They may get coddled in some respects, but it's still a very unpleasant place to live.
I want in a review what any geek would want:
The maximum FPS (frames per second) for Half-Life 2, Farcry, and Doom 3 at varying resolutions.
There's no way I would buy a server that can't get above 40 FPS on Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024! It you can't trust it to play your favorite shooter without choking, how could you trust it to support the essential functions of you company?
I think that giving robots to old people is a terrible solution!
Not only do we have to worry about them pushing old people down the stairs, but they are almost guaranteed to terrorize the elderly and consume their medicine for fuel!
What do you mean? We're exploring Iraq.
...for oil.
For any of those who are wondering about this, the parent post is a SimCity reference (at least SimCity 2000, since I haven't played any later versions).
"Llama" was the medium game speed, and "Cheetah" was the fast game speed. One usually went to Cheetah when there wasn't much to do at the moment, and all you wanted to do was to wait for time to pass.
I think the slowest game speed was "Turtle" or something like that.
For some reason that reminds me of the Eye of Sauron. If it focuses on you, you're toast.
Go Frodo! Err, Firefox that is. Kill the mean Microsoft before it knows you're there!
If keystroke logging isn't wiretapping, maybe this opens a whole can of worms whereby spyware becomes legal.
Just because the judge rules it isn't wiretapping doesn't mean it is legal. The judge just ruled that anyone involved with keystroke logging can't be convicted of wiretapping.
The guy who was covertly keystroke logging will probably be charged with something else. There are plenty of things other than "wiretapping" you can charge someone with.
It's true: at least the jet-skiing part. The U.S. army has some stupid commercial on TV that makes look like all they do in the army is mess with cool stuff with technology, learning skills, and playing sports.
Of course they never show any of the miserable stuff (cleaning toilets, boot camp, etc.) or people being shot at or coffins or anything. I can't say I feel all that sorry for people who join the army and end up in Iraq. Sure it's a bummer they're in a nasty place getting shot at, but they did voluntarily join and knew what the job involved. Armies do occasionally get involved in fighting after all.
Interestingly enough, I've lived in California for most of my life and I've never experienced a single earthquake. So it's not like everywhere in California is having earthquakes all the time.
I wouldn't mind experiencing a mild one just to see what it feels like.
The only problem is that Americans like their cars and hate high gas prices. There would probably be a huge backlash against any politicians that tried to significantly increase gas taxes.
Recently, Californians were so angry at yearly car tax (which in my opinion wasn't that bad) that they cut it so that it's now a third of what it used to be. Making gas significantly more expensive would be political suicide, especially since car is the only reasonable form of transportation for a lot of people in California.
When I lived in Europe, I wasn't even interested in having a car because public transportation got me everywhere. In California where I live now, not having a car would make things difficult. Everything here is designed around the automobile: you even have to drive a ways to get to a food store because they are all clustered in large shopping centers surrounded by huge parking lots.
In Europe where I lived (southern Germany), there was *always* at least a food store within walking distance and other stores could be reached by a long walk or a short bus/train ride. I sure liked that.