Then stand up and announce on the loud speaker in a polite English accent to everyone; "So you guys have a choice: Either turn off your Wi-Fi (devices) or I give up. Would you like to see the demos?"......"Then all you bloggers need to turn off your notebooks. Go ahead, just shut the lids. I'll wait," he said.
Truly amazing that we, the only sentient life-forms we know of in the known universe, can conquer the nearly insurmountable forces and vastness of space, to discover the unknown. Restores my faith in humanity just a little bit!
In that game everything was measured in Energy, not money. Energy were credits you could use to purchase products, energy could produce more food, produce more minerals, even produce more people. Yet again, SMAC taught me how the future would really work.;)
But then we need to get access to Cheyenne Mountain to activate the stargate, which considering how the Americans don't like to share their toys would be slim to none.
With pessimism like that, how to you do walk outside? You might fall in a manhole or get hit by a bus. Did it not occur to you that just maybe, the landing method used was deemed the best chance for success? Well then again, you're no rocket scientist are you?
The next frontier will be natural gas. There is plenty of natural gas in the middle east (and else where). After that there is coal. Electric cars will proliferate over the next 20 years. Even Solar power plants are picking up steam. Don't forget about nuclear. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others are in the advanced stages to build dozens of nuclear power plants. Some people might get hungrier, but they won't breed any less.
We created anti-biotics, pesticides, irrigation, the agricultural revolution. We have the ability to completely transform any habitat to suit our own. We chop down the rainforest (the earth's lungs) to plant millions of acres of soy, sugar, and other cash crops. We divert the mightiest of rivers and dam them, laying waste to natural cycles that held true for thousands of years. When all environments are covered with humanity, we will move to the oceans to harvest what is left of their bounty. Even if we have massive famines, there will still be billions of humans. Diseases such as plague, flu, virulent TB, ebola ect... are able to be defeated through modern methods of intervention. No...the population will continue to rise, and the planet is set to become much more crowded. Your choice to forgo your evolutionary birthright will be but a blip among the billions of humanity.
They add about 2 million to the population here every year. Africa's population is set to double in 30 years. My advice, buy land. Food will be worth more than gold.
Books will become antiques and collectors items. If one looks at the 21 century information society, books have no place in it. Once all current books are scanned and fully digitized, any human on the planet with an internet connection will be able to access them. This is a powerful tool that is not fully realized. e-book technology is till in its infancy. You're also fooling yourself if you assume that a paper book is automatically superior to a digital version. A paper book only has one copy, is probably printed on cheap paper, supportable to moisture, mold, insect, natural disaster, fire... you name it. Books are perishable goods and none too portable. Digital information is forever and can be backed up infinitely.
My favorite part of that movie was at the moment near the end of the movie when Clooney passes the threshold, he realizes that it was a trite and empty goal all along.
This is the problem with the US IMO. They lack any long term planning. The political party in power at any given time is only obsessed and focused with getting themselves reelected in four years. Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule? It takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build other MEGA infrastructure projects? There are so many unemployed out there, the US should be doing like China and upgrading its ancient infrastructure and laying the groundwork for a high-tech, energy efficient 21st century. I would suggest to raise taxes, but so far that has only made banksters on wallstreet wealthier with zero economic impact. Where is the leadership?
Privacy is disappearing before our eyes. Soon it will be illegal to just log onto the internet anonymously for fear that we may be terrorists or criminals. We'll have to enter our biometrics and submit a blood sample just to get an account! I admit that I use Gmail as it has been very convenient over the years, but I really need to reevaluate convenience for loss of privacy. Maybe I'll just have to migrate all my communications onto my own personal server/domain. That seems like the only recourse.
Space is REALLY REALLY big. Space also requires multinational efforts to reach and operate in. There is no way we are going to fight wars in Space. Any country that has the resources to get into space is not going to risk having them destroyed. Indeed, with Space becoming privatized, there will be even less incentive for war to happen. Corporations can make magnitudes more profit from peaceful operations rather than supporting WAR.
BOOKS, like computers are TECHNOLOGY, just like anything else Humans have invented. Mass produced books have only been around for about 300 years (I'm talking about massed produced CHEAP books). There may always be a market for fine crafted leather-bound volumes of 'Classics', but for a growing world of 6-10billion people, Ebooks will make up 95% of the market in the near future (say 10-20 years). It's happening. E-readers will continue to come down in cost, e-printing technology will continue to improve and adapted. It's happening. The good thing is that the world will become more literate, and better informed. It is a travesty than even in this modern age, illiteracy is still a HUGE problem in the developing world. Ebooks and digitized media will be their salvation.
Um....if a tyrannical government doesn't like a particular book, they ban them or burn them in a nice big bonfire. Digital copies on the other hand are virtually impossible to erase once they are out in the wild (I'm talking about DRM free copies of course).
Your precious books could fall victim to MOLD or even bookworms and very easily turn into sawdust. Contrary to popular belief, old file formats are easily readable today. Making back-ups with different technologies (SSD, CD, TAPE, CLOUD) is prudent. One can never have enough backups. Also, if your back up fails, chances are one of the 6 billion other people on this planet will have a backup copy of your book.
Authors can publish themselves! Cut out the middle man! It's already happening. Indeed, pirating of books is rampant, I myself have the top 1000 sci-fi books in digital format from a torrent, only took a few minutes to download. The future is here.
Most books sold these days are on cheap recycled, low quality paper. They will naturally degrade in a very short time. I'm talking years here. Higher quality books, those on non-acidic, high quality paper, high quality bounding, could last virtually forever if you keep them dry.
They have ongoing environmental collapse in many areas of the country. Floods, drought.... as many experts say, one failed harvest away from disaster. Inflation has a nasty way of creeping up on you until its too late. If China does not address their structural flaws (corruption, widening gap between rich and poor, rural vs. urban development, inflation, environmental collapse) there will be hard and fast consequences. China does not deal well with internal unrest.
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I'm sure everyone will understand.
Truly amazing that we, the only sentient life-forms we know of in the known universe, can conquer the nearly insurmountable forces and vastness of space, to discover the unknown. Restores my faith in humanity just a little bit!
In that game everything was measured in Energy, not money. Energy were credits you could use to purchase products, energy could produce more food, produce more minerals, even produce more people. Yet again, SMAC taught me how the future would really work. ;)
But then we need to get access to Cheyenne Mountain to activate the stargate, which considering how the Americans don't like to share their toys would be slim to none.
With pessimism like that, how to you do walk outside? You might fall in a manhole or get hit by a bus. Did it not occur to you that just maybe, the landing method used was deemed the best chance for success? Well then again, you're no rocket scientist are you?
No he couldn't, because he was stupid and greedy.
No, no, no. He's going to federal POUND ME IN THE ASS prison.
The next frontier will be natural gas. There is plenty of natural gas in the middle east (and else where). After that there is coal. Electric cars will proliferate over the next 20 years. Even Solar power plants are picking up steam. Don't forget about nuclear. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others are in the advanced stages to build dozens of nuclear power plants. Some people might get hungrier, but they won't breed any less.
We created anti-biotics, pesticides, irrigation, the agricultural revolution. We have the ability to completely transform any habitat to suit our own. We chop down the rainforest (the earth's lungs) to plant millions of acres of soy, sugar, and other cash crops. We divert the mightiest of rivers and dam them, laying waste to natural cycles that held true for thousands of years. When all environments are covered with humanity, we will move to the oceans to harvest what is left of their bounty. Even if we have massive famines, there will still be billions of humans. Diseases such as plague, flu, virulent TB, ebola ect... are able to be defeated through modern methods of intervention. No...the population will continue to rise, and the planet is set to become much more crowded. Your choice to forgo your evolutionary birthright will be but a blip among the billions of humanity.
They add about 2 million to the population here every year. Africa's population is set to double in 30 years. My advice, buy land. Food will be worth more than gold.
Books will become antiques and collectors items. If one looks at the 21 century information society, books have no place in it. Once all current books are scanned and fully digitized, any human on the planet with an internet connection will be able to access them. This is a powerful tool that is not fully realized. e-book technology is till in its infancy. You're also fooling yourself if you assume that a paper book is automatically superior to a digital version. A paper book only has one copy, is probably printed on cheap paper, supportable to moisture, mold, insect, natural disaster, fire... you name it. Books are perishable goods and none too portable. Digital information is forever and can be backed up infinitely.
My favorite part of that movie was at the moment near the end of the movie when Clooney passes the threshold, he realizes that it was a trite and empty goal all along.
He was porking the cute airline stewardesses...
Nuclear Power is a beautiful thing.
This is the problem with the US IMO. They lack any long term planning. The political party in power at any given time is only obsessed and focused with getting themselves reelected in four years. Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule? It takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build other MEGA infrastructure projects? There are so many unemployed out there, the US should be doing like China and upgrading its ancient infrastructure and laying the groundwork for a high-tech, energy efficient 21st century. I would suggest to raise taxes, but so far that has only made banksters on wallstreet wealthier with zero economic impact. Where is the leadership?
Privacy is disappearing before our eyes. Soon it will be illegal to just log onto the internet anonymously for fear that we may be terrorists or criminals. We'll have to enter our biometrics and submit a blood sample just to get an account! I admit that I use Gmail as it has been very convenient over the years, but I really need to reevaluate convenience for loss of privacy. Maybe I'll just have to migrate all my communications onto my own personal server/domain. That seems like the only recourse.
Someone has to serve the coffee. And make sure they use skim milk!
Space is REALLY REALLY big. Space also requires multinational efforts to reach and operate in. There is no way we are going to fight wars in Space. Any country that has the resources to get into space is not going to risk having them destroyed. Indeed, with Space becoming privatized, there will be even less incentive for war to happen. Corporations can make magnitudes more profit from peaceful operations rather than supporting WAR.
BOOKS, like computers are TECHNOLOGY, just like anything else Humans have invented. Mass produced books have only been around for about 300 years (I'm talking about massed produced CHEAP books). There may always be a market for fine crafted leather-bound volumes of 'Classics', but for a growing world of 6-10billion people, Ebooks will make up 95% of the market in the near future (say 10-20 years). It's happening. E-readers will continue to come down in cost, e-printing technology will continue to improve and adapted. It's happening. The good thing is that the world will become more literate, and better informed. It is a travesty than even in this modern age, illiteracy is still a HUGE problem in the developing world. Ebooks and digitized media will be their salvation.
Um....if a tyrannical government doesn't like a particular book, they ban them or burn them in a nice big bonfire. Digital copies on the other hand are virtually impossible to erase once they are out in the wild (I'm talking about DRM free copies of course).
Modern libraries do a lot more these days than just lend out books. Libraries are centres for knowledge and learning, they will adapt.
Your precious books could fall victim to MOLD or even bookworms and very easily turn into sawdust. Contrary to popular belief, old file formats are easily readable today. Making back-ups with different technologies (SSD, CD, TAPE, CLOUD) is prudent. One can never have enough backups. Also, if your back up fails, chances are one of the 6 billion other people on this planet will have a backup copy of your book.
Authors can publish themselves! Cut out the middle man! It's already happening. Indeed, pirating of books is rampant, I myself have the top 1000 sci-fi books in digital format from a torrent, only took a few minutes to download. The future is here.
Most books sold these days are on cheap recycled, low quality paper. They will naturally degrade in a very short time. I'm talking years here. Higher quality books, those on non-acidic, high quality paper, high quality bounding, could last virtually forever if you keep them dry.
They have ongoing environmental collapse in many areas of the country. Floods, drought.... as many experts say, one failed harvest away from disaster. Inflation has a nasty way of creeping up on you until its too late. If China does not address their structural flaws (corruption, widening gap between rich and poor, rural vs. urban development, inflation, environmental collapse) there will be hard and fast consequences. China does not deal well with internal unrest.