Well, VLC plays the sound well enough, and it sounds kinda intresting, but it doesn't have support for wmw3 video, so I can't comment on that yet. I wish people running these places would recognize that there are better formats out there than wmv, or at least alternate formats.
Call me blind, but I can't seem to put my virtual hands on a copy of that movie. And I'd rather like to see it. Sounds intresting, and I've always liked visualizations of cutting edge physics. Or would that be vanishing edge?
1)I know the company that's putting it out, and they have a pretty good reputation. Everything of AmbrosiaSW's I've played, I liked.
2)I've read all the official releases, and descriptions, and many of the reviews, and possibly more importantly, I've also read a fair bit of commentary from people who have played it, listened to their descriptions of how it works, and their own views of it's strengths and weaknesses.
3)I've looked at all the screenshots I could find, and watched all the screen-captured movies of gameplay that AmbrosiaSW released.
Knowing all of that, along with my own intrests and desires for a new game, add in the novelty and unique gameplay and concept characteristics, and the result is a game that I wuold very much like to play. Which is the point, largely. If I had to pick a single game to add to my comp, I'd take this one over any of the multitude of FPS or RTS games out there. Although I admire the quality and graphical beauty of some of the newer versions of both, a new FPS is still just another FPS. I have yet to hear of radically new elements of gameplay added to most of the game categories in recent years. (graphical improvement doesn't count. I'm talking actual new gameplay). That beign said, if someone out there developes a radically new game, I want to try it out, play it through as best I can. Those bold enough to actually create new games and not just re-issue a current standard type should be encouraged and supported.
From what I've seen in many larger environments, there can be a fair amount of paperwork, formalities, and other stuff that isn't really getting much accomplished. Granted that some of it does have it's place (keeping effort from being duplicated, making sure stuff happens, and the like), but much is not.
I would say that right in the middle of said paperwork would be a good place for an Admin of the Admins. They don't really need to have someone admining them, but it might really help to have someone who is simply responsible for keeping track of everything that goes on, does most of the generic paperwork, does all the senior managemnt reports, goes to the generic meetings (and brings back the actual important and/or intresting bits to the rest of the admins). In short, deal with all the stuff that doesn't really need an Admin to do, and let the Admins do those things that actually require an Admin to do.
I suppose it is a "rule by serving" type approach, and one that might be better served by a good secretary/manager type with a good working knowledge of the field, but it deffinitly makes it more pallatable to have an Admin running things than some manager. At least you'll be able to understand what they're complaining about. *grin*
On second thought, it'd probably be better to actually have someone with Admin training/credentials occupying such a post than a manager/secretary type, since you'll have a better understanding of what your Admins need and want, and probably know enough to tell the difference.
Darwinia. From everything I've read about it, it looks to be one of the more intresting (read: different, unique, and quite possibly fun) games to hit the market recently. Not much chance of getting to try any of them out in the near future, though.
On a related note, has anyone bult that time transporter yet? Or any way to add a couple hours to my own personall time frame without changing the rest of the world's time? (so I can get in a couple hours extra on everyone else)
Well, for sheer humour's sake, I'll go with a modification of one of the above posts: "The way communism has been implemented in the world has caused a huge amount of suffuring, but it hasn't caused me any harm. Spam, on the other hand has." - Mental anguish, if nothing else.
That being said, I agree with those pointing out that these govts aren't actually communist. They call themselves that, and in certain ways they follow it's teachings, but fundementally, there has not yet been a true communist nation. Like another form of govt, Monarchy, it can accomplish a lot and do great things for it's people/nation, but it is far too easy to get an incompetant/selfserving monarch/council in charge. If there was some way to guarantee that it was actually governed by one or more individuals who actually do have the best intrests of the country and/or people at heart (and aren't incompetant or blind in the intelectual sense), then it could and would truly accomplish wonders.
Unfortuntaly, while I do believe that human beings *can* be better than they appear, we (as a society) seem to be heading the opposite way. Humans are probably worse overall than many of us would like to believe, but they're a lot nicer than the general average of what we see in the media. (remember: Our news is heavily slanted towards the negative. Most media would rather print the article on how suicide bomber X blew themselves up in suchandsuch than run a news item on how government official Soandso figured out how to provide fast, effective, universal health care for everyone without increasing taxes. The later is deffinitly the more important, and benefits society as a whole, but it'll be the bomber that gets the front page.)
Oh, and back to the main point of all this, the article on someone helping the chinese citizens. It's great that they're out there doing this, but don't articles like this hinder? What are the chances that *someone* in the cencorship bureaucracy is reading slashdot? We're not exactly a small site here. It would save them a lot of the effort of trying to find the holes in their system, since they can just watch for it to appear on the news here, then they just have to go looking for things once they know where it is. Or at least that it's there. Sort of doing their own work for them.
Which raises another point: How much are we willing to be less informed about subjects of intrest to us in order to benefit those who are actually involved in said subjects?
The real question is how many different kinds of MMOGs will the world market support? We can hope that the best in each category will win out, but it's more likely going to be the one that has the best advertising, or the ones that have the best infrastructure to support it decently, and either way have something that isn't total garbage.
From my point of view, however, it's likely that the truly great games are probably going to *still* be startups that, while awesome games for those who like them, don't have the wide audience appeal that some of the not-so good games. And thus may well end up failing, going bankrupt, or being bought out by one of the big companies.
A case in point is probably the entire SWG thing. They had a great premise (however flawed the implementation might have been), but it was sacrificed for what is essentially a more focused game that is probably easier to play (and thus accessible to a lot more people), even if it is a massively inferior gameplay experience for those who are willing to take the time to really learn the complexities of a game. Economically, they'd rather have a huge number of part-time gamers than a small number of hard-core ones.
Although that brings up the point that someone, somewhere, may figure out how to make a game with the intricacies, complexities, and depth to keep the hard-core types happy while still being accessible and fun for those who just want to drop in and play. A good example of this might well be done using Dungeons and Dragons. For those who know the game, there are an insane number of variations on all the different character themes. For those who don't want to spend the time to learn all that, there's the default sets for each major class, slap in the ability scores, and you've got a fully functional archtype, ready for the next hack and slash. And in the process of playing said archtypes, you'll still be exposed to the mechanics, and thus you learn. And after a while, you'll know enough to be making your own builds, thus the archtypes served to ease the learning curve to get you into the more complex things, and thus both systems co-exist.
If someone can figure out how to make that perfect game, I look forward to playing it.
...of me is of the opinion that we (people of the web) are better off without all those who aren't bright enough to avoid such a simple infection method. Now, if only the virus could transmit itself out of the computer and take down the user who, for all intents and purposes, installed the thing on it to begin with. Or at least permenently remove them from ever touching the web again.
That being said, the web would probably be a bit scarier place if viruses/software had that kind of physical power...
On the hopefull side, the more people who get burned by something like this, the more likely they are to take precautions in the future.
Oh, and to those with similar points of view to mine in the IT industry, do any of you worry that you're going to get tagged with the blame when a chunk of your users lose some of their important docs? "It's the tech's responsibility to keep bad stuff off the network", after all.
First of all, being a coastal city isn't really the safest situation in the tropics, especially storm-rich areas such as theirs. I've lived in the tropics long enough to have figured out that much. Either you take extra precautions, or you live with the risk.
Everything else pretty much stems from that. Being below sea-level in an area that is going to get storm surges is just plain silly. Even if you invest in the biggest and best dykes in the world, there is going to come a time when a) the biggest and worst storm *still* manages to push the waves over it, or b) you get flooded from the inside by torrential rains that have nowhere to go. And aren't going to go anywhere untill they evaporate or are removed forcibly, or c) you get flooded by rivers or miscelaneous other sources.
After all that, they make matters worse by building on a flood plain. A silt flood plain, even. Nature's built her world to take these sorts of things, and in the watery world that frequently involves having large plains ecosystems that are designed to be flooded on a regular basis. Removing these, as well as straightening and cleaning out rivers results in much higher and faster water flows downstream, and increases the likelyhood of major flooding elsewhere. And the fact that, somehow or another, flood plains managed to flood now and then despite all of our efforts, no getting around that. Like it happened to us up here, precautions might make it less frequent, but that also usually means that when flooding does happen, it tends to end up being worst-case scenarios.
Lastly, building on silt is just asking for trouble. Silt settles, silt is most deffinitly going to leak, and in the odd chance of an earthquake, silt tends to turn into quicksand and/or soup.
Oh, and someone sugested simply building overtop in order to keep everything above sea level, which was promptly denigrated. Isn't there another major city that did that? Somewhere in the Mexico/South America areas, although I forget exactly which one. And as far as that goes, there's always venice. Let the ocean in, (but keep the dykes as breakwaters to keep the waves out) and build all the buildings taller to accomodate having the lower levels flooded. Use the negative as a positive atraction. Replace everyone's cars with boats. You can have just as many traffic jams and speed just as much with boats as with cars, although you tend to have fewer fires when you get into accidents.
Well, going on the basis that I spend most of my comp time typing in DVORAK and only a small amount in QWERTY, I find that, although I've lost some of my ability to type in Q, you don't forget where the keys are. What I *do* lose is the muscle memory that guides the fingers. So when I do Qwerty, it's something of an odd pecking way of doing it, but it's not hunt and peck. Slows me down some, probably down to about 30 wpm (top speed in Qwerty was about70). I don't know what my speeds for DVORAK are, since I haven't had access to a typing program since I switched.
The annoying thing, I've found, is a number of games that hard route the keyboard, so they aren't actually listening for the "s" key (for example), but actually listening to the 2nd key to the right of caps lock. (at least that's how I figure it). Either that or they force interpret the keyboard as Qwerty regardless of settings. Kinda annoying.
Very true, very true.
It really is an amazing thing to see, our beautiful planet. Makes me wish that much more that I could be up there to see for myself.
Ah well, someday. I can hope, can't I?
Sax wasn't really a green. I'd term him more a kind of archtypical pure scientist. Research and experiment. If that involved changing the climate, so be it. The biggest lab in the solar system, so to seak. His logic for doing so was debateable as to it's political ideology. It's more his acts supported the greens a lot more than doing what he did for the greens, if you see the dfference.
Later on he became more of a green/red mix. And for a bit he was just pure power crazy. (hmm... massive forest fire just for revenge, playing with climate just because he can, ordering a shuttle "diverted" into the outer solar system....)
Vive la revolution
Long Live Free Mars
I suppose they could do that. In theory, they'd charge the ISP for the total data sent, and the ISP would pass that on to the consumer.
It'd probably result in something along the lines of
1) fee implemented (about double what they actually want)
2) users scream and threaten
3) fee cut in half, everyone happy since city gets the fees it wanted, users are paying half what they were going to.
2b) noone complains, thus fees remaining absurdly high, and city is VERY happy.
From the user's point of view, most broadband acounts have dl limits, above which you get charged, usually on a per Gb basis. So essentially, from the user's POV, they've got broadband, but the dl limit is set at 0 Gb/month. So everything as of the first Mb gets the surcharge. This extra fee, on top of normal user fees, I could see causing a lot of ppl to drop broadband and go back to dial up. Why pay a bunch just for the priveldge of the option to pay more? At least on dial up you can't earn as huge a values.
On a side note, what about those on satelite internet? No wires, no local ISPs, no way for the city (or state/province for that matter) to really track how much you download. And thus no fees for you. Unless they implement a flat rate for satelite types.
I could see wardriving being a much more common way of getting internet access under these regs. Less traceability. *grin*
No, 911 is NOT dying. It's an essential service, and a huge portion of the North Americain population has it ingrained to call that number in case of emergency. A fair number of people don't even know that the fire/ambulance/police departments even HAVE other phone numbers. Not all, or even a majority by any stretch, but enough to be highly significant.
What I see as more likely is a sort of centralization of both the telecommunication and the 911 services. If VoIP is continent wide, then eventually 911 is going to have to be too. In the future, the first question won't be whether you need Police, Ambulance, or Fire, it will be "What state or province are you in?". Doing so will probably increase the lag time in recieving 911 services, unfortunatly, but it's a heck of a lot better than loosing the service altogether.
Charging a fee per Mb won't really work. Sure, they'll get to massively boost their revenue (on a per call basis, make massively more. How much traffic in a given area's actually VoIP and not, say, MMORG or bitorrent?) Sure, they'll keep the funding for 911 and others, but if everyone's shifted to VoIP, then those services will need/have a budget a tiny fraction of the size they do now, since no-one's on copper lines anymore. Unless everyone's required to have a regular line for emergencies, or something.
Good question, that. Depending on how much they're spending per satelite it's possible they're using geosync orbits, and simply have spent extra to have top end resoltutions. Although they'd still have to have some mobile and/or aiming capability, since even 100 satelites won't be able to keep the entire country within the view of high res cameras.
My personal bet would be with a bunch of geosync sats over areas of significant intrest to the gov, (say, about half of the sats, possibly as many as 75) with the rest being in polar orbits to cover all the rest of the locations that aren't so easily predictable.
Well, on the good side, one would think it's releasing pressure, thus less danger of big quakes later on. On the downside, more smaller quakes. I guess they could get used to'm.
And some people say that humans can't have an impact on their environment in the crust of the earth sense.
Hehe... Now we get to not only mess up the atmosphere and the biosphere, but the crust too.
Well, as far as regs go, aircraft have said transponders installed and rigged to trigger if they're subject to greater than x amounts of g force. (such as that momentary peak that occurs when running into the ground) Leaving the transponder on for more than a minute or two will usually result in a radio call from the local control tower (if there is one), and possibly a hefty fine. It's assumed that if you have one installed and operating you should know about it.
Because of this, most aircraft post landing checks include listening on 121.5 for that signal so you can get to it (the transponder) before they start takling to you. (which is a bad thing)
I'm not certain, but I do believe that it's actually several satelites. Quite possibly linked to the GPS network, actually. (similar coverage, anyway) The main difference being that it's operating in reverse.
And that transponder is probably going to be one of the strongest HF (high frequency) broadcasting pieces of equipment on most things. HF so it's pretty much line of site, which limits it to being picked up by things that are above the horizon. Usually, anyway. Our atmosphere does funny things to it sometimes.
From all that I can tell from the article, there wasn't anything that could be termed "fighting words". And even if there were, I fundementally disagree that some cop can arbitrarly decide "Oh, that sounds like he actually meant it. Let's break this up now." Quite frankly, unless they're actually inciting violence or obviously trying to start a riot/mob mentality, the police shouldn't be able to do anything.
With all respect to police, who do provide a necesary function in our society, they should NOT be in the busness of preventing "disturbances" in the political and/or freedom of speach areas. Just like they can't arrest someone for walking down the street dressed in black at night on the basis that "they might be planning to break into somewhere", they should not be allowed to break up demonstrations (and even arrest people for failing to disperse) if said demonstration was not doing anything illegal. From the sounds of the article they weren't even blocking the street, and that's one of the easiest and least violent things a protest can do. If they aren't even doing that, what's the chances they're doing anything worse. (say, throwing rocks at the oposing group, or the police)
Essentially, it's the entire "presumed innocent untill proven guilty" thing. Which is what the constitution is based on. Although from what I can tell from outside of the US it does appear to be gradually changing towards "presumed guilty untill proven inocent", what with all the anti-terrorism and anti-don't like the goverment type bills.
Too bad. But it's still at least within reason. If I win the lottery I can go. *grin* Unlike going via NASA or the rusian space agency where I'd have to win several, in all likelyhood, to afford it.
I'm aware that they didn't reach LEO, or beyond that to the moon, and I didn't say that they'd surpassed NASA, but just that they're probably a bit of an embarasment. I don't have figures, but I dare say that NASA isn't the most efficient organization in the world. This small group that put SSO as far as it did has demonstrated very promsing results in a fairly short time period without establishing a substantial bureaucracy. Their comparative efficiency is going to earn NASA not a few comparisons, although admitedly NASA is a lot bigger, and has gone a lot farther, and most likely needs substantially more. But as much as they have? *shrug*
This is only the first step. Next time I bet they go for LEO. Next time being the next ship they produce, not the next flight. I doubt they have that much expansion capability in their current ship.
But regardless of the additional tech available now, it's still a remarkable achievemnt.
Where the governments are in the process of failing, the private secotor, and human ingenuity have taken the lead once more!
My, that must be a black eye for NASA. Tiny fraction of the budget, and yet they made it quite nicely. Hopefully someone over there take's notice.
And hopefully rides for the rest of humanity will be along shortly. Regardless, it's deffinitly within our grasp now, if not actually within the practical range quite yet. Only a matter of time, now. Hmmm... I wonder how much it costs per flight now that it's built and the main chunk of design/research is done? Is it low enough that "average" ppl can start thinking about a trip? As in the price per trip down into the single digit thousands? Or is is it still in the range of the very well off? On the plus side, it's gota be less than the $20mil that was being charged for a trip up to the ISS...
Oh yes, and a link to footage.
http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/gallery_rocketc am.shtml
Yeah for us! No need for CNN soul sucking registration for the vid!
Z
After it was discovered that web pages could autorun/autoinstall softmware, (I don't know the technical details, but anyway) Apple instituted this feature as a security device. Any app that wasn't specificall requested by the user and not a known system app, would the first time, pop up a message stating that this program (insert app name) is trying to run, if you want it to run, click OK, if not, or if appears malicious, click cancel.
Of course, this is a fairly new security addition to the MacOS X environment, and not for all you main stream windows ppl. But it's possible in one place, so it should be possible elswhere. Deffinitly a good security feature.
If expanded to auto block known spyware apps it could be even better.
Hehehe....
Well, looks like owning a windoze machine just got one step less safe. If I ever get one, remind me to shutdown at night instead of loging off, will you?
How well does this fare against hard/software firewalls?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, VLC plays the sound well enough, and it sounds kinda intresting, but it doesn't have support for wmw3 video, so I can't comment on that yet. I wish people running these places would recognize that there are better formats out there than wmv, or at least alternate formats.
Thanks for the links. They should satisfy my curiosity for the moment. *grin*
Call me blind, but I can't seem to put my virtual hands on a copy of that movie. And I'd rather like to see it. Sounds intresting, and I've always liked visualizations of cutting edge physics. Or would that be vanishing edge?
1)I know the company that's putting it out, and they have a pretty good reputation. Everything of AmbrosiaSW's I've played, I liked.
2)I've read all the official releases, and descriptions, and many of the reviews, and possibly more importantly, I've also read a fair bit of commentary from people who have played it, listened to their descriptions of how it works, and their own views of it's strengths and weaknesses.
3)I've looked at all the screenshots I could find, and watched all the screen-captured movies of gameplay that AmbrosiaSW released.
Knowing all of that, along with my own intrests and desires for a new game, add in the novelty and unique gameplay and concept characteristics, and the result is a game that I wuold very much like to play. Which is the point, largely. If I had to pick a single game to add to my comp, I'd take this one over any of the multitude of FPS or RTS games out there. Although I admire the quality and graphical beauty of some of the newer versions of both, a new FPS is still just another FPS. I have yet to hear of radically new elements of gameplay added to most of the game categories in recent years. (graphical improvement doesn't count. I'm talking actual new gameplay). That beign said, if someone out there developes a radically new game, I want to try it out, play it through as best I can. Those bold enough to actually create new games and not just re-issue a current standard type should be encouraged and supported.
From what I've seen in many larger environments, there can be a fair amount of paperwork, formalities, and other stuff that isn't really getting much accomplished. Granted that some of it does have it's place (keeping effort from being duplicated, making sure stuff happens, and the like), but much is not.
I would say that right in the middle of said paperwork would be a good place for an Admin of the Admins. They don't really need to have someone admining them, but it might really help to have someone who is simply responsible for keeping track of everything that goes on, does most of the generic paperwork, does all the senior managemnt reports, goes to the generic meetings (and brings back the actual important and/or intresting bits to the rest of the admins). In short, deal with all the stuff that doesn't really need an Admin to do, and let the Admins do those things that actually require an Admin to do.
I suppose it is a "rule by serving" type approach, and one that might be better served by a good secretary/manager type with a good working knowledge of the field, but it deffinitly makes it more pallatable to have an Admin running things than some manager. At least you'll be able to understand what they're complaining about. *grin*
On second thought, it'd probably be better to actually have someone with Admin training/credentials occupying such a post than a manager/secretary type, since you'll have a better understanding of what your Admins need and want, and probably know enough to tell the difference.
Darwinia. From everything I've read about it, it looks to be one of the more intresting (read: different, unique, and quite possibly fun) games to hit the market recently. Not much chance of getting to try any of them out in the near future, though. On a related note, has anyone bult that time transporter yet? Or any way to add a couple hours to my own personall time frame without changing the rest of the world's time? (so I can get in a couple hours extra on everyone else)
Well, for sheer humour's sake, I'll go with a modification of one of the above posts: "The way communism has been implemented in the world has caused a huge amount of suffuring, but it hasn't caused me any harm. Spam, on the other hand has." - Mental anguish, if nothing else.
That being said, I agree with those pointing out that these govts aren't actually communist. They call themselves that, and in certain ways they follow it's teachings, but fundementally, there has not yet been a true communist nation. Like another form of govt, Monarchy, it can accomplish a lot and do great things for it's people/nation, but it is far too easy to get an incompetant/selfserving monarch/council in charge. If there was some way to guarantee that it was actually governed by one or more individuals who actually do have the best intrests of the country and/or people at heart (and aren't incompetant or blind in the intelectual sense), then it could and would truly accomplish wonders.
Unfortuntaly, while I do believe that human beings *can* be better than they appear, we (as a society) seem to be heading the opposite way. Humans are probably worse overall than many of us would like to believe, but they're a lot nicer than the general average of what we see in the media. (remember: Our news is heavily slanted towards the negative. Most media would rather print the article on how suicide bomber X blew themselves up in suchandsuch than run a news item on how government official Soandso figured out how to provide fast, effective, universal health care for everyone without increasing taxes. The later is deffinitly the more important, and benefits society as a whole, but it'll be the bomber that gets the front page.)
Oh, and back to the main point of all this, the article on someone helping the chinese citizens. It's great that they're out there doing this, but don't articles like this hinder? What are the chances that *someone* in the cencorship bureaucracy is reading slashdot? We're not exactly a small site here. It would save them a lot of the effort of trying to find the holes in their system, since they can just watch for it to appear on the news here, then they just have to go looking for things once they know where it is. Or at least that it's there. Sort of doing their own work for them.
Which raises another point: How much are we willing to be less informed about subjects of intrest to us in order to benefit those who are actually involved in said subjects?
From my point of view, however, it's likely that the truly great games are probably going to *still* be startups that, while awesome games for those who like them, don't have the wide audience appeal that some of the not-so good games. And thus may well end up failing, going bankrupt, or being bought out by one of the big companies.
A case in point is probably the entire SWG thing. They had a great premise (however flawed the implementation might have been), but it was sacrificed for what is essentially a more focused game that is probably easier to play (and thus accessible to a lot more people), even if it is a massively inferior gameplay experience for those who are willing to take the time to really learn the complexities of a game. Economically, they'd rather have a huge number of part-time gamers than a small number of hard-core ones.
Although that brings up the point that someone, somewhere, may figure out how to make a game with the intricacies, complexities, and depth to keep the hard-core types happy while still being accessible and fun for those who just want to drop in and play. A good example of this might well be done using Dungeons and Dragons. For those who know the game, there are an insane number of variations on all the different character themes. For those who don't want to spend the time to learn all that, there's the default sets for each major class, slap in the ability scores, and you've got a fully functional archtype, ready for the next hack and slash. And in the process of playing said archtypes, you'll still be exposed to the mechanics, and thus you learn. And after a while, you'll know enough to be making your own builds, thus the archtypes served to ease the learning curve to get you into the more complex things, and thus both systems co-exist.
If someone can figure out how to make that perfect game, I look forward to playing it.
That being said, the web would probably be a bit scarier place if viruses/software had that kind of physical power...
On the hopefull side, the more people who get burned by something like this, the more likely they are to take precautions in the future.
Oh, and to those with similar points of view to mine in the IT industry, do any of you worry that you're going to get tagged with the blame when a chunk of your users lose some of their important docs? "It's the tech's responsibility to keep bad stuff off the network", after all.
First of all, being a coastal city isn't really the safest situation in the tropics, especially storm-rich areas such as theirs. I've lived in the tropics long enough to have figured out that much. Either you take extra precautions, or you live with the risk. Everything else pretty much stems from that. Being below sea-level in an area that is going to get storm surges is just plain silly. Even if you invest in the biggest and best dykes in the world, there is going to come a time when a) the biggest and worst storm *still* manages to push the waves over it, or b) you get flooded from the inside by torrential rains that have nowhere to go. And aren't going to go anywhere untill they evaporate or are removed forcibly, or c) you get flooded by rivers or miscelaneous other sources. After all that, they make matters worse by building on a flood plain. A silt flood plain, even. Nature's built her world to take these sorts of things, and in the watery world that frequently involves having large plains ecosystems that are designed to be flooded on a regular basis. Removing these, as well as straightening and cleaning out rivers results in much higher and faster water flows downstream, and increases the likelyhood of major flooding elsewhere. And the fact that, somehow or another, flood plains managed to flood now and then despite all of our efforts, no getting around that. Like it happened to us up here, precautions might make it less frequent, but that also usually means that when flooding does happen, it tends to end up being worst-case scenarios. Lastly, building on silt is just asking for trouble. Silt settles, silt is most deffinitly going to leak, and in the odd chance of an earthquake, silt tends to turn into quicksand and/or soup. Oh, and someone sugested simply building overtop in order to keep everything above sea level, which was promptly denigrated. Isn't there another major city that did that? Somewhere in the Mexico/South America areas, although I forget exactly which one. And as far as that goes, there's always venice. Let the ocean in, (but keep the dykes as breakwaters to keep the waves out) and build all the buildings taller to accomodate having the lower levels flooded. Use the negative as a positive atraction. Replace everyone's cars with boats. You can have just as many traffic jams and speed just as much with boats as with cars, although you tend to have fewer fires when you get into accidents.
Well, going on the basis that I spend most of my comp time typing in DVORAK and only a small amount in QWERTY, I find that, although I've lost some of my ability to type in Q, you don't forget where the keys are. What I *do* lose is the muscle memory that guides the fingers. So when I do Qwerty, it's something of an odd pecking way of doing it, but it's not hunt and peck. Slows me down some, probably down to about 30 wpm (top speed in Qwerty was about70). I don't know what my speeds for DVORAK are, since I haven't had access to a typing program since I switched. The annoying thing, I've found, is a number of games that hard route the keyboard, so they aren't actually listening for the "s" key (for example), but actually listening to the 2nd key to the right of caps lock. (at least that's how I figure it). Either that or they force interpret the keyboard as Qwerty regardless of settings. Kinda annoying.
I don't know about you, but it looks pretty burnt black to me... *grin/innocent look*
Very true, very true. It really is an amazing thing to see, our beautiful planet. Makes me wish that much more that I could be up there to see for myself. Ah well, someday. I can hope, can't I?
Sax wasn't really a green. I'd term him more a kind of archtypical pure scientist. Research and experiment. If that involved changing the climate, so be it. The biggest lab in the solar system, so to seak. His logic for doing so was debateable as to it's political ideology. It's more his acts supported the greens a lot more than doing what he did for the greens, if you see the dfference. Later on he became more of a green/red mix. And for a bit he was just pure power crazy. (hmm... massive forest fire just for revenge, playing with climate just because he can, ordering a shuttle "diverted" into the outer solar system....) Vive la revolution Long Live Free Mars
I suppose they could do that. In theory, they'd charge the ISP for the total data sent, and the ISP would pass that on to the consumer. It'd probably result in something along the lines of 1) fee implemented (about double what they actually want) 2) users scream and threaten 3) fee cut in half, everyone happy since city gets the fees it wanted, users are paying half what they were going to. 2b) noone complains, thus fees remaining absurdly high, and city is VERY happy. From the user's point of view, most broadband acounts have dl limits, above which you get charged, usually on a per Gb basis. So essentially, from the user's POV, they've got broadband, but the dl limit is set at 0 Gb/month. So everything as of the first Mb gets the surcharge. This extra fee, on top of normal user fees, I could see causing a lot of ppl to drop broadband and go back to dial up. Why pay a bunch just for the priveldge of the option to pay more? At least on dial up you can't earn as huge a values. On a side note, what about those on satelite internet? No wires, no local ISPs, no way for the city (or state/province for that matter) to really track how much you download. And thus no fees for you. Unless they implement a flat rate for satelite types. I could see wardriving being a much more common way of getting internet access under these regs. Less traceability. *grin*
No, 911 is NOT dying. It's an essential service, and a huge portion of the North Americain population has it ingrained to call that number in case of emergency. A fair number of people don't even know that the fire/ambulance/police departments even HAVE other phone numbers. Not all, or even a majority by any stretch, but enough to be highly significant. What I see as more likely is a sort of centralization of both the telecommunication and the 911 services. If VoIP is continent wide, then eventually 911 is going to have to be too. In the future, the first question won't be whether you need Police, Ambulance, or Fire, it will be "What state or province are you in?". Doing so will probably increase the lag time in recieving 911 services, unfortunatly, but it's a heck of a lot better than loosing the service altogether. Charging a fee per Mb won't really work. Sure, they'll get to massively boost their revenue (on a per call basis, make massively more. How much traffic in a given area's actually VoIP and not, say, MMORG or bitorrent?) Sure, they'll keep the funding for 911 and others, but if everyone's shifted to VoIP, then those services will need/have a budget a tiny fraction of the size they do now, since no-one's on copper lines anymore. Unless everyone's required to have a regular line for emergencies, or something.
Good question, that. Depending on how much they're spending per satelite it's possible they're using geosync orbits, and simply have spent extra to have top end resoltutions. Although they'd still have to have some mobile and/or aiming capability, since even 100 satelites won't be able to keep the entire country within the view of high res cameras. My personal bet would be with a bunch of geosync sats over areas of significant intrest to the gov, (say, about half of the sats, possibly as many as 75) with the rest being in polar orbits to cover all the rest of the locations that aren't so easily predictable.
OK, even for some of the things that get posted on slashdot, this is bad. We do NOT need text porn on this site. If only I had some mod points....
Well, on the good side, one would think it's releasing pressure, thus less danger of big quakes later on. On the downside, more smaller quakes. I guess they could get used to'm. And some people say that humans can't have an impact on their environment in the crust of the earth sense. Hehe... Now we get to not only mess up the atmosphere and the biosphere, but the crust too.
Well, as far as regs go, aircraft have said transponders installed and rigged to trigger if they're subject to greater than x amounts of g force. (such as that momentary peak that occurs when running into the ground) Leaving the transponder on for more than a minute or two will usually result in a radio call from the local control tower (if there is one), and possibly a hefty fine. It's assumed that if you have one installed and operating you should know about it. Because of this, most aircraft post landing checks include listening on 121.5 for that signal so you can get to it (the transponder) before they start takling to you. (which is a bad thing) I'm not certain, but I do believe that it's actually several satelites. Quite possibly linked to the GPS network, actually. (similar coverage, anyway) The main difference being that it's operating in reverse. And that transponder is probably going to be one of the strongest HF (high frequency) broadcasting pieces of equipment on most things. HF so it's pretty much line of site, which limits it to being picked up by things that are above the horizon. Usually, anyway. Our atmosphere does funny things to it sometimes.
From all that I can tell from the article, there wasn't anything that could be termed "fighting words". And even if there were, I fundementally disagree that some cop can arbitrarly decide "Oh, that sounds like he actually meant it. Let's break this up now." Quite frankly, unless they're actually inciting violence or obviously trying to start a riot/mob mentality, the police shouldn't be able to do anything. With all respect to police, who do provide a necesary function in our society, they should NOT be in the busness of preventing "disturbances" in the political and/or freedom of speach areas. Just like they can't arrest someone for walking down the street dressed in black at night on the basis that "they might be planning to break into somewhere", they should not be allowed to break up demonstrations (and even arrest people for failing to disperse) if said demonstration was not doing anything illegal. From the sounds of the article they weren't even blocking the street, and that's one of the easiest and least violent things a protest can do. If they aren't even doing that, what's the chances they're doing anything worse. (say, throwing rocks at the oposing group, or the police) Essentially, it's the entire "presumed innocent untill proven guilty" thing. Which is what the constitution is based on. Although from what I can tell from outside of the US it does appear to be gradually changing towards "presumed guilty untill proven inocent", what with all the anti-terrorism and anti-don't like the goverment type bills.
Too bad. But it's still at least within reason. If I win the lottery I can go. *grin* Unlike going via NASA or the rusian space agency where I'd have to win several, in all likelyhood, to afford it. I'm aware that they didn't reach LEO, or beyond that to the moon, and I didn't say that they'd surpassed NASA, but just that they're probably a bit of an embarasment. I don't have figures, but I dare say that NASA isn't the most efficient organization in the world. This small group that put SSO as far as it did has demonstrated very promsing results in a fairly short time period without establishing a substantial bureaucracy. Their comparative efficiency is going to earn NASA not a few comparisons, although admitedly NASA is a lot bigger, and has gone a lot farther, and most likely needs substantially more. But as much as they have? *shrug* This is only the first step. Next time I bet they go for LEO. Next time being the next ship they produce, not the next flight. I doubt they have that much expansion capability in their current ship. But regardless of the additional tech available now, it's still a remarkable achievemnt.
Where the governments are in the process of failing, the private secotor, and human ingenuity have taken the lead once more! My, that must be a black eye for NASA. Tiny fraction of the budget, and yet they made it quite nicely. Hopefully someone over there take's notice. And hopefully rides for the rest of humanity will be along shortly. Regardless, it's deffinitly within our grasp now, if not actually within the practical range quite yet. Only a matter of time, now. Hmmm... I wonder how much it costs per flight now that it's built and the main chunk of design/research is done? Is it low enough that "average" ppl can start thinking about a trip? As in the price per trip down into the single digit thousands? Or is is it still in the range of the very well off? On the plus side, it's gota be less than the $20mil that was being charged for a trip up to the ISS... Oh yes, and a link to footage. http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/gallery_rocketc am.shtml
Yeah for us! No need for CNN soul sucking registration for the vid!
Z
Ummm... This exists. In part, anyway.
After it was discovered that web pages could autorun/autoinstall softmware, (I don't know the technical details, but anyway) Apple instituted this feature as a security device. Any app that wasn't specificall requested by the user and not a known system app, would the first time, pop up a message stating that this program (insert app name) is trying to run, if you want it to run, click OK, if not, or if appears malicious, click cancel.
Of course, this is a fairly new security addition to the MacOS X environment, and not for all you main stream windows ppl. But it's possible in one place, so it should be possible elswhere. Deffinitly a good security feature.
If expanded to auto block known spyware apps it could be even better.
Hehehe.... Well, looks like owning a windoze machine just got one step less safe. If I ever get one, remind me to shutdown at night instead of loging off, will you? How well does this fare against hard/software firewalls?