The most important thing to realise is that some food types (the delicate, the subtle and so on) are not going to be reproducable in orbital or Lunar facilities. Earth, as the only natural biosphere we have available will (hopefully) move towards an agricultural base, producing Luxuries (High grade alcohol, such as Whisky, will probably be very difficult to reproduce, due to the way it is made).
Meanwhile the Human race as a whole should shift all Heavy industry and as much Light Industry as possible to Low Earth Orbit at least as this is nearer to the Luna and asteroid belt resource sources.
Remember, crews of Asteroid miners would only have to boost a rock Earths way, let celestial mechanics take its course, and reap the benefits when it got here - you could probably clamp a drifting refinery onto such a boosted rock, so that by the time it got here, the rock has been chewed up into its component metals, water and carbon compounds.
Then the crew of the refinery take some well earned R&R, the metals go to the orbital factories to make stuff and the money brings Luxuries up from down side.
The Luxuries trade is especially good for planetside economics, because the items are usually low-mass, therefore requiring less fuel to lift to LEO.
And this has the added benefit of reducing pollution downside, maybe making Earth into the SolSys' relaxation and holiday centre - been out in the Asteroid belt mining for 5 years? Take a well earned break on Terra! See the wonders of New York, Moscow, Beijing and London! Experience the ancient home of Humanity!
The Moon is also at the bottom of a Gravity Well, you could use an orbital based mass driver against both Terra and Luna - plus, there is plenty of raw ammunition just floating around the SolSys in the form of asteroids to do the job.
On a happier (and less paranoid) note, I don't suppose there might just be a chance for overall Human co-operation on getting us all into space would there? No? Too much to ask I supose.
Now THAT I would pay to see. The Reduced Shakespeare co make some damn funny work (The Bible: The complete word of God(abridged) being, IMHO, better than the complete works of the Bard)
After all, the major complaint EVER about LOTR is that it is waaaaaay too long and has to much descriptive rubbish in it.
The Microsoft website does not display correctly in Opera, I can't swear to its performance in Mozilla.
The site displays all of the text on the page as too small (easily solved by zooming the page) and the left hand menu bars are messed up. Masquerading as IE doesn't seem to help - in fact, it can make things worse.
The only real problem this has every created was with the pages for Asheron's Call 2, but it turned out that game was gash anyway.
Then I would advise you try Opera. And I really mean try it properly. Take a week or two. Learn the interface. Use the News and Mail facilities. Learn the Mouse gestures.
Having tried both Mozilla and Opera (among others) I can confidently state that it is worth the money.
Mind you, it may hae to be stated that my job basically consists of using web pages, so that extra speed and the mouse gesture functionality is a *lot* more useful to me than it may be to your average end user.
go to The German Site and have a look at the specification or features pages - very clearly labels a USB dock... maybe your prayers have been answered.
Re:Yopy is out ... yeah right...
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 1
If i'm reading this correctly (german not being my best language) then the german site is charging the equivalent of US$900!
As I pointed out in another post somewhere in this tree, bundling the free (ad-supported) version of Opera with OS's or give-away net connection CD's would, IMHO, be the optimal solution. Sure, most of those users would not buy, but it would give Opera the market share that it needs, and the consumer loyalty base who, in the future, would look to Opera and not M$ for their browser.
The only way to successfully fight the M$ assimilation is to meet it on its own ground - with software to show the new users what they could be using, giving them options from M£ware.
As for your assertion that net adoption is tapering off, I think you will find that there is (and will be for some time) a steady rate of increase, mainly due to the fact that the younger generations adopt net access as a priority when leaving home for college/own home. The level of net access adoption will not stop until the main users of the net begin to die off - and we have a few years to wait before that seriously starts to happen.
And as for the Opera!=Free-beer thing, well, I am prepared to pay $40 for a product that is standards compliant, easy to use (i estimate i save 50% time over using IE) and integrates so many functions (browser, mail client, newreader) of use to me.
An the $40 is only for the ad-free version. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility (indeed, it would be a very good business move, IMHO) for Opera to get the ad-included version bundled in the same way as any other browser.
Rationale? Opera is not going to come to the attention of your average AOL user as the situation currently stands, but by bundling it Opera would get a percentage (probably a small one, TBH) of that user base buying up the browser. This in turn would lead to those people buying the next version of the Browser when it came out.
In short, fight fire with fire, M$ do it, why not Opera?
The ONLY site i have ever seen fail to render correctly in Opera was, coincidentally, Microsoft and its associated support pages, and TBH, most of that is the text size, which is a simple case of CTRL-ScrollUp (Opera's 'zoom page' function, for the uninitiated).
I pretty certain the M$ pages are designed to be broken in anything that isn't M$IE.
I'm presuming you're referring to some type of fast-rewind feature. Opera's got that (not sure if the button's on the toolbar by default though)
Mouse Gestures. Once you have learnt them, you fly through the web. The only drawback is on those rare occasions you have to use another browser it gets very frustrating when you use a gesture and... nothing happens...
Functions like page zoom, inbuilt mail client, "restart the browser where I was browsing last time", inbuilt download client, easy bookmarks (including my the 'these were you IE/Netscape/whatever favourites'), popup protection and a whole host of tweaks and twitches are great.
You are missing an important point: AOL/TW make money from the movie, they lose money from the development of a browser when they already have one for free.
This is an M$ move to cut the competition out of the game by removing development funding.
As for the "AOL have the priviledge to use IE royalty free for 7 years" well, that just stinks of typical M$hit - AOL use IE, cut out their development costs, M$ get a dependent user base (again) from the people in the position least knowledgable and least likely to realise what crud they are being palmed off with.
What need to be done is concerted education of the legions of newcomers to the.net - yes, okay, I acknowledge that a lot of the masses are VERY annoying, but either they get welcomed to the net by those of us who know what we are doing, or they get assimilated by the GatesBorg collective.
The mass population of the internet has to be won over to break the M$ stranglehold. The few 3l173 H4XX0Rz aren't a significant enough user base to challenge M$.
Hmmm, I seem to have wandered violently off topic. Meh.
I have a Maxtor 80Gb, and i'll admit to a few nervous moments while waiting for the/.ed site to load... says it only affects drives made in China, but who really knows?
Plus, I was not impressed with the service level of the people i purchased it from, and the drive does have chinese characters on it... im going to check if it was made in china, and if it was, well, i have a tape drive somewhere about - time i got around to installing it I feel
SCO CEO Publicly retracts threat to sue Linus
on
SCO vs Linux.. Continued
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Well, here is a thing - I have found that there is a project underway to find as many instances as possible where acess to code that may have been copied was found, in order to prove that the IP for Unix has been nullified
Hey, thats a point, as a Linux redistributor, SCO have been knowingly been redistributing the code they claim is stolen from Unix System V with their Linux packages, therefore implicitly giving consent (via the GPL) for said use of the code, surely?
Is that the case under US law? Probably not, or at least it'll be a lawyers dream of a cashcow arguement
It is down now to roughly double its pre-lies value, and is still dropping, although yesterdays nosedive isn't being continued.
Shame.
However, if the share price does hit low enough, we will almost certainly see a buy out, simply because at that point it becomes cheaper than the lawsuit for IBM and Novell.
Slashdot Mirror
The most important thing to realise is that some food types (the delicate, the subtle and so on) are not going to be reproducable in orbital or Lunar facilities. Earth, as the only natural biosphere we have available will (hopefully) move towards an agricultural base, producing Luxuries (High grade alcohol, such as Whisky, will probably be very difficult to reproduce, due to the way it is made).
Meanwhile the Human race as a whole should shift all Heavy industry and as much Light Industry as possible to Low Earth Orbit at least as this is nearer to the Luna and asteroid belt resource sources.
Remember, crews of Asteroid miners would only have to boost a rock Earths way, let celestial mechanics take its course, and reap the benefits when it got here - you could probably clamp a drifting refinery onto such a boosted rock, so that by the time it got here, the rock has been chewed up into its component metals, water and carbon compounds.
Then the crew of the refinery take some well earned R&R, the metals go to the orbital factories to make stuff and the money brings Luxuries up from down side.
The Luxuries trade is especially good for planetside economics, because the items are usually low-mass, therefore requiring less fuel to lift to LEO.
And this has the added benefit of reducing pollution downside, maybe making Earth into the SolSys' relaxation and holiday centre - been out in the Asteroid belt mining for 5 years? Take a well earned break on Terra! See the wonders of New York, Moscow, Beijing and London! Experience the ancient home of Humanity!
Then money makes the Solar System go round.
Do unto others as you fear they will do unto you?
Severely not good policy.
Severely not good Ethics.
The Moon is also at the bottom of a Gravity Well, you could use an orbital based mass driver against both Terra and Luna - plus, there is plenty of raw ammunition just floating around the SolSys in the form of asteroids to do the job.
On a happier (and less paranoid) note, I don't suppose there might just be a chance for overall Human co-operation on getting us all into space would there? No? Too much to ask I supose.
I have to say I am attracted to the idea of an Orbital facility based upon (and hopefully governed by) high tech and ethical principles.
The idea of 'data haven' facilities is also one with which any reader of SF/Cyberpunk will be familiar, and one that could be very profitable.
The question of funding is of course the major sticking point.
Basically, this news story ammounts to 'M$ are doing what they are paid to do and making their software secure'?
Why is this considered newsworthy?
On second thoughts...
Now THAT I would pay to see. The Reduced Shakespeare co make some damn funny work (The Bible: The complete word of God(abridged) being, IMHO, better than the complete works of the Bard)
:)
After all, the major complaint EVER about LOTR is that it is waaaaaay too long and has to much descriptive rubbish in it.
A RSC version may actually be watchable
The Microsoft website does not display correctly in Opera, I can't swear to its performance in Mozilla.
The site displays all of the text on the page as too small (easily solved by zooming the page) and the left hand menu bars are messed up. Masquerading as IE doesn't seem to help - in fact, it can make things worse.
The only real problem this has every created was with the pages for Asheron's Call 2, but it turned out that game was gash anyway.
Then I would advise you try Opera. And I really mean try it properly. Take a week or two. Learn the interface. Use the News and Mail facilities. Learn the Mouse gestures.
Having tried both Mozilla and Opera (among others) I can confidently state that it is worth the money.
Mind you, it may hae to be stated that my job basically consists of using web pages, so that extra speed and the mouse gesture functionality is a *lot* more useful to me than it may be to your average end user.
go to The German Site and have a look at the specification or features pages - very clearly labels a USB dock... maybe your prayers have been answered.
If i'm reading this correctly (german not being my best language) then the german site is charging the equivalent of US$900!
anyone any idea what the bottom photo on the accessories page is? It isn't labelled in any way.
I can think of any number of uses for this tool, in terms of instant access and sys work.
I can also think of a number of highly illegal uses for its capabilities.
As I pointed out in another post somewhere in this tree, bundling the free (ad-supported) version of Opera with OS's or give-away net connection CD's would, IMHO, be the optimal solution. Sure, most of those users would not buy, but it would give Opera the market share that it needs, and the consumer loyalty base who, in the future, would look to Opera and not M$ for their browser.
The only way to successfully fight the M$ assimilation is to meet it on its own ground - with software to show the new users what they could be using, giving them options from M£ware.
As for your assertion that net adoption is tapering off, I think you will find that there is (and will be for some time) a steady rate of increase, mainly due to the fact that the younger generations adopt net access as a priority when leaving home for college/own home. The level of net access adoption will not stop until the main users of the net begin to die off - and we have a few years to wait before that seriously starts to happen.
And as for the Opera!=Free-beer thing, well, I am prepared to pay $40 for a product that is standards compliant, easy to use (i estimate i save 50% time over using IE) and integrates so many functions (browser, mail client, newreader) of use to me.
Ahh, thanks for the link, I'd been considering if that had been done :)
An the $40 is only for the ad-free version. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility (indeed, it would be a very good business move, IMHO) for Opera to get the ad-included version bundled in the same way as any other browser.
Rationale? Opera is not going to come to the attention of your average AOL user as the situation currently stands, but by bundling it Opera would get a percentage (probably a small one, TBH) of that user base buying up the browser. This in turn would lead to those people buying the next version of the Browser when it came out.
In short, fight fire with fire, M$ do it, why not Opera?
The ONLY site i have ever seen fail to render correctly in Opera was, coincidentally, Microsoft and its associated support pages, and TBH, most of that is the text size, which is a simple case of CTRL-ScrollUp (Opera's 'zoom page' function, for the uninitiated).
I pretty certain the M$ pages are designed to be broken in anything that isn't M$IE.
I'm presuming you're referring to some type of fast-rewind feature. Opera's got that (not sure if the button's on the toolbar by default though)
Mouse Gestures. Once you have learnt them, you fly through the web. The only drawback is on those rare occasions you have to use another browser it gets very frustrating when you use a gesture and... nothing happens...
Functions like page zoom, inbuilt mail client, "restart the browser where I was browsing last time", inbuilt download client, easy bookmarks (including my the 'these were you IE/Netscape/whatever favourites'), popup protection and a whole host of tweaks and twitches are great.
Exactly my point. What needs to happen is that a better alternative is made available to the new users, so as to prevent their unwitting assimilation.
You are missing an important point: AOL/TW make money from the movie, they lose money from the development of a browser when they already have one for free.
This is an M$ move to cut the competition out of the game by removing development funding.
Browser wars over? One word for you. Opera
.net - yes, okay, I acknowledge that a lot of the masses are VERY annoying, but either they get welcomed to the net by those of us who know what we are doing, or they get assimilated by the GatesBorg collective.
As for the "AOL have the priviledge to use IE royalty free for 7 years" well, that just stinks of typical M$hit - AOL use IE, cut out their development costs, M$ get a dependent user base (again) from the people in the position least knowledgable and least likely to realise what crud they are being palmed off with.
What need to be done is concerted education of the legions of newcomers to the
The mass population of the internet has to be won over to break the M$ stranglehold. The few 3l173 H4XX0Rz aren't a significant enough user base to challenge M$.
Hmmm, I seem to have wandered violently off topic. Meh.
I have a Maxtor 80Gb, and i'll admit to a few nervous moments while waiting for the /.ed site to load... says it only affects drives made in China, but who really knows?
Plus, I was not impressed with the service level of the people i purchased it from, and the drive does have chinese characters on it... im going to check if it was made in china, and if it was, well, i have a tape drive somewhere about - time i got around to installing it I feel
See here
yeah, and 95% of it goes straight to Novell, our new favourite good guys :)
Well, here is a thing - I have found that there is a project underway to find as many instances as possible where acess to code that may have been copied was found, in order to prove that the IP for Unix has been nullified
See here for details.
Hey, thats a point, as a Linux redistributor, SCO have been knowingly been redistributing the code they claim is stolen from Unix System V with their Linux packages, therefore implicitly giving consent (via the GPL) for said use of the code, surely?
Is that the case under US law? Probably not, or at least it'll be a lawyers dream of a cashcow arguement
It is down now to roughly double its pre-lies value, and is still dropping, although yesterdays nosedive isn't being continued.
Shame.
However, if the share price does hit low enough, we will almost certainly see a buy out, simply because at that point it becomes cheaper than the lawsuit for IBM and Novell.