a similar program (geared towards Mars) has found that the real show-stopper to all of this extended micro-grav (so far) is our bones. Humans appear to lose bone mass continuously in microgravity, even with countermeasures applied.
It's really wonderful that the United Nations wants to help one- armed chicken farmers in Bangladesh surf the Web. But maybe these sanctimonious bureaucrats should focus on more pressing issues - like providing plumbing, electricity and medicine - before obsessing over whether malnourished children in Ethiopia have DSL access.
Besides, the only Macintosh a starving North Korean wants to see is the bright red fruit. And what good does a flat-panel monitor do if reading the opinions expressed thereon gets you hanged from the nearest apple tree?
As with most U.N. summits, there is a dark side to this all-expenses-paid cocktail party in Geneva. Countries like China, Egypt, Syria and Vietnam are lobbying hard to wrest control of the Internet from the United States.
Despite ICANN's weaknesses, giving U.N. bureaucrats the key to the Internet's chastity belt would be a certain disaster. For starters, if the United Nations had to pass a simple resolution stating "the cyber-sky is blue," it would take three years and include a condemnation of Zionism. Getting scores of U.N. member states to agree on complex technical standards would be next to impossible.
But there's a much bigger problem with giving the United Nations regulatory control of the Internet.
Despite the sunny charm of countries like Cuba and Iran, the United Nations is populated with many despots who strive to censor anything that might enlighten their own people. They regard freedom of speech and individual rights - which are the life-blood of the Internet - with contempt. In some countries, sending the wrong e-mail can get you killed.
These tyrannical regimes would love to regulate cyberspace through the United Nations. But the Internet doesn't need their help. It already works splendidly well. Indeed, for many of the world's oppressed people, the Internet is a source of liberation, where they can access uncensored information.
Ruled largely by free-market forces, the Internet has become one of the miracles of our times. Sure, cyberspace has its problems. But if you think pop-up ads and spam are annoying, wait until China and Syria start meddling with your e-mail.
To make large, economical and safe space hotels in orbit or on the moon, we would need a lot of asteroidal and/or lunar material to make structural materials, outfit the interiors (tables, chairs, etc.), build shielding from space radiation and micrometeorites, and large, thick windows for great views. Giant, flat, polished mirrors from asteroid nickel or lunar aluminum could be used to protect large windows from direct exposure to micrometeorites.
Agricultural areas would be needed to reduce expensive food imports, water, oxygen, a large solar power plant (or other energy source). As these are all of the same things that we will need for a permanent lunar base, the producers of space hotel components may be the creators of the first factories, homes and communities in space and on the moon.
And there will always be some people who will want to buy a one-way ticket! How would you feel about moving permanently to the moon? According to the Space Tourism Initiative, a survey completed by the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in 1995, in North America (U.S. and Canada) of 1020 households concluded that overall, 60% of those surveyed were interested in traveling to space for a vacation.
45.6% indicate they would pay three month's salary for such a trip, 18.2% would pay six months salary, and 10.65% would pay a year's salary. Two-thirds of those wishing to visit space said they would do so several times.
nasa's take on what it would take to make "pathetic tourism" worthwhile... sigh. I wonder if the other great explorers had to listen to people like you.
Itchy and Scratchy and Marge already covered this:
Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing...
There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Kent: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance.
Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went on for thirty years.
Kent: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
-- `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
practical applications of surveilance: You log onto the websites you read in the morning. This info is captured by your ISP. you then stop by the gas station, using your easy pass to fill up your car. this info is captured by the gas station database. Then, using your fastlane, you get on the highway and drive 2 exits. This is logged in the speedpass database. You get to work, login to the network and begin working. Your time of arrival and time you actually spend working are logged. as well as what you typed (keystroke recorder). Don't forget they can record your conversations too via the computer.
It happened here in the US in the past couple of years. A woman filed sexual harrassment charges against her company and won when it was discovered that the company was recording every conversation near a computer with voice activated mics inside the machines. the conversations were stored on a server and were used as evidence in the trial. It would be pretty easy to write up a program that records how much time you are actually spending working on your computer. Why should the company pay you for time you spend in the toilet? piss on your own time buddy. Why should they pay you for mistakes? they are paying you for CORRECT work. If any of this seems unlikely, think about how many full (40 hours) time jobs there are now. Best buy, which just opened a store in my area, consideres full time 30 hours! no benefits, no overtime. They are not unique. So when they can get away with that, how far away is it to impliment the scenario I just described?
By the way a couple of years ago doubleclick, the company that is responsible for most of the banner ads you see, bought the company that has to the largest consumer database in the world. Do you think they won't use it? Do you trust corporations to do the right thing and pass up this opportunity to make a ton of money. Enron, Worldcom, and the others make the answer clear to me.
I've been using a Debain-based distro called MEPIS for several months now. FWIW, I've contributed to the developer because I really dig this OS.
It features a live CD like Knoppix and lets you install the distro through the live CD w/an installation application. In addition - the hardware detection was damn near flawless - talk about your easy install of Debain!!
this affects me personally, as I just submitted the faxwork to cancel/transfer my landline # to my vonage account. For redundancy, I'm getting a new cell plan with more minutes. In other words, it'll cost me a few more bucks a month but I'm still saving heaps of money over the (landline) greedy monster-corp
Even with the new taxes I still feel much cleaner - kinda like when I dumped cable for my dish...
The self-funded company even plans a smidgen of peer-to-peer distribution, according to Sampath. Songs bought through the service will all be wrapped tightly in Microsoft copy-protection technology, but people may be able to download them from each other's computers in order to save on bandwidth costs and download times, he said.
Founding father of Trustix Secure Linux, Erlend Midttun, along with
Trustix Secure Linux developer, Christian Toldnes now offers development,
maintenance and support for community and commercial customers from the
newly started company - Tawie Technologies AS.
Trondheim, Norway - 1st October 2003 - Erlend Midttun, a seasoned UNIX and
Linux system administrator and the creator of the Trustix Secure Linux
distibution, along with Trustix Secure Linux developer Christian Toldnes,
founded Tawie Technologies AS as a means to provide full support and
services around the Linux operating system in general, and the Tawie
Server Linux product in particular.
Erlend Midttun says: "The community and several commercial customers
needed someone to guarantee the future of the Trustix Secure Linux
product. This move ensures the customers and the community that the future
of Trustix Secure Linux is secured. The name of the product is also
changed to Tawie Server Linux, to reflect and state what the product is
and to avoid any conflicts with trademark ownership. The product will
continue to be developed under the GPL".
Tawie Technologies AS not only employs Erlend Midttun, experienced
security and software engineer Christian Toldnes was also part of the
founding duo. Christian is the current maintainer of SWUP, the automatic
software update tool for Tawie Server Linux (TSL).
Christian was instrumental to the release of TSL 2.0 this summer, and
says: "We have received several reports of TSL 2.0 installations in
several 30+ server environments. Serving Windows and UNIX users, primary
DNS, web and e-mail services in Europe, Americas and Asia. Systems
administrators rely on the stability and security of TSL, and our move to
Tawie Technologies AS now gives us the time and security we need to focus
on TSL".
Tawie Server Linux 2.0 provides full cross upgrades from Trustix Secure
Linux 2.0. The details for doing this is provided on the Tawie
Technologies webpage.
ABOUT Tawie Technologies AS
Tawie Technologies AS was founded in 2003 and provides consultancy and
service contracts for the Tawie Server Linux. Services are provided world
wide, with a wide range of support options available.
For more information about Tawie Technologies AS, see http://www.tawie.com
ABOUT TAWIE SERVER LINUX
Tawie Server Linux is a Linux distribution targeted at companies, of all
sizes, in need of a low footprint and high security server operating
system. Tawie Server Linux includes the open standards based SoftWare
UPdater, SWUP, which keeps all software packages up-to-date, resolves
library dependancies and integrates public key cryptography to ensure
safety and security.
For more information about Tawie Server Linux, see http://www.tawie.net/
PRESS CONTACTS:
Jo Uthus,
Linux is trademark Linus Torvalds
All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
talk about wishful thinking - are the mega-corps really going to pass on this opportunity? Every time Jennifer Anistion gets her hair cut millions of American women run out and get the latest new hairdo.
So why not include candy bars, soda pop, and autos? I say lets bring back smoking on TV and really get the money rolling in!
not so sure about this - I use gotmail to fetch (well, forward really) mail from a *otmail account to my pop address. There was a time when hotmail was changing their re-directs at least daily and if you could wait the update would be out that night. I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen with MSN
OTOH - if MSN is successful in blocking out 3rd party clients then their membership #'s will no doubt suffer and people will move to Yahoo or ICQ or whatever... Sony has taught us this lesson over and over since the Betamax.
...I know that Amazon used to "experiment" with pricing - I'd worry to much they were doing the same thing with linking. Rather than relevance to my search it'd be listed according to Amazon's fees/whims....
sue a few more kids, maybe even a 9 or 10-year-old, and see how fast the main-stream news jumps all over this. Sueing your customer base is a PR nightmare as it is - now things are just going to get worse with each "incident" like this.
Slashdot Mirror
a similar program (geared towards Mars) has found that the real show-stopper to all of this extended micro-grav (so far) is our bones. Humans appear to lose bone mass continuously in microgravity, even with countermeasures applied.
Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program
It's really wonderful that the United Nations wants to help one- armed chicken farmers in Bangladesh surf the Web. But maybe these sanctimonious bureaucrats should focus on more pressing issues - like providing plumbing, electricity and medicine - before obsessing over whether malnourished children in Ethiopia have DSL access. Besides, the only Macintosh a starving North Korean wants to see is the bright red fruit. And what good does a flat-panel monitor do if reading the opinions expressed thereon gets you hanged from the nearest apple tree? As with most U.N. summits, there is a dark side to this all-expenses-paid cocktail party in Geneva. Countries like China, Egypt, Syria and Vietnam are lobbying hard to wrest control of the Internet from the United States. Despite ICANN's weaknesses, giving U.N. bureaucrats the key to the Internet's chastity belt would be a certain disaster. For starters, if the United Nations had to pass a simple resolution stating "the cyber-sky is blue," it would take three years and include a condemnation of Zionism. Getting scores of U.N. member states to agree on complex technical standards would be next to impossible. But there's a much bigger problem with giving the United Nations regulatory control of the Internet. Despite the sunny charm of countries like Cuba and Iran, the United Nations is populated with many despots who strive to censor anything that might enlighten their own people. They regard freedom of speech and individual rights - which are the life-blood of the Internet - with contempt. In some countries, sending the wrong e-mail can get you killed. These tyrannical regimes would love to regulate cyberspace through the United Nations. But the Internet doesn't need their help. It already works splendidly well. Indeed, for many of the world's oppressed people, the Internet is a source of liberation, where they can access uncensored information. Ruled largely by free-market forces, the Internet has become one of the miracles of our times. Sure, cyberspace has its problems. But if you think pop-up ads and spam are annoying, wait until China and Syria start meddling with your e-mail.
To make large, economical and safe space hotels in orbit or on the moon, we would need a lot of asteroidal and/or lunar material to make structural materials, outfit the interiors (tables, chairs, etc.), build shielding from space radiation and micrometeorites, and large, thick windows for great views. Giant, flat, polished mirrors from asteroid nickel or lunar aluminum could be used to protect large windows from direct exposure to micrometeorites.
Agricultural areas would be needed to reduce expensive food imports, water, oxygen, a large solar power plant (or other energy source). As these are all of the same things that we will need for a permanent lunar base, the producers of space hotel components may be the creators of the first factories, homes and communities in space and on the moon.
And there will always be some people who will want to buy a one-way ticket! How would you feel about moving permanently to the moon? According to the Space Tourism Initiative, a survey completed by the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in 1995, in North America (U.S. and Canada) of 1020 households concluded that overall, 60% of those surveyed were interested in traveling to space for a vacation.
45.6% indicate they would pay three month's salary for such a trip, 18.2% would pay six months salary, and 10.65% would pay a year's salary. Two-thirds of those wishing to visit space said they would do so several times.
nasa's take on what it would take to make "pathetic tourism" worthwhile... sigh. I wonder if the other great explorers had to listen to people like you.
Itchy and Scratchy and Marge already covered this:
Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing...
There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Kent: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance.
Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went on for thirty years.
Kent: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
-- `Smartline', ``Itchy and Scratchy and Marge''
practical applications of surveilance: You log onto the websites you read in the morning. This info is captured by your ISP. you then stop by the gas station, using your easy pass to fill up your car. this info is captured by the gas station database. Then, using your fastlane, you get on the highway and drive 2 exits. This is logged in the speedpass database. You get to work, login to the network and begin working. Your time of arrival and time you actually spend working are logged. as well as what you typed (keystroke recorder). Don't forget they can record your conversations too via the computer.
It happened here in the US in the past couple of years. A woman filed sexual harrassment charges against her company and won when it was discovered that the company was recording every conversation near a computer with voice activated mics inside the machines. the conversations were stored on a server and were used as evidence in the trial. It would be pretty easy to write up a program that records how much time you are actually spending working on your computer. Why should the company pay you for time you spend in the toilet? piss on your own time buddy. Why should they pay you for mistakes? they are paying you for CORRECT work. If any of this seems unlikely, think about how many full (40 hours) time jobs there are now. Best buy, which just opened a store in my area, consideres full time 30 hours! no benefits, no overtime. They are not unique. So when they can get away with that, how far away is it to impliment the scenario I just described?
By the way a couple of years ago doubleclick, the company that is responsible for most of the banner ads you see, bought the company that has to the largest consumer database in the world. Do you think they won't use it? Do you trust corporations to do the right thing and pass up this opportunity to make a ton of money. Enron, Worldcom, and the others make the answer clear to me.
I find most of my "family" support time is devoted to pops-ups, spam, updating and patching windows, and virus eradication...
why the hell would anyone NOT want to give all those things up especially on a box that is most used to surf the net and read emails?
Mepis - Live Debain-based distro which you can also install to your harddrive THROUGH the liveCD version.
Good stuff - I've been running it as my primary distro for months now.
I've been using a Debain-based distro called MEPIS for several months now. FWIW, I've contributed to the developer because I really dig this OS.
It features a live CD like Knoppix and lets you install the distro through the live CD w/an installation application. In addition - the hardware detection was damn near flawless - talk about your easy install of Debain!!
I BETTER see one of these warnings on the outside of a M$ OS box!!
how can they tell if the axe-head markings are from the creators or just really really old graffiti?
this affects me personally, as I just submitted the faxwork to cancel/transfer my landline # to my vonage account. For redundancy, I'm getting a new cell plan with more minutes. In other words, it'll cost me a few more bucks a month but I'm still saving heaps of money over the (landline) greedy monster-corp
Even with the new taxes I still feel much cleaner - kinda like when I dumped cable for my dish...
Can any of these Windows alternatives to Apple's iTunes compete though with the inherent restrictions built into the wma format?
from News.com.com:
The self-funded company even plans a smidgen of peer-to-peer distribution, according to Sampath. Songs bought through the service will all be wrapped tightly in Microsoft copy-protection technology, but people may be able to download them from each other's computers in order to save on bandwidth costs and download times, he said.
...I can't get a hold of the national do not call list too see if Dave's on it or not.
don't wanna get hit with that 2K fine ya know...
...think baster worm * phone callls... it'll be like trying to get through to a radio station when in fact it's your own house. Sounds ugly to me!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Trustix Secure Linux: The future is secured
Founding father of Trustix Secure Linux, Erlend Midttun, along with Trustix Secure Linux developer, Christian Toldnes now offers development, maintenance and support for community and commercial customers from the newly started company - Tawie Technologies AS.
Trondheim, Norway - 1st October 2003 - Erlend Midttun, a seasoned UNIX and Linux system administrator and the creator of the Trustix Secure Linux distibution, along with Trustix Secure Linux developer Christian Toldnes, founded Tawie Technologies AS as a means to provide full support and services around the Linux operating system in general, and the Tawie Server Linux product in particular.
Erlend Midttun says: "The community and several commercial customers needed someone to guarantee the future of the Trustix Secure Linux product. This move ensures the customers and the community that the future of Trustix Secure Linux is secured. The name of the product is also changed to Tawie Server Linux, to reflect and state what the product is and to avoid any conflicts with trademark ownership. The product will continue to be developed under the GPL".
Tawie Technologies AS not only employs Erlend Midttun, experienced security and software engineer Christian Toldnes was also part of the founding duo. Christian is the current maintainer of SWUP, the automatic software update tool for Tawie Server Linux (TSL).
Christian was instrumental to the release of TSL 2.0 this summer, and says: "We have received several reports of TSL 2.0 installations in several 30+ server environments. Serving Windows and UNIX users, primary DNS, web and e-mail services in Europe, Americas and Asia. Systems administrators rely on the stability and security of TSL, and our move to Tawie Technologies AS now gives us the time and security we need to focus on TSL".
Tawie Server Linux 2.0 provides full cross upgrades from Trustix Secure Linux 2.0. The details for doing this is provided on the Tawie Technologies webpage.
ABOUT Tawie Technologies AS Tawie Technologies AS was founded in 2003 and provides consultancy and service contracts for the Tawie Server Linux. Services are provided world wide, with a wide range of support options available.
For more information about Tawie Technologies AS, see http://www.tawie.com
ABOUT TAWIE SERVER LINUX Tawie Server Linux is a Linux distribution targeted at companies, of all sizes, in need of a low footprint and high security server operating system. Tawie Server Linux includes the open standards based SoftWare UPdater, SWUP, which keeps all software packages up-to-date, resolves library dependancies and integrates public key cryptography to ensure safety and security.
For more information about Tawie Server Linux, see http://www.tawie.net/
PRESS CONTACTS: Jo Uthus,
Linux is trademark Linus Torvalds All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
talk about wishful thinking - are the mega-corps really going to pass on this opportunity? Every time Jennifer Anistion gets her hair cut millions of American women run out and get the latest new hairdo. So why not include candy bars, soda pop, and autos? I say lets bring back smoking on TV and really get the money rolling in!
not so sure about this - I use gotmail to fetch (well, forward really) mail from a *otmail account to my pop address. There was a time when hotmail was changing their re-directs at least daily and if you could wait the update would be out that night. I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen with MSN
OTOH - if MSN is successful in blocking out 3rd party clients then their membership #'s will no doubt suffer and people will move to Yahoo or ICQ or whatever... Sony has taught us this lesson over and over since the Betamax.
...I know that Amazon used to "experiment" with pricing - I'd worry to much they were doing the same thing with linking. Rather than relevance to my search it'd be listed according to Amazon's fees/whims....
...how long until they demand Google pull all R**A links?
...I bet people won't the RTFA
best /. post ever. Wish I was a mod!
and I couldn't imagine living in the capsule for an extended period of time.. sure hope they make it bigger!
sue a few more kids, maybe even a 9 or 10-year-old, and see how fast the main-stream news jumps all over this. Sueing your customer base is a PR nightmare as it is - now things are just going to get worse with each "incident" like this.
...anyone who played Splinter Cell would know that!
yet somehow I manage - p2p is dragging these guys kicking and screaming to what the customers want and already get (free).