IMing "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" will only get you fired.
IM is useful in some contexts with some teams, but by and large, it's counterproductive.
And FACEBOOK at work? BWAHAHAHAAAA!!!
YOU ARE SO FIRED!!!!
You're in a meeting and some clown texts you with "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" and you answer? YOU'RE FIRED.
Email is crucial in a business environment as it is not synchronistic - you don't have to engage, and there is no immediacy. That is important.
Jobs make all the difference - sitting around doing bong hits in your dorm is OK for facebook. But getting paid to do something is something else altogether.
RS
Re:lapdesk.com - avoid if you're using Safari
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 1
the CSS on the site comes out totally hashed. Interesting looking products, though.
Come and get me!!! Blast me with your microwaves. what's it gonna do? Upset my alternator? Maybe. I'll just punch the gas and leave you turkeys in the DUST!!! HAHA!!!
Stupid cops - they will never defeat Super Bad Guys in ancient muscle cars! So watch out for the black Barracuda hemi driven by the guy wearing the ski mask! He's looking to do some Serious Crime!
The Flash UI is a total POS. It was crappy from the start. MM never did it right to begin with. I was working at MM in techsupport when they acquired Flash. I was thinking of getting into it to support it, but I found the UI so utterly craptacular, I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
Dreamweaver isn't a whole lot better, but at least it's not as offensive, and operates from something resembling a sensible model (even if it is poorly implemented).
1. the most important part of a video is? The Audio. You can take something that was shot on a fischer-price pixelvision camera, and if you finesse the audio - it can "look" awesome. Audio matters in a first rank kind of way.
1. the other most important part of a video is? Storytelling. If it doesn't tell a compelling story, or an interesting story in a compelling manner, nobody gives a flying fuck. The wasteland of 20th century "experimental" cinema is proof. Andy Warhol did a 24 hour film of the Empire state building, and it was a pointless waste of filmic Koolaid that the avant garde sucked right down. Kubrick, Wenders, Herzog, and even into documentary filmmaking - the list is long - and it all proves one thing: Storytelling matters, and is tied with Sound for #1 importance.
2. Editing. Editing is #2, and it's a close 2.Editing won't fix a broken story, and it won't make something sound better. But it can take a mediocre story and make it more compelling. So editing is #2.
3. Acting. Assuming one is not doing straight nature documentary, Acting is required. There are a variety of vagaries around this - charisma is hard to pin down. But it is necessary, if one is going to make a compelling video or film.
4. Lighting. Lighting DOES matter, but it can be "worked" - sunlight is fine, if variable - but it helps to have a light bounce around to add some clarity and reduce shadows a bit. As a consequence, Lighting is a definite 4th. It doesn't usually break something, but it can make something.
5. Catering. If you have a crew that consists of someone other than yourself, FEED THEM. Seriously.A well fed crew and actors are a happier bunch who can do good work. If everyone is scampering off to feed themselves, you lose control of the set, esp. in an amateur / non-union production.
So - ALL of these things exist outside of the HD format, and they exist solely in the field of pre and post production. So: now we come to amateur productions in HD:
The sound? Sucks - built in camera microphone. Arf. You can hear the camera whirring. It's tinny and lame.
Story? What story? Cat poops on bed! Ewwww! end of story. that's a great use of technology. Or: the "avant garde" film maker who sits and shakes the camera while a naked woman reads the phone book. Great. That's something I'll remember forever. After I beat the crap out of the filmmaker for wasting 10 minutes of my life.
Acting? My sister was an understudy for her high school production of 1776! She's GREAT! Not.
Lighting? Hey - those CFLs are GREAT!
etc. etc. etc. Putting ever higher technology in the hands of citizens does NOT guarantee higher quality work, except in the narrow and meaningless sense of it being in some precise and lovely format that is de facto to the technology itself.
It's not bad that they have access to the tech, it's just no promise of quality.
Correct. Regional bar bands are of exceptionally little interest to anyone except the members.
Incorrect. They are part of a cultural milieu, and are the sourcing of more popular talent. To understand a given subculture, one needs to understand the fabric of that subculture, and that is composed of the actions of its constituents. Bar bands, quilting bees, energy coalitions, food collectives, etc. and so on.
>Wikipedia isn't the place for vanity pages.
Who's talking about vanity pages? I wasn't even IN the band I was thinking of, and in fact, I thought they sort of sucked. However they dominated local club culture. Here's an example of a similar band - "Musical box". They do covers of music by Genesis, that are extremely accurate, and even use the same and original props as Genesis. They CAN'T release records, because, well, Genesis already did that 30+ years ago... However, Musical Box is an EXCELLENT example of cultural (specifically musical) preservation. They do deserve a wiki page, but it would probably be dumped due to a lack of notability....
Some people seem to have the idea that Wikipedia is a dumping ground for personal web pages. It's not. It's a reference for many millions of people, and search pollution is a problem. So, I'm sorry, but no one cares about your band. Get your own hosting and your own site to promote your now-defunct bar band.
As noted, you PRESUMED I was in the band in question: I was not. Nor am I in Musical Box, nor do I know them. Nor have I ever seen them in concert. So, in regard to your last two sentences, I can cheerfully and confindently tell you to go fuck yourself, asshole.
And in terms of a "dumping ground" for personal web pages, no one said anything about that either. It is a reference, but it also purports to be an encyclopaedia, and one with a truly unique capacity that can and should exceed all known. Search pollution is NOT a problem with disambiguation pages, which are easy enough to develop.
You got a zero troll rating, and you deserve it, asshat.
I TOTALLY agree with you. I've written a few articles on wikipedia that were pulled WITHIN WEEKS. When I question the admin, it's always "notability". WTF??? Oh, I see - an article on a local band that played every bar between Maryland and Massachusetts for the better part of 15 years and whose members went on to other cultural exploits, but NEVER PUT OUT A RECORD, is not notable, but the name and identity and detail of every pokemon character IS notable? What a load of shite. I guess data for contemporary anthropology doesn't qualify as "notable" for those asshats.
I've written many other articles for wikipedia, and none of them were pulled, so it's not like I don't kow how, or I don't know what I'm taking about. However, since there has been this overzealous culling of articles, my production of articles for wikipedia has decreased dramatically, and I no longer consider it my "go to" for general info. Either wikipedia DOES IT ALL, or it has to fess up to the facts: it's not an ecyclopaedia.
first: I like CDs. I like vinyl. I have an AWESOME turntable (SOTA Comet), and I'm a real fanatic about music.
But the FA is missing one REALLY HUGE point:
Most people don't "listen" to music. They use it as a soundtrack to their sad pathetic lives as they schlep their bodies to and from work, or put it on as background during dinner, or an ambient enhancement while reading or cruising the web, or as something to hide the sounds of bedsprings while they fuck their paramour du jour.
But VERY FEW people sit and listen to music with the attention one would need to bother with discerning the subtleties between different recording principles. Music is under competition from a thousand different directions, and people's lives are so busy, that sitting around in a comfy chair with a nice drink and listening, being MOVED by music, being swet away by something that matters, is an increasingly rare event.
I consider this a sad thing, but not unexpected, given the circumstances. There is no urge toward quality. fuck - if there was, then I wouldn't have 160 gigs of 192bps mp3 files. WHY do I, as a lover of fine audio, have so much mp3? Because I can't fit my stereo system into my office, and I like working to music. I am not uncommon. I know MANY people with extensive record and CD collections who have huge mp3 selections. And I also know many people who have huge mp3 collections and very few CDs and no vinyl records at all. They are perfectly good people who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. They are not deaf - they just don't care. And more and more people are like that.
So, in short, I think vinyl will NEVER replace CDs. CDs and vinyl will be replaced by high quality digital audio downloads and digital/cable/internet radio. I love my vinyl, but I'm not stupid about it.
I got a really nice computer backpack in 1998 from attending (against my will, but at the behest of The Powers That Be) an SAP conference. And before that I got a Palm IV (!!!) for free, and all that was WAY more expensive and WAY more useful than a fucking iPod nano.
At another convention, I got a guitar tuner, and a really nice long sleeve Moog Synthesizer T shirt. ANY old dump can crank out cheap short sleeve shirts - you know you're getting a better deal when they dish out heavier quality long sleeve T shirts. That's much better swag. I am a swag seeker. I have original Napster Golf Shirts. I have Macromedia mouse pads, I have all kinds of this crap in my garage. I even have a heavy duty cotton button down collared Fontographer shirt. Really nice shirt, and a prized possession. I have a long sleeve "ready Set go" shirt, too.
But iPod nano? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Don't make me laugh. That it such junior league material - intro stuff like my shirts and mousepads. When they give away the giant 160 gig iPod, then we're talkin' quality swag....
I agree. I think this is fairly excellent example of why the "9/11 truther" crowd are idiots. IF after all these years, they couldn't even fake a dopey news conference, all the machinations and evil Evil EVILness of 9/11 is simply light years beyond their capabilities. 9/11 was wrong and evil, but it wasn't staged by the govt or some kind of a false flag deal. It's was a buch of assholes from Saudi Arabia and Egypt who hijacked planes and flew them into the buildings. Period.
The Bush Admin is far too incompetent to pull off something like 9/11.
That shit is NASTY. It's like a braindead mix of cheap whiskey and cough syrup, and the only people I know who drink it are stupid 21 year old mooks with backward baseball caps. Giselle? Ha - she'll end up some billionaire's trophy wife.
so, unless one of you mooks gets lucky and hits the trillion dollar lottery, fuggedaboutit.
Right now, Linux has a bunch of quirky fucked up wierdness that needs to get fixed. Someone above noted gettign some minor UI problem fixed. Another person noted that getting an 802.11x card installed is a nightmare. Stuff like that MUST GO AWAY. Period. Forever.
At the same time, the apps have to improve in quality.
GIMP is mediocre. OpenOffice is good, but not quite there. HiDef Video editing? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Video FX? Nope. Professional music production? Sorry, not there yet. A true page layout app (viz Quark, InDesign) that will print to a high res film printer? Nope. The list is long...
Sure, you can brag about the POWER OF LINUX, but it doesn't mean shite if people can't get their work done on it because there's no application support.
Frankly, I think if Adobe moved their software to Linux, THEN Linux wouuld be in a Really Good Place, and Microsoft would basically whither away.
But until then, it's a place for specialists and fanboyz. Not a bad place, but never a contender.
When I lived in the States, I was a registered Democrat.
Bush and his fascist cronies disgusted me, and when an opportunity came up for me to leave, I left. But I left hoping the Dems would grow a spine and fight for What's Right, or even something resembling it.
They are worthless jellyfish. They could stop the war tomorrow (simply not fund it), but they don't.
They don't have to vote FOR this fascist nonsense, but they DO.
Pelosi and Ried are DISASTERS - every bit as criminally culpable as Bush, because he couldn't do it without their complicity. They have rolled over and over and over on every major vote. They have proven themselves unworthy of governance, and the Republicans are, sadly, even worse.
I'm afraid the experiment of American Democracy is over. People talk about 2008 being the most important election. I disagree. I think it's over. It doesn't matter who wins the White House: the military/industrial party will continue its endless reign of terror.
The election of 2008 may be momentous, it could be equal to Germany in 1932, or the USA in 1860. Either way, I do believe that the USA is in line for some serious turbulence, and I have serious doubts that it will survive as a democratic republic.
If the Republicans DO win in 08, either prepare yourself for some desperate fighting (which the USA/gov will lose), or do what I did: Leave. ASAP. If the Dems win, and get a super majority in the Senate/House, then prepare for a rollercoaster ride, as the Fascist News Channel (Fox et al) whips the witless masses into a froth.
If you can get a TB on 1 inch drive, why not build a drive with the same density that's LOTS bigger? I imagine warping might be a problem, but I remember 10" winchester drives!
A 2.4cm drive has an area (just for this thought experiment) of (1.2 x 1.2)pi, or roughly,4.52 sq cm. now, a 10 inch drive (24cm) has an area of 45.2 sq cm.
So, that would make it a 45 TB drive. Data retrieval might be kind of slow, but: if you have massive RAM caching, it could be of great use. Imagine a home theatre with something like this.
Imagine buying a drive like this that comes pre-installed with every song ever produced by WEA or EMI or Sony/Columbia. Say, everything from 1925 onward. How much would you pay for such a drive?
Or, ALL the movies ever made by (name your favourite) movie studio between (date x) and (date y).
I'd pay some serious green for that. All the classic movies. All the great songs of history.
That's what we're facing, very very soon: the trivialisation of media technology.
And eventually, that 25cm drive holding 45TB becomes a 2 inch drive holding 90TB.
We should be able to predict the arrival of the $500 2 inch exabyte drive.
The entire collection of world culture, audio in mp3, film in mp4, and images in jpg. Japanese, chinese, American, canadian, English, French, Italian, Russian, etc etc etc. on one or maybe two drives, or even one for audio, one for video, and one for images.
what then? with all of audio and visual culture at your fingertips, what will we do with it? what will a society in the future (assuming it doesn't implode with the loss of petroleum, or vapourise itself fighting over it) DO with that much data commonly available. to anyone?
Will it be possible to write a new melody? Will it be possible to tell a new story? Will it be possible to make an image that matters? Some would argue that imaging is dead - eaten alive by advertising. some would argue that film is dead as all the stories are told, and now we're in a grid of "1 from column A, two from column B" kind of mix and match story telling. And some say that even music itself has run its course - washed up on the blandishments of pop, the inaccessibility of the academy, and the dumbed-down rumbling of a sold before it was born hiphop, and an inchoate melange of world music that mimics and fights the imperial culture.
When it's ALL on your drive, who cares? will culture just gradually wither away?
Maybe we will do better when the oil runs out, and the machines stop working. We'll have to sing to each other, and tell stories to each other by the fire, instead of the sitting around having the fire tell stories to us.
The pentagon is only in it for the weapon. Any spacebased power system is insanely uneconomical and unfeaseable. Furthermore, all you need is for something like that to lose its "mooring" and then go frying up the countryside suburbs / cities / oceans or whatever is underneath it... or do it "on purpose" and fry up like Countries We Don't Like.
They want something like that to act as a test bed for an orbital death ray. pure and simple. They are not to be trusted. Iraq is proof enough.
I bought a book. It has instructions. You can buy it on Amazon
It's called Cooking With the Sun" by Dan and Beth Halacy.
Go for it! They're dead cheap to make and if built really well and cared for, can last a lifetime. The energy savings are absurdly huge, and the experience of "slow food" cooking is good preparation.
I would also recommend learning about hay box cooking... it's not solar, but it uses an order of magnitude less energy - all you do is heat up the contents to a high degree of temperature, and then stick the whole thing in a highly insulated box. Come back a few hours later and bingo: food is cooked.
I want to make a "hay box" out of space shuttle tiles...
Use these energy saving systems NOW in countries like the USA and Europe. Conserve energy NOW, especially oil and natgas. Oil can be made into all kinds of amazing substances and burning it up as fuel is like making logs out of $20 bills. Natgas is great for making into fertiliser. We need oil for materials and natgas for food. We need to use Other Technologies for electrical generation (Solar, Wind, hydro, nuke, geothermal, whatever) so we can stretch out our supply of petrochemicals as long as possible.
People can do their part by using these personal conservation technologies in their own lives.
A few times a week, I set out a big pot of stew or chili or soup in my solar cooker. Even in the dead of winter, I come home to a hot meal at the end of the day. It Works. And it's awesome.
This is completely to the point, and of absolute precision.
There is *no* economic incentive to putting something like this together, and it is certainly not going to "solve our energy problems". Solutions have to be global, which means North Korea needs power, just like the USA and China and India and the Vatican City. IIRC, global power consumption is somewhere around 14 TW/y. So: take whatever power ONE of these things can make and multiply it to 14TW. Mmmmm - not gonna happen at $10,000 kg payload, or with the flaky launch vehicles that have a habit of blowing up and killing everyone on board on the way up or toasting the crew on re-entry.
Orbital electric is never going to happen. It's a dumb idea, and there are terrestrial solutions that are vastly cheaper and efficient - like TURNING THE FUCKING LIGHTS OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE THE ROOM and similar simple acts of conservation.
Slashdot Mirror
IMing "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" will only get you fired.
IM is useful in some contexts with some teams, but by and large, it's counterproductive.
And FACEBOOK at work? BWAHAHAHAAAA!!!
YOU ARE SO FIRED!!!!
You're in a meeting and some clown texts you with "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" and you answer? YOU'RE FIRED.
Email is crucial in a business environment as it is not synchronistic - you don't have to engage, and there is no immediacy. That is important.
Jobs make all the difference - sitting around doing bong hits in your dorm is OK for facebook. But getting paid to do something is something else altogether.
RS
RS
Stupid cops - they will never defeat Super Bad Guys in ancient muscle cars! So watch out for the black Barracuda hemi driven by the guy wearing the ski mask! He's looking to do some Serious Crime!
RS
Dreamweaver isn't a whole lot better, but at least it's not as offensive, and operates from something resembling a sensible model (even if it is poorly implemented).
Flash needs to go away. Soon.
RS
Really easy to remember!
RS
A variety of reasons:
1. the most important part of a video is? The Audio. You can take something that was shot on a fischer-price pixelvision camera, and if you finesse the audio - it can "look" awesome. Audio matters in a first rank kind of way.
1. the other most important part of a video is? Storytelling. If it doesn't tell a compelling story, or an interesting story in a compelling manner, nobody gives a flying fuck. The wasteland of 20th century "experimental" cinema is proof. Andy Warhol did a 24 hour film of the Empire state building, and it was a pointless waste of filmic Koolaid that the avant garde sucked right down. Kubrick, Wenders, Herzog, and even into documentary filmmaking - the list is long - and it all proves one thing: Storytelling matters, and is tied with Sound for #1 importance.
2. Editing. Editing is #2, and it's a close 2.Editing won't fix a broken story, and it won't make something sound better. But it can take a mediocre story and make it more compelling. So editing is #2.
3. Acting. Assuming one is not doing straight nature documentary, Acting is required. There are a variety of vagaries around this - charisma is hard to pin down. But it is necessary, if one is going to make a compelling video or film.
4. Lighting. Lighting DOES matter, but it can be "worked" - sunlight is fine, if variable - but it helps to have a light bounce around to add some clarity and reduce shadows a bit. As a consequence, Lighting is a definite 4th. It doesn't usually break something, but it can make something.
5. Catering. If you have a crew that consists of someone other than yourself, FEED THEM. Seriously.A well fed crew and actors are a happier bunch who can do good work. If everyone is scampering off to feed themselves, you lose control of the set, esp. in an amateur / non-union production.
So - ALL of these things exist outside of the HD format, and they exist solely in the field of pre and post production. So: now we come to amateur productions in HD:
The sound? Sucks - built in camera microphone. Arf. You can hear the camera whirring. It's tinny and lame.
Story? What story? Cat poops on bed! Ewwww! end of story. that's a great use of technology. Or: the "avant garde" film maker who sits and shakes the camera while a naked woman reads the phone book. Great. That's something I'll remember forever. After I beat the crap out of the filmmaker for wasting 10 minutes of my life.
Acting? My sister was an understudy for her high school production of 1776! She's GREAT! Not.
Lighting? Hey - those CFLs are GREAT!
etc. etc. etc. Putting ever higher technology in the hands of citizens does NOT guarantee higher quality work, except in the narrow and meaningless sense of it being in some precise and lovely format that is de facto to the technology itself.
It's not bad that they have access to the tech, it's just no promise of quality.
RS
Adobe could sell dedicated computers loaded with their gear. With Linux, they could do it at a discount, and totally Kick Ass.
Getting it all to work with every known printer on earth could be a problem, though....
RS
Incorrect. They are part of a cultural milieu, and are the sourcing of more popular talent. To understand a given subculture, one needs to understand the fabric of that subculture, and that is composed of the actions of its constituents. Bar bands, quilting bees, energy coalitions, food collectives, etc. and so on.
>Wikipedia isn't the place for vanity pages.
Who's talking about vanity pages? I wasn't even IN the band I was thinking of, and in fact, I thought they sort of sucked. However they dominated local club culture. Here's an example of a similar band - "Musical box". They do covers of music by Genesis, that are extremely accurate, and even use the same and original props as Genesis. They CAN'T release records, because, well, Genesis already did that 30+ years ago... However, Musical Box is an EXCELLENT example of cultural (specifically musical) preservation. They do deserve a wiki page, but it would probably be dumped due to a lack of notability....
Some people seem to have the idea that Wikipedia is a dumping ground for personal web pages. It's not. It's a reference for many millions of people, and search pollution is a problem. So, I'm sorry, but no one cares about your band. Get your own hosting and your own site to promote your now-defunct bar band.
As noted, you PRESUMED I was in the band in question: I was not. Nor am I in Musical Box, nor do I know them. Nor have I ever seen them in concert. So, in regard to your last two sentences, I can cheerfully and confindently tell you to go fuck yourself, asshole.
And in terms of a "dumping ground" for personal web pages, no one said anything about that either. It is a reference, but it also purports to be an encyclopaedia, and one with a truly unique capacity that can and should exceed all known. Search pollution is NOT a problem with disambiguation pages, which are easy enough to develop.
You got a zero troll rating, and you deserve it, asshat.
RS
I've written many other articles for wikipedia, and none of them were pulled, so it's not like I don't kow how, or I don't know what I'm taking about. However, since there has been this overzealous culling of articles, my production of articles for wikipedia has decreased dramatically, and I no longer consider it my "go to" for general info. Either wikipedia DOES IT ALL, or it has to fess up to the facts: it's not an ecyclopaedia.
RS
RS
RS
But the FA is missing one REALLY HUGE point:
Most people don't "listen" to music. They use it as a soundtrack to their sad pathetic lives as they schlep their bodies to and from work, or put it on as background during dinner, or an ambient enhancement while reading or cruising the web, or as something to hide the sounds of bedsprings while they fuck their paramour du jour.
But VERY FEW people sit and listen to music with the attention one would need to bother with discerning the subtleties between different recording principles. Music is under competition from a thousand different directions, and people's lives are so busy, that sitting around in a comfy chair with a nice drink and listening, being MOVED by music, being swet away by something that matters, is an increasingly rare event.
I consider this a sad thing, but not unexpected, given the circumstances. There is no urge toward quality. fuck - if there was, then I wouldn't have 160 gigs of 192bps mp3 files. WHY do I, as a lover of fine audio, have so much mp3? Because I can't fit my stereo system into my office, and I like working to music. I am not uncommon. I know MANY people with extensive record and CD collections who have huge mp3 selections. And I also know many people who have huge mp3 collections and very few CDs and no vinyl records at all. They are perfectly good people who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. They are not deaf - they just don't care. And more and more people are like that.
So, in short, I think vinyl will NEVER replace CDs. CDs and vinyl will be replaced by high quality digital audio downloads and digital/cable/internet radio. I love my vinyl, but I'm not stupid about it.
RS
RS
At another convention, I got a guitar tuner, and a really nice long sleeve Moog Synthesizer T shirt. ANY old dump can crank out cheap short sleeve shirts - you know you're getting a better deal when they dish out heavier quality long sleeve T shirts. That's much better swag. I am a swag seeker. I have original Napster Golf Shirts. I have Macromedia mouse pads, I have all kinds of this crap in my garage. I even have a heavy duty cotton button down collared Fontographer shirt. Really nice shirt, and a prized possession. I have a long sleeve "ready Set go" shirt, too.
But iPod nano? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Don't make me laugh. That it such junior league material - intro stuff like my shirts and mousepads. When they give away the giant 160 gig iPod, then we're talkin' quality swag....
RS
The Bush Admin is far too incompetent to pull off something like 9/11.
RS
so, unless one of you mooks gets lucky and hits the trillion dollar lottery, fuggedaboutit.
RS
At the same time, the apps have to improve in quality.
GIMP is mediocre. OpenOffice is good, but not quite there. HiDef Video editing? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Video FX? Nope. Professional music production? Sorry, not there yet. A true page layout app (viz Quark, InDesign) that will print to a high res film printer? Nope. The list is long...
Sure, you can brag about the POWER OF LINUX, but it doesn't mean shite if people can't get their work done on it because there's no application support.
Frankly, I think if Adobe moved their software to Linux, THEN Linux wouuld be in a Really Good Place, and Microsoft would basically whither away.
But until then, it's a place for specialists and fanboyz. Not a bad place, but never a contender.
RS
Bush and his fascist cronies disgusted me, and when an opportunity came up for me to leave, I left. But I left hoping the Dems would grow a spine and fight for What's Right, or even something resembling it.
They are worthless jellyfish. They could stop the war tomorrow (simply not fund it), but they don't.
They don't have to vote FOR this fascist nonsense, but they DO.
Pelosi and Ried are DISASTERS - every bit as criminally culpable as Bush, because he couldn't do it without their complicity. They have rolled over and over and over on every major vote. They have proven themselves unworthy of governance, and the Republicans are, sadly, even worse.
I'm afraid the experiment of American Democracy is over. People talk about 2008 being the most important election. I disagree. I think it's over. It doesn't matter who wins the White House: the military/industrial party will continue its endless reign of terror.
The election of 2008 may be momentous, it could be equal to Germany in 1932, or the USA in 1860. Either way, I do believe that the USA is in line for some serious turbulence, and I have serious doubts that it will survive as a democratic republic.
If the Republicans DO win in 08, either prepare yourself for some desperate fighting (which the USA/gov will lose), or do what I did: Leave. ASAP. If the Dems win, and get a super majority in the Senate/House, then prepare for a rollercoaster ride, as the Fascist News Channel (Fox et al) whips the witless masses into a froth.
RS
That's a lot of storage...
HW
A 2.4cm drive has an area (just for this thought experiment) of (1.2 x 1.2)pi, or roughly,4.52 sq cm. now, a 10 inch drive (24cm) has an area of 45.2 sq cm.
So, that would make it a 45 TB drive. Data retrieval might be kind of slow, but: if you have massive RAM caching, it could be of great use. Imagine a home theatre with something like this.
Imagine buying a drive like this that comes pre-installed with every song ever produced by WEA or EMI or Sony/Columbia. Say, everything from 1925 onward. How much would you pay for such a drive?
Or, ALL the movies ever made by (name your favourite) movie studio between (date x) and (date y).
I'd pay some serious green for that. All the classic movies. All the great songs of history.
That's what we're facing, very very soon: the trivialisation of media technology.
And eventually, that 25cm drive holding 45TB becomes a 2 inch drive holding 90TB.
We should be able to predict the arrival of the $500 2 inch exabyte drive.
The entire collection of world culture, audio in mp3, film in mp4, and images in jpg. Japanese, chinese, American, canadian, English, French, Italian, Russian, etc etc etc. on one or maybe two drives, or even one for audio, one for video, and one for images.
what then? with all of audio and visual culture at your fingertips, what will we do with it? what will a society in the future (assuming it doesn't implode with the loss of petroleum, or vapourise itself fighting over it) DO with that much data commonly available. to anyone?
Will it be possible to write a new melody? Will it be possible to tell a new story? Will it be possible to make an image that matters? Some would argue that imaging is dead - eaten alive by advertising. some would argue that film is dead as all the stories are told, and now we're in a grid of "1 from column A, two from column B" kind of mix and match story telling. And some say that even music itself has run its course - washed up on the blandishments of pop, the inaccessibility of the academy, and the dumbed-down rumbling of a sold before it was born hiphop, and an inchoate melange of world music that mimics and fights the imperial culture.
When it's ALL on your drive, who cares? will culture just gradually wither away?
Maybe we will do better when the oil runs out, and the machines stop working. We'll have to sing to each other, and tell stories to each other by the fire, instead of the sitting around having the fire tell stories to us.
RS
They want something like that to act as a test bed for an orbital death ray. pure and simple. They are not to be trusted. Iraq is proof enough.
I guess because super sized tungsten lawn darts aren't good enough.
RS
It's called Cooking With the Sun" by Dan and Beth Halacy.
Go for it! They're dead cheap to make and if built really well and cared for, can last a lifetime. The energy savings are absurdly huge, and the experience of "slow food" cooking is good preparation.
I would also recommend learning about hay box cooking... it's not solar, but it uses an order of magnitude less energy - all you do is heat up the contents to a high degree of temperature, and then stick the whole thing in a highly insulated box. Come back a few hours later and bingo: food is cooked.
I want to make a "hay box" out of space shuttle tiles...
RS
RS
People can do their part by using these personal conservation technologies in their own lives.
A few times a week, I set out a big pot of stew or chili or soup in my solar cooker. Even in the dead of winter, I come home to a hot meal at the end of the day. It Works. And it's awesome.
RS
So we can engage in Avatar Capital Punishment?
It used to be fun until people took it seriously. Now it's just another buzz in the Drug Store of Culture.
RS
There is *no* economic incentive to putting something like this together, and it is certainly not going to "solve our energy problems". Solutions have to be global, which means North Korea needs power, just like the USA and China and India and the Vatican City. IIRC, global power consumption is somewhere around 14 TW/y. So: take whatever power ONE of these things can make and multiply it to 14TW. Mmmmm - not gonna happen at $10,000 kg payload, or with the flaky launch vehicles that have a habit of blowing up and killing everyone on board on the way up or toasting the crew on re-entry.
Terrestrial solar power connected to comparatively low efficiency (but fairly cheap to build) mass storage batteries combined with wind power connected to same batteries, in conjunction with a massive conservation effort and shift in social definitions of happiness and and assortment of greener (if localised) technologies like geo-thermal and hydro, when combined with shorter-term interim technologies like (sorry greenies) nuclear power, is a much more sustainable and practical direction as civilisation gradually powers down to sustainability.
Orbital electric is never going to happen. It's a dumb idea, and there are terrestrial solutions that are vastly cheaper and efficient - like TURNING THE FUCKING LIGHTS OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE THE ROOM and similar simple acts of conservation.
RS