It would be way too easy to say the U.S. is "in a period of sloth and introspection". Let's face it - when the bottom drops out of the current stock market we're in for a bad time. This country is finished - doomed.
Well, now, I wouldn't go *that* far. ^_^ Besides, just because we're not interested in space *now* doesn't mean that future generations won't have different ideas on the subject, especially if the private companies or other nations really start making a profit out there. Besides, I've noticed that historically for Americans it's usually a crisis (Slavery, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor) that provides the pin in the bum necessary to get us going.
and how will you get to the stars in real time? warp drives or screwing 7 of 9...? so what if the commies had beat the us to the moom? how much did the us spend and what was the cost-benfit? china and india are going to mine the moon and asteroids for what exactly, that could not be mined here on earth far cheaper? russian will re-assemble the soviet union and do what? are you on drugs or just stupid?
I meant "conquer the stars" as a figure of speech, you stupid dumbass. Jeez, people like you--who flame at the drop of a hat and have nothing intelligent to say--are the reason I abandond USENET. And *this* get's a Score: 1?! Guess I'll have to raise my threshold to 2. . .
But future generations may have other ideas. I believe that right now we (Americans) are in a period of sloth and introspection, and do not have anymore what our ancestors had--the drive to explore, to challenge, to test ourselves. We're comfortable, the economy's going good. ..why bother with all that space stuff, y'know? The only reason we went up there the first time was to beat the Soviets to the moon. Once that was accomplished, well. . .
But the U.S.A. isn't the whole world. Even if we over here remain too fat and lazy to get out there and conquer the stars, other nations may not. China and India are just getting their space programs off the ground, for example, and later they may decide that mining Luna and the asteroids for their minerals or building a solar power satellite to beam solar energy to earth would not be a waste of money at all. Also the Russians could always put themselves back together down the road--never count Ivan out for long! And of course there's Japan, the European Space Agency with their Ariane (sp?) booster, and last but certainly not least, all of the privately run space organizations that an above poster mentioned (Rotary Rocket, XCOR, etc). So I'm not giving up hope just yet--you'd be surprised how fast things can change.
>That way when someone is born (no wait not born, made) like that and they happen to be insane they are an ultra-intelligent and nearly >unstoppable psychopath bent on killing everyone they see for sport. See how much of an "overall boon to humanity" it is then.
Been watching TERMINATOR 2 again, have we? Or perhaps too much anime. ^_^
Greater risks will bring about greater safeguards against said risks. The kind of thing you're worried about would likely be one of the situations the governments/corporations involved with the genome project would be trying to guard against; it's the *unintended* consequences of genetic engineering--the things we won't realize until they actually happen--that concern me. Still, I say again--I am not at all opposed to genetic tweaking to improve the Race, to bring it to it's optimum physical/mental potential. I believe that it's a great idea, and see nothing wrong with it.
. ..I'd be happy. I'd be very pleased if the only improvement I could get out of all this would be a "photographic" memory. The rest (my physical health, etc) I'd take care of myself.
As to genetically enhanced superbeings, I think it's kind of inevitable, and I really don't know how it can be avoided. Even if the USA banned such things as "immoral," the US is not the world. Other nations--China springs prominently to mind--may have other ideas. And I personally have no problems at all with the idea of improving the human race by jacking up physical strength/intelligence to the optimum levels while adding an open-ended life span on to boot. This IMOHO would be an overall boon to humanity, though as with most solutions to problems it will likely come with it's own set of unforeseen drawbacks.
Part of the reason why so much of science fiction has trouble getting the future right is that they tend to take the present day's trends/memes and extrapolate them too much into the future. Take his assessment that by 2035 humanity still hasn't gotten to Mars yet: IMOHO, this reflects too much of today's navel-gazing, who-cares-about-it-if-I-can't-make-a-buck-off-it-r ight-away self-absorption. Future generations may have different priorities, and in any case the United States isn't the only country on earth with a space program. All it would take is one wild-eyed visionary in the right place at the right time, and the Great Migration will begin.
I'm gonna use the hell out of this thing, bugs and all. I'm sick of Communicator 4.7 and it's problems, and IE 5 freezes on me every 10-15 minutes and I have to restart. Screw that. Mozilla's 11-13 have run (mostly) great on my machine, and have gotten better with each release. I'm counting the days until beta.
I had just targeted THIS MONTH to grab a DVD drive to slap in my Win98 box and now this! I ain't even finished converting from tapes to CD's yet. Jeeeez. The storage thing is gettin' to be as bad as the Intel/AMD processor race--not that I'm complaining. Heh heh heh. . .
I Estimate this thing won't be out for another year or so, so I've still got time to start building a library of Ranma, Cowboy Bebop and Sailor Moon DVD's before the changeover occurs. The fact that this new doohicky can be made backward compatible with crusty old archaic-ass DVD's is a plus. Ooooh, gods--and what will Quake IV be like?? I imagine the Id guys must be droolin' with the prospect of all that space to play around in. God I love technology!!
Re:Out of the Real World
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
Heh. Nice flamebait.;-)
To be honest, though, the whole money-for-space-vs-starving-children-on-earth dichotomy is something of a red herring. Let's step back and take a look at the big picture, shall we?
These countries (India, the African states, much of south and central America, etc.) are undergoing population explosions, widespread poverty, famine and all the rest because they lack the education base and the technology to reach "First World" status. Many nations, India and China most prominently, are doing everything they can to solve these problems, and IMOHO we should help them where we can. How? Well, many of them need energy--which is why they turn to, um, *questionable* things like nuclear power. But how about solar energy? How about building a solar power satellite to beam the sun's energy to earth where it can be converted to electricity? What if a consortium of, say, Indian, Chinese, American and Euro electric companies along with their respective governments put together a program to build these things, with equal participation/funding from all of the states involved? The private sector would make a hell of a lot of money after the initial outlay; the 3rd World nations involved would get to develop a host of new technologies and industries and everyone involved would get access to a relatively cheap, clean source of energy. The same recipe could be used for Lunar mining/research/exploration: what if the next mission to the moon was a joint US/Chinese/European/Japanese mission to mine and colonize the hell out of that thing? How much would it cost the US Taxpayer *then,* eh? Ohmigod, and CANADA! They have a strong aerospace industry as well, don't they? They should be involved as well, helping us Yanks and the Chinese crank out the necessary boosters en masse. And in the end the less developed places are again that much closer being fully industrialized while humanity as a whole has taken its first real steps towards the stars. The point of all this is of course that space colonization can be used as a means of alleviating conditions on earth, not ignoring them.
Or at least one more secure then Win98/2k? As a Win98 user on a budget I have been considering installing Linux as my next OS since I'm not *so* eager to shell out US$200+ for W2K. Some have told me to get Open Linux it's supposidly more newbie-friendly. Others have suggested Red Hat. But I don't wanna have to put up with security holes, too, if they have any. Or am I making too much out of all this? But anyway, as a viable, secure alternative to Windows for a Linux virgin, what would you people suggest?
>You seem to not realize that military spending is one of the things that prevents a Chinese language version of Linux from being the only >version.
Yeah, yeah, and before that it was those vicious Iranians; before that, the Godless Soviet Empire; before that, Nazi Germany, etc., etc ad infinitum.
There's always gonna be an "enemy." You can either live your life inside a prison of your own making, afraid of your own shadow and jumping at every sound, or you can get out there, explore and live.
Boreing, worthless crap progamming and way too many ads. Yawn. I don't own a boob tube now and won't in the future. What's there to watch? I'd rather spend that US$3,000 or whatever on a loaded G4. At least the net is somewhat interactive.
I was listening to "Mountain of Power Procession" and "The Orgy" off of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack this morning as I read about this. Seemed appropriate, yes?
Are there Apple action figures I can get too?? Then I can have them battle it out with the M$ofties like G.I. Joe vs Cobra. Well, this has got to be one of the weirder toys I've ever heard of. And though I would love, love, love to get my hands on a Bill Gates figure, I know he isn't that stupid--no way he's gonna hand out voodoo dolls to everyone.
Seriously, whatever else he may be, Steve Jobs is the only reason that Apple hasn't gone the way of the Amiga--i.e., died (and please don't try to tell me it's still alive. My brother owns an A4000 and he's not buying that crap either--he's getting a G4). Jobs seems to care more about the well being of the company more than any recent CEO, and not only that he also wants to turn it into what it once was--a company that brought cutting-edge cool technology to the masses. To my mind he has thus far succeeeded in that goal admirably, though he STILL needs to do something about those prices--they're much lower then they were back in the day, but if he really wants to provide an alternative to the x86 world they need to drop a wee bit more. But maybe that's just me ^_^. In any case, long live Apple!
Have you considered sending these ideas to the Amino guys? Seriously--it sounds like the sort of feedback they could use, and your suggestions are really great! For myself, I agree--a new Amiga will only make an impact if it tries to be truly revolutionary, really moving beyond the PC/Mac world: filling the spaces they won't fill, doing the things they won't/can't do. A consumer Alpha-based computer would be just the ticket. Best of luck to the Amino guys!
I was hoping that when he finally went, it would be peacefully in his sleep at 110. That he went in a car accident just makes this all the more sad. Q would have had an escape hatch or an ejection seat, y'know? Or he would have been faking his death in order for Bond to find out who was trying to kill him while the assasin had his guard down. ..but of course, reality isn't like that. We'll miss you, Mr. Llewelyn. You were easily full half of what made the Bond films worth watching.
YEAH BABY, YEAH!! BRING IT!!! Heh heh. Sorry, but that's all I wanted to say. Gods I love Quake. . .
Mother of Allah, this sounds FANTASTIC!
on
The Broken God
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· Score: 1
This sounds like EXACTLY what I've been looking for in space-based science fiction for the LONGEST time now! Babylon 5 and especially 2001 came closest to what I want-decently written adult science fiction that doesn't talk down to the reader (or viewer) and isn't dumbed down for the masses. This sounds perfect! I'm there. And yeah, I know--I've got to read more. I'm composing a reading list for next year right now, in fact, and Kim Stanley Robinson, Neil Stepenson (sp?) and Neil Gaiman are all on it. Any other suggestions?
I first got intro'd to Quake last year--QI, running on the gaming servers at work. Before then I wasn't much for gaming--all I'd played was Simm City and Rai Den on occasion. But Quake deathmatching turned out to be (pun intended) a blast! Then last month a friend gave me a burn of QII. I set it up on my box at home, downloaded some anime skins, went online and. ..ooooohhhh, yeah. I decided that the creators of *this* much fun and catharsis had to be rewarded so I went out and brought a legit copy. Meantime I got some of the QIII tests--more beautiful 3D graphics I have seen nowhere! Being relatively new to all this--I never played Doom or Wolfenstein--I guess I'm not yet at the stage where point and shoot is monotonous to me. Still, the next games I wanna try are Half-Life and System Shock II; those seem to have more of a story to them. Too bad about Daikatana though; even now the screen shots I've seen of it look great, though nowhere near QIII of course. And as for QIII--I'm getting the Demo as soon as the servers calm down a bit (if ever;-)) and when the official release comes out in the stores, I am *there.*
I first started posting on Usenet back in '93-'94 or thereabouts; in the rec.arts.anime groups and some of the soc.history forums. Even then there was the occasional jerk but you could just ignore them, and there was *nothing* like the level of spam that exists now. After getting flamed one too many times last year and having to shut down my yahoo account because of all the spam (despite the filtering I tried)--no more. It's worthless now. Sad, because it used to be so very cool. I only use moderated mailing lists and forums like this nowadays. Hopefully, though, the people at Usenet II can make a better version which will reach it's full potential.
Odd that this comes up just as I've been going on a Bowie jag! I brought "Earthling" a few weeks ago, and picked up "Hours. .." and "Scary Monsters" just last week. Fascinating interview as well, btw; and his web site looks fab. That's all I wanted to say. Ta!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, now, I wouldn't go *that* far. ^_^ Besides, just because we're not interested in space *now* doesn't mean that future generations won't have different ideas on the subject, especially if the private companies or other nations really start making a profit out there. Besides, I've noticed that historically for Americans it's usually a crisis (Slavery, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor) that provides the pin in the bum necessary to get us going.
I meant "conquer the stars" as a figure of speech, you stupid dumbass. Jeez, people like you--who flame at the drop of a hat and have nothing intelligent to say--are the reason I abandond USENET. And *this* get's a Score: 1?! Guess I'll have to raise my threshold to 2. . .
But the U.S.A. isn't the whole world. Even if we over here remain too fat and lazy to get out there and conquer the stars, other nations may not. China and India are just getting their space programs off the ground, for example, and later they may decide that mining Luna and the asteroids for their minerals or building a solar power satellite to beam solar energy to earth would not be a waste of money at all. Also the Russians could always put themselves back together down the road--never count Ivan out for long! And of course there's Japan, the European Space Agency with their Ariane (sp?) booster, and last but certainly not least, all of the privately run space organizations that an above poster mentioned (Rotary Rocket, XCOR, etc). So I'm not giving up hope just yet--you'd be surprised how fast things can change.
Been watching TERMINATOR 2 again, have we? Or perhaps too much anime. ^_^
Greater risks will bring about greater safeguards against said risks. The kind of thing you're worried about would likely be one of the situations the governments/corporations involved with the genome project would be trying to guard against; it's the *unintended* consequences of genetic engineering--the things we won't realize until they actually happen--that concern me. Still, I say again--I am not at all opposed to genetic tweaking to improve the Race, to bring it to it's optimum physical/mental potential. I believe that it's a great idea, and see nothing wrong with it.
As to genetically enhanced superbeings, I think it's kind of inevitable, and I really don't know how it can be avoided. Even if the USA banned such things as "immoral," the US is not the world. Other nations--China springs prominently to mind--may have other ideas. And I personally have no problems at all with the idea of improving the human race by jacking up physical strength/intelligence to the optimum levels while adding an open-ended life span on to boot. This IMOHO would be an overall boon to humanity, though as with most solutions to problems it will likely come with it's own set of unforeseen drawbacks.
Part of the reason why so much of science fiction has trouble getting the future right is that they tend to take the present day's trends/memes and extrapolate them too much into the future. Take his assessment that by 2035 humanity still hasn't gotten to Mars yet: IMOHO, this reflects too much of today's navel-gazing, who-cares-about-it-if-I-can't-make-a-buck-off-it-r ight-away self-absorption. Future generations may have different priorities, and in any case the United States isn't the only country on earth with a space program. All it would take is one wild-eyed visionary in the right place at the right time, and the Great Migration will begin.
I'm gonna use the hell out of this thing, bugs and all. I'm sick of Communicator 4.7 and it's problems, and IE 5 freezes on me every 10-15 minutes and I have to restart. Screw that. Mozilla's 11-13 have run (mostly) great on my machine, and have gotten better with each release. I'm counting the days until beta.
The architecture's much more gorgeous, especially Brimstone Abbey and the Camping Grounds. But hey, that's just me. ^_~
I Estimate this thing won't be out for another year or so, so I've still got time to start building a library of Ranma, Cowboy Bebop and Sailor Moon DVD's before the changeover occurs. The fact that this new doohicky can be made backward compatible with crusty old archaic-ass DVD's is a plus. Ooooh, gods--and what will Quake IV be like?? I imagine the Id guys must be droolin' with the prospect of all that space to play around in. God I love technology!!
To be honest, though, the whole money-for-space-vs-starving-children-on-earth dichotomy is something of a red herring. Let's step back and take a look at the big picture, shall we?
These countries (India, the African states, much of south and central America, etc.) are undergoing population explosions, widespread poverty, famine and all the rest because they lack the education base and the technology to reach "First World" status. Many nations, India and China most prominently, are doing everything they can to solve these problems, and IMOHO we should help them where we can. How? Well, many of them need energy--which is why they turn to, um, *questionable* things like nuclear power. But how about solar energy? How about building a solar power satellite to beam the sun's energy to earth where it can be converted to electricity? What if a consortium of, say, Indian, Chinese, American and Euro electric companies along with their respective governments put together a program to build these things, with equal participation/funding from all of the states involved? The private sector would make a hell of a lot of money after the initial outlay; the 3rd World nations involved would get to develop a host of new technologies and industries and everyone involved would get access to a relatively cheap, clean source of energy. The same recipe could be used for Lunar mining/research/exploration: what if the next mission to the moon was a joint US/Chinese/European/Japanese mission to mine and colonize the hell out of that thing? How much would it cost the US Taxpayer *then,* eh? Ohmigod, and CANADA! They have a strong aerospace industry as well, don't they? They should be involved as well, helping us Yanks and the Chinese crank out the necessary boosters en masse. And in the end the less developed places are again that much closer being fully industrialized while humanity as a whole has taken its first real steps towards the stars. The point of all this is of course that space colonization can be used as a means of alleviating conditions on earth, not ignoring them.
*Sigh.* If only I could get OS X for x86. . .
Yeah, yeah, and before that it was those vicious Iranians; before that, the Godless Soviet Empire; before that, Nazi Germany, etc., etc ad infinitum.
There's always gonna be an "enemy." You can either live your life inside a prison of your own making, afraid of your own shadow and jumping at every sound, or you can get out there, explore and live.
Which do *you* choose?
Boreing, worthless crap progamming and way too many ads. Yawn. I don't own a boob tube now and won't in the future. What's there to watch? I'd rather spend that US$3,000 or whatever on a loaded G4. At least the net is somewhat interactive.
I was listening to "Mountain of Power Procession" and "The Orgy" off of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack this morning as I read about this. Seemed appropriate, yes?
Are there Apple action figures I can get too?? Then I can have them battle it out with the M$ofties like G.I. Joe vs Cobra. Well, this has got to be one of the weirder toys I've ever heard of. And though I would love, love, love to get my hands on a Bill Gates figure, I know he isn't that stupid--no way he's gonna hand out voodoo dolls to everyone.
Yeah, I haven't read his stuff in awhile, but back in the day, he made me laugh. Thumbs up to him.
Well. . .damn, dude. Now I've got to read this thing!
Seriously, whatever else he may be, Steve Jobs is the only reason that Apple hasn't gone the way of the Amiga--i.e., died (and please don't try to tell me it's still alive. My brother owns an A4000 and he's not buying that crap either--he's getting a G4). Jobs seems to care more about the well being of the company more than any recent CEO, and not only that he also wants to turn it into what it once was--a company that brought cutting-edge cool technology to the masses. To my mind he has thus far succeeeded in that goal admirably, though he STILL needs to do something about those prices--they're much lower then they were back in the day, but if he really wants to provide an alternative to the x86 world they need to drop a wee bit more. But maybe that's just me ^_^. In any case, long live Apple!
Have you considered sending these ideas to the Amino guys? Seriously--it sounds like the sort of feedback they could use, and your suggestions are really great! For myself, I agree--a new Amiga will only make an impact if it tries to be truly revolutionary, really moving beyond the PC/Mac world: filling the spaces they won't fill, doing the things they won't/can't do. A consumer Alpha-based computer would be just the ticket. Best of luck to the Amino guys!
I was hoping that when he finally went, it would be peacefully in his sleep at 110. That he went in a car accident just makes this all the more sad. Q would have had an escape hatch or an ejection seat, y'know? Or he would have been faking his death in order for Bond to find out who was trying to kill him while the assasin had his guard down. . .but of course, reality isn't like that. We'll miss you, Mr. Llewelyn. You were easily full half of what made the Bond films worth watching.
YEAH BABY, YEAH!! BRING IT!!! Heh heh. Sorry, but that's all I wanted to say. Gods I love Quake. . .
This sounds like EXACTLY what I've been looking for in space-based science fiction for the LONGEST time now! Babylon 5 and especially 2001 came closest to what I want-decently written adult science fiction that doesn't talk down to the reader (or viewer) and isn't dumbed down for the masses. This sounds perfect! I'm there. And yeah, I know--I've got to read more. I'm composing a reading list for next year right now, in fact, and Kim Stanley Robinson, Neil Stepenson (sp?) and Neil Gaiman are all on it. Any other suggestions?
I first got intro'd to Quake last year--QI, running on the gaming servers at work. Before then I wasn't much for gaming--all I'd played was Simm City and Rai Den on occasion. But Quake deathmatching turned out to be (pun intended) a blast! Then last month a friend gave me a burn of QII. I set it up on my box at home, downloaded some anime skins, went online and. . .ooooohhhh, yeah. I decided that the creators of *this* much fun and catharsis had to be rewarded so I went out and brought a legit copy. Meantime I got some of the QIII tests--more beautiful 3D graphics I have seen nowhere! Being relatively new to all this--I never played Doom or Wolfenstein--I guess I'm not yet at the stage where point and shoot is monotonous to me. Still, the next games I wanna try are Half-Life and System Shock II; those seem to have more of a story to them. Too bad about Daikatana though; even now the screen shots I've seen of it look great, though nowhere near QIII of course. And as for QIII--I'm getting the Demo as soon as the servers calm down a bit (if ever ;-)) and when the official release comes out in the stores, I am *there.*
I first started posting on Usenet back in '93-'94 or thereabouts; in the rec.arts.anime groups and some of the soc.history forums. Even then there was the occasional jerk but you could just ignore them, and there was *nothing* like the level of spam that exists now. After getting flamed one too many times last year and having to shut down my yahoo account because of all the spam (despite the filtering I tried)--no more. It's worthless now. Sad, because it used to be so very cool. I only use moderated mailing lists and forums like this nowadays. Hopefully, though, the people at Usenet II can make a better version which will reach it's full potential.
Odd that this comes up just as I've been going on a Bowie jag! I brought "Earthling" a few weeks ago, and picked up "Hours. . ." and "Scary Monsters" just last week. Fascinating interview as well, btw; and his web site looks fab. That's all I wanted to say. Ta!