It is interesting how two sometimes-Libertarians like you and I could be on such opposite sides of the political spectrum. I don't want people passing legislation. I think legislation is almost always the source of the problem.
Therefore I propose the formation of the first political party you can actually trust -- a deterministic party. A party that always votes exactly the way you want them to. Always.
I call it the Obstructionist Party, and Obstructionist Party candidates swear to always vote no on every piece of legislation they vote on. No matter what, if it's a bill, the vote is no. At least that way I can tell if their vote is being bought, and it has the added upside of increasing the percentage of votes needed for bill passage, such that every bill embraces more compromise than it otherwise would. No "republican controlled congress" or "democrat controlled congress". If we have enough Obstructionist votes, then we would have compromise on every bill.
I think the Fermi Paradox is no paradox at all, just a foolish assumption that intelligent lifeforms would be as interested in exploration and expansion as we were recently--even though we're still too primitive to be an interstellar-capable people.
You miss one thing: we don't choose to be interested in exploration or expansion, we are driven to it by the fact that we are a superpredator.
Individual superpredators will generally choose to eat, grow and successfully reproduce rather than not. That's going to drive exponential demand for resources. For all the grand experiments with population control we've tried to date, it seems that people are happier with the horrors of unending bloody conflict than the idea of not having kids. I'm not aware of any trends to the contrary. Some countries have decreasing population, but it would seem that those countries are simply unsuccessful -- it's just a matter of time before the crazed hordes conquer them and acquire their resources.
Interstellar space travel becomes mandatory immediately after basic civilization forms. An interstellar civilization would seem to be relatively unimpeded with respect to exponential population growth. Recompute for T+100,000,000 years and discover a galaxy completely conquered by their children. My best guess to the Fermi paradox is that we are the first intelligent civilization in this galaxy, and we should reasonably be expected to utterly subjugate and consume it in geologic short order.
Only one civilization gets the luxury of the Fermi paradox -- the rest get eaten.
You may want to consider that the problem is more subtle than that.
Just because you have your home directory on an iPod connected to a foreign Mac doesn't mean that you can authenticate and log in. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could have, in your home directory, credentials signed by a trustee that you could use to log in to any system, with your access limited to writing to public areas or your own home directory. Furthermore, encrypt that image on the iPod so that it can't be accessed unless you authenticate successfully. I'm not sure what the scope of the invention is, since I refuse to read patents or patent applications, but it might be a great solution to a tough problem. It also has implications for DRM licensing schemes -- licenses that apply to the user, not the computer.
I know sarcasm is like breathing after a few years on slashdot, but this might actually be an interesting invention. We'll have to wait and see.
Actually, with Google's deep pockets, there is NO chance that the awards will ever be paid out. You seem to have missed U.S. vs Microsoft: given sufficiently deep pockets, you can keep a case alive and churning through the legal morass of the court system indefinitely.
Prediction-the-first: this will be settled out-of-court, and along the lines of a statutory license. Prediction-the-second: you will watch GoogleTV, and the copyright holders will love you for it. Prediction-the-third: in the face of TiVo-enabled departures from a supportable advertising model, traditional TV broadcasting will end up losing out since Google will be able to provide exact viewer measurements and demographics and be able to target the most coveted consumer groups.
You are dismissing the effect of mergers and corporate reorganization as a factor in database design. Good DBAs are perpetually responding to the decisions of bad managers.
If you insist on killing people over it, you should at least make sure you target people in the appropriate pay grade. Otherwise the problem just gets worse. Killing DBAs is particularly bad form.
Not necessarily. 15GB is plenty of room for a 2 hour H.264 encoded 1080P/24 program. The difference between MPEG-2 and H.264 is night and day, in terms of coding efficiency. There is a good chance that it would go dual-layer DVD + single layer HD-DVD.
It's not cost effective for the USPS to maintain their own fleet of aircraft, when they can just have private companies compete to provide that service to them as contractors.
Actually it is cost effective, which is why FedEx does it. I think you may be confusing cost issues with Congressional decree.
It works like this:
1) Corporation lobbies Congress.
2) Congress passes law forbidding "unfair government competition" to corporation.
3) Government agency contracts corporation.
4) Profit!
5) Campaign contributions!
Re:If video games really influence our behavior...
on
The 64% Violent Pacman
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It's pretty clear that Pacman could lead this entire country, nay the entire world, to extensive drug use, poor taste in music, and cannibalism unless we legislate against it.
They called this dark period in our history "The 80's".
RFC dated April 1997, based on draft documents dating back to February 1995, based on public work on Dynamic DNS dating from 1994. This one is a no-brainer, overwhelming prior art exists -- DynDNS doesn't begin to touch it.
Take a look at BOOTP from 1985 (client transmits MAC address to BOOTP server announcing it's presence, BOOTP server returns an IP address, routed and ARP complete the query portion transforming public presence identity, in this case a publicly routable IP address, to the MAC address).
Prediction: Net2Phone loses case, Skype loses money, lawyers make money.
Payloads, or tourists, would simply ascend the cable into low-Earth orbit, eliminating the need for rocket launches.
Well there's your problem right there -- you can't take a space elevator to low earth orbit. A space elevator that puts you in low earth orbit is moving at an angular velocity 18 times faster than the earth, and is therefore quickly destroyed.
This isn't science, it's an ill-conceived editorial. Ignore this article and get back to work, my space monkey minions! Soon space will be ours!
Actually, that's a great precedent to cite: but it works against your argument.
Standard "first class" mail is handled on a best effort basis, and there is no discrimination between senders or receivers. That describes the "net neutral" model for best effort route interconnects as it exists today -- and as it has existed since the advent of the internet.
The AT&T plan would say, "Yes, your 39 cents is good, but not when your mail is addressed to Google. In that case we drop your letter on the floor because Google won't pay an extra surcharge that we only levy against them." Net neutrality isn't limited to access -- it has to do with interconnect agreements. Best-effort routing is at risk, and with it the expectation that you should be able to route a packet from one IP address to another without worrying about which troll bridge your packet has to cross.
Don't worry, though. Us old timers have seen this before.
I'd guess the top 10 albums provide 30-50% of total sales.
Interesting guess. Nice margin of error. Unfortunately, you've basically supported GPs analysis. If last year it made up 50% of total sales, and this year it makes up 30% of total sales, we'd have a decline of (gasp!) 40%.
Hard to say it without a tragic sigh -- but the WSJ converging on USAToday as a limit. These statistics are laughable.
If you figure in lawyer's fees, it already costs more than $10,000 to apply for a patent. I frankly doubt that application fees would help in any way whatsoever -- speaking as the named inventor on 9 patents and a pile of applications.
The only workable solution I can think of is imposing liability on the inventor to find prior art and prove novelty: if your patent gets invalidated, you are held liable for restraint of trade. I think a lot of folks -- particularly "IP speculators" -- would walk away from their patents in that environment.
They are best suited to use on interplanetary probes and that kind of thing, not for reaching escape veolcity.
Not to be petty, but I think what you mean is "not for reaching orbit". Once in a stable orbit you can slowly climb to escape velocity with a low-output thruster - you simply need to exceed drag.
Well if they accepted Apple's OS then they would have a wide range of programs.
As a daily user of both MacOS and Linux, I find your comment confusing. My Mac came with a browser, email, IM client, music manager, photo manager, a great compiler suite and some cut rate media production tools deliberately designed to upsell customers to their $1000+ product line.
My linux distro all that and an office suite, educational software, graphics editing (vector and raster), desktop publishing, and a great compiler suite that just happens to be the same one as above, except newer. Oh yes, and the source code to every single program on the box. Were the programs "first tier"? Well, some less than others -- but they were at least there to use.
It's truly baffling that you can buy a $2000 Mac and not even end up with a basic word processing program or spreadsheet on it -- especially when that software can be had for free. Owning a Mac is like a owning a Jeep -- pay once to own it, then pay continuously to use it.
Apple's OS has no business anywhere near this project -- it's a gloriously decorated desktop operating system designed for people that can justify paying thousands of dollars for a photo editing program. Id est no one outside of California. I certainly can't afford it -- I had to fink my way to a fully functional desktop box since the missus wouldn't switch from Linux without the equivalent of Open Office, Scribus, The GIMP and Inkscape. The "first tier" commercial equivalents of those programs would have cost me significantly more than the computer itself.
since I'm not fluent in the 100 different web technologies (I don't recall all the acronyms), I'm not employable.
No, you are not employable because you refuse to become fluent in the 100 different web technologies. There is nothing to any of them that you can't learn on your own time using a home built server and free software. Either you will do what it takes be valuable to the market, or you won't. There are your choices; choose wisely.
Scene: my bedroom, this morning 5:40 AM
Me: Remind me to download a copy of Echo2 so I can fiddle with AJAX a bit more this weekend.
Wife: When are you going to have time to do that?
Me: I'll make time. What's good for my resume is good for your clothes budget.
Wife: OKAY!
It holds more than that when the Declarer commits his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor. The problem is that there isn't anyone left in this country that still carries the Patrick Henry gene.
Actually, in the case of an emergency, you don't even need a Technician class. You can transmit without any license at all.
Not true. The only case where you can transmit without a license is when you are in immediate danger of loss of life or property. "Immediate danger" does not cover most emergency situations.
But I'll up the GP one -- don't stop at Technician, get your General Class ticket. Techs can't really communicate without infrastructure (simplex VHF is normally very short range). General Class and above can use HF, and that is usable for long distance communication without any infrastructure at all. I've run voice on 17 meters from Colorado to New Zealand using a backpack radio many times. NVIS on 40 and 75 provides reliable regional communications with nothing more complicated than 100 feet of wire.
This is not nearly as difficult as you make it seem: implement the parser in a standardized language. The formal specification of the standardized language can then be included with the source of the parser.
Getting code to run on later architectures is not usually very difficult. I am fairly comfortable with the proposition of porting any code to any future architecture -- the "emulator scene" testifies to the viability of this strategy. The biggest problem to be solved is reading storage media for which no hardware exists.
For example, how do I get to my college research stored on AmigaDos floppies? Tragically, the easiest solution is to try to get my Amiga running again, and then move the data over a serial cable with kermit. I'm awfully glad I have kermit on that computer, because I don't think I'd be able to find any 2400 baud Amiga BBSes around to download it.
Alternative? Maya, Lightwave, Softimage are all available on Linux. No alternative needed: use the real deal. Or is it that you want to compare free-free software with incredibly expensive proprietary software?
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It is interesting how two sometimes-Libertarians like you and I could be on such opposite sides of the political spectrum. I don't want people passing legislation. I think legislation is almost always the source of the problem.
Therefore I propose the formation of the first political party you can actually trust -- a deterministic party. A party that always votes exactly the way you want them to. Always.
I call it the Obstructionist Party, and Obstructionist Party candidates swear to always vote no on every piece of legislation they vote on. No matter what, if it's a bill, the vote is no. At least that way I can tell if their vote is being bought, and it has the added upside of increasing the percentage of votes needed for bill passage, such that every bill embraces more compromise than it otherwise would. No "republican controlled congress" or "democrat controlled congress". If we have enough Obstructionist votes, then we would have compromise on every bill.
Individual superpredators will generally choose to eat, grow and successfully reproduce rather than not. That's going to drive exponential demand for resources. For all the grand experiments with population control we've tried to date, it seems that people are happier with the horrors of unending bloody conflict than the idea of not having kids. I'm not aware of any trends to the contrary. Some countries have decreasing population, but it would seem that those countries are simply unsuccessful -- it's just a matter of time before the crazed hordes conquer them and acquire their resources.
Interstellar space travel becomes mandatory immediately after basic civilization forms. An interstellar civilization would seem to be relatively unimpeded with respect to exponential population growth. Recompute for T+100,000,000 years and discover a galaxy completely conquered by their children. My best guess to the Fermi paradox is that we are the first intelligent civilization in this galaxy, and we should reasonably be expected to utterly subjugate and consume it in geologic short order.
Only one civilization gets the luxury of the Fermi paradox -- the rest get eaten.
You may want to consider that the problem is more subtle than that.
Just because you have your home directory on an iPod connected to a foreign Mac doesn't mean that you can authenticate and log in. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could have, in your home directory, credentials signed by a trustee that you could use to log in to any system, with your access limited to writing to public areas or your own home directory. Furthermore, encrypt that image on the iPod so that it can't be accessed unless you authenticate successfully. I'm not sure what the scope of the invention is, since I refuse to read patents or patent applications, but it might be a great solution to a tough problem. It also has implications for DRM licensing schemes -- licenses that apply to the user, not the computer.
I know sarcasm is like breathing after a few years on slashdot, but this might actually be an interesting invention. We'll have to wait and see.
Actually, with Google's deep pockets, there is NO chance that the awards will ever be paid out. You seem to have missed U.S. vs Microsoft: given sufficiently deep pockets, you can keep a case alive and churning through the legal morass of the court system indefinitely.
Prediction-the-first: this will be settled out-of-court, and along the lines of a statutory license.
Prediction-the-second: you will watch GoogleTV, and the copyright holders will love you for it.
Prediction-the-third: in the face of TiVo-enabled departures from a supportable advertising model, traditional TV broadcasting will end up losing out since Google will be able to provide exact viewer measurements and demographics and be able to target the most coveted consumer groups.
You are dismissing the effect of mergers and corporate reorganization as a factor in database design. Good DBAs are perpetually responding to the decisions of bad managers.
If you insist on killing people over it, you should at least make sure you target people in the appropriate pay grade. Otherwise the problem just gets worse. Killing DBAs is particularly bad form.
So long as I've got my solid gold mouse and my rocket car, I don't need anything else. I'm not greedy.
Problem: new drone design rotates so quick the human eye can't see it.
Solution: strobing LCD glasses.
Once again a $50M defense project defeated by $30 worth of hardware.
Not necessarily. 15GB is plenty of room for a 2 hour H.264 encoded 1080P/24 program. The difference between MPEG-2 and H.264 is night and day, in terms of coding efficiency. There is a good chance that it would go dual-layer DVD + single layer HD-DVD.
It works like this:
1) Corporation lobbies Congress.
2) Congress passes law forbidding "unfair government competition" to corporation.
3) Government agency contracts corporation.
4) Profit!
5) Campaign contributions!
They called this dark period in our history "The 80's".
For lack of trying? I for one think the application in adaptive optics (both refractive and reflective) is quite compelling.
RFC dated April 1997, based on draft documents dating back to February 1995, based on public work on Dynamic DNS dating from 1994. This one is a no-brainer, overwhelming prior art exists -- DynDNS doesn't begin to touch it.
Take a look at BOOTP from 1985 (client transmits MAC address to BOOTP server announcing it's presence, BOOTP server returns an IP address, routed and ARP complete the query portion transforming public presence identity, in this case a publicly routable IP address, to the MAC address).
Prediction: Net2Phone loses case, Skype loses money, lawyers make money.
This isn't science, it's an ill-conceived editorial. Ignore this article and get back to work, my space monkey minions! Soon space will be ours!
Actually, that's a great precedent to cite: but it works against your argument.
Standard "first class" mail is handled on a best effort basis, and there is no discrimination between senders or receivers. That describes the "net neutral" model for best effort route interconnects as it exists today -- and as it has existed since the advent of the internet.
The AT&T plan would say, "Yes, your 39 cents is good, but not when your mail is addressed to Google. In that case we drop your letter on the floor because Google won't pay an extra surcharge that we only levy against them." Net neutrality isn't limited to access -- it has to do with interconnect agreements. Best-effort routing is at risk, and with it the expectation that you should be able to route a packet from one IP address to another without worrying about which troll bridge your packet has to cross.
Don't worry, though. Us old timers have seen this before.
Hard to say it without a tragic sigh -- but the WSJ converging on USAToday as a limit. These statistics are laughable.
The only workable solution I can think of is imposing liability on the inventor to find prior art and prove novelty: if your patent gets invalidated, you are held liable for restraint of trade. I think a lot of folks -- particularly "IP speculators" -- would walk away from their patents in that environment.
My linux distro all that and an office suite, educational software, graphics editing (vector and raster), desktop publishing, and a great compiler suite that just happens to be the same one as above, except newer. Oh yes, and the source code to every single program on the box. Were the programs "first tier"? Well, some less than others -- but they were at least there to use.
It's truly baffling that you can buy a $2000 Mac and not even end up with a basic word processing program or spreadsheet on it -- especially when that software can be had for free. Owning a Mac is like a owning a Jeep -- pay once to own it, then pay continuously to use it.
Apple's OS has no business anywhere near this project -- it's a gloriously decorated desktop operating system designed for people that can justify paying thousands of dollars for a photo editing program. Id est no one outside of California. I certainly can't afford it -- I had to fink my way to a fully functional desktop box since the missus wouldn't switch from Linux without the equivalent of Open Office, Scribus, The GIMP and Inkscape. The "first tier" commercial equivalents of those programs would have cost me significantly more than the computer itself.
Scene: my bedroom, this morning 5:40 AM
Me: Remind me to download a copy of Echo2 so I can fiddle with AJAX a bit more this weekend.
Wife: When are you going to have time to do that?
Me: I'll make time. What's good for my resume is good for your clothes budget.
Wife: OKAY!
But I'll up the GP one -- don't stop at Technician, get your General Class ticket. Techs can't really communicate without infrastructure (simplex VHF is normally very short range). General Class and above can use HF, and that is usable for long distance communication without any infrastructure at all. I've run voice on 17 meters from Colorado to New Zealand using a backpack radio many times. NVIS on 40 and 75 provides reliable regional communications with nothing more complicated than 100 feet of wire.
This is not nearly as difficult as you make it seem: implement the parser in a standardized language. The formal specification of the standardized language can then be included with the source of the parser.
Getting code to run on later architectures is not usually very difficult. I am fairly comfortable with the proposition of porting any code to any future architecture -- the "emulator scene" testifies to the viability of this strategy. The biggest problem to be solved is reading storage media for which no hardware exists.
For example, how do I get to my college research stored on AmigaDos floppies? Tragically, the easiest solution is to try to get my Amiga running again, and then move the data over a serial cable with kermit. I'm awfully glad I have kermit on that computer, because I don't think I'd be able to find any 2400 baud Amiga BBSes around to download it.