This is important stuff. In the U.S. this has (unsurprisingly) typically been a function of the Navy. Their Alvin submarines have been used for undersea exploration, rescue and military investigation work, but they do not have the ability to go to every point on the ocean bottom.
Those of you who are tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists would do well to take note of the Glomar Explorer, which was a ship and diving apparatus that was something of a joint venture between the US Navy and Howard Hughes. One of the covert operations it performed was the recovery of nuclear weapons, cryptographic equipment and dead sailors from a Soviet K-129 submarine, which was lost (with all crew) in 16,000 feet of water in the late 60's. See Project Azorian. I ain't saying Cameron is exactly the type to be embracing the US military, but you can bet there's keen interest.
Disclaimer: I worked there for two years, though I haven't been with OnLive since early 2010 (before the OnLive Desktop). I do not hold any OnLive or Microsoft stock at this time, and therefore don't have a horse in this race. It's just amusing to watch.
Something to consider. Steve Perlman, their CEO, was also the CEO of WebTV, which was sold to Microsoft. He knows the Microsoft execs at the highest level, and has a good business relationship with them. He also isn't stupid. I know that it's trendy to be cynical and hipster-esque about these things, and that it generates page views (and revenue from advertising, hence the motivation for TFA to appear as it did) to make this sort of speculation, but common sense dictates that no company of OnLive's size would do something as blatant and as public as wholesale commercial piracy. There is far too much to lose and very little to gain. In fact, one of OnLive's messages to software publishers is "software installed on OnLive cannot be pirated, because there is no external access to the binaries". Short of a hack that allows access to the back-end servers, you can no more pirate an app from OnLive than you can pirate AutoCAD by taking a photograph of the box. In that context, does any of TFA make sense?
In fact, the entire article seems to come down to "I, random bloggy guy with zero personal access to what's actually happening, am not aware of a licensing program that fits, therefore such a licensing program does NOT exist, and CANNOT exist. I'm not smart enough or educated enough or informed enough know how it works, therefore it cannot work." Pretty thin, if you ask me.
I do not have firsthand knowledge of this, but I know the people involved, at least on the OnLive side. They're not PirateBay; they are thoughtful people who are aware of the consequences of their actions and who want good business relationships with software publishers (including Microsoft). I think it is very likely that there is a deal in place which might not be a boilerplate license. It is also possible that such a license is part of a larger framework.
Just like going to the moon... something we did in the 60's, we've basically forgotten how to do for the lack of will to do it. So we have to reinvent the wheel, only this time in a more risk-averse environment (and therefore far more expensive to accomplish).
A discussion of the refrigeration laser in Brin's novel "Sundiver" is at the Physics Forum here.
Brin's science fiction writing, by the way, is very good. He's won all the big awards in the field (Hugo, Nebula, Locus), at least in part because he knows his material (B.S. Astrophysics, MSEE, Ph.D in Space Sciences, various post-doctoral honors, NASA exobiologist) . He also has some interesting ideas on sociology and politics, though not all of what he proposes is practical. His website is at davidbrin.com.
With a physical book they have the cost of materials, printing costs, warehousing costs, shipping costs, retail space costs. An ebook has none of those costs.
But an e-book still has the costs of editing, marketing, royalties, a legal department to track copyright issues, a business development department to manage relationships with e-publishers, accountants, payroll... and for the e-publisher you can add data center costs, bandwidth bills, IT personnel costs, etc.
The physical part of a book is actually not the majority of the price of a book, and e-books have some costs that physical books do not. However, people tend not to value something they can't physically hold in their hands, regardless of how much the intangibles actually cost.
One thing the intelligence community has that Wikileaks and the Anonymous script-kiddies will never have is the ability to evacuate the craniums of people who become too much of a threat... and get away with it because it's part of their mission. I really think it's going to take a few Anonymous folk being found dead in a ditch to get the message across: this isn't a fucking game. They're playing with people with guns and prosecutorial immunity who won't hesitate to kill whom they see as a genuine threat, but Anonymous and Wikileaks see it all as one great big joke. One thing that Anonymous has in common with other groups attacking the U.S. is that they are composed of a few smart people surrounding themselves with naive, expendable clueless fools (it's not the leaders of jihadist groups who blow themselves up; it's young, stupid, naive idealists with no clue about how the world actually works).. It's the expendable fools who will (at first) be the ones looking down the barrel of a.45, and the line to join the expendable fools goes around the block.
Whether the pending violent reaction to Anonymous etc. is as it should be is another matter, and is subject to debate. The fact that Anonymous/Wikileaks are messing with people who kill is not subject to debate; it's fact. You can either live (and die) in denial, or realize that this is literally deadly serious business.
I think I read it cost about $100 to manufacture one of these phones,
No, it costs a lot more than that to make an iPhone. But what does the EE Times know, right? And that's just the cost of the physical components. Good thing for your argument that R&D, shipping, marketing, software, and all that stuff that isn't something you physically hold in your hand are free, right?
Experimental are all planes that have not been vetted by proper people.
WRONG. Experimental aircraft, when ready for their first flight, go through an inspection from an FAA representative that is extremely thorough. The build log of the plane (which is required to be detailed) is examined, every system on the plane is demonstrated on the ground, and a provisional airworthiness certificate is granted. At that point, a flight test plan is agreed upon (anywhere from 25 to 60 hours, depending upon whether it's an original design or a well-known kit from a major manufacturer). The test flights, which include operating the aircraft on every maneuver it is expected to perform, flight at the extremes of its weight-and-balance profile, performance measurements, and operation of all flight systems (navigation instruments, flight instruments, etc.) is demonstrated under actual flight. Once these tests are performed and signed off, the aircraft is again inspected, just as rigorously. Then, and only then, is it granted an airworthiness certificate.
Experimental planes ARE vetted by the proper people.
I'm building an experimental plane. I'm a pilot. I know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. You're talking out of your ass.
Speaking as a pilot who is building an experimental-class aircraft (Vans RV-10)...
"Experimental" is what the FAA calls all home-built and kit aircraft. It is a registration designation (which includes a no-commercial-use clause), little more. There is no assumption of decreased reliability with the designation "experimental". An experimental aircraft can be as reliable, or even better than, "certified" aircraft such as Cessna. As a matter of fact, Cessna bought Lancair recently and began selling their aircraft as Cessna the C400. The Lancair family of aircraft (experimental-class or otherwise) have an excellent service record.
Uninformed media want you to think it's some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption or a one-off; that feeds into the "rich, idle playboy" image they pander to their audiences. Don't buy it. They don't know what they're talking about; neither do you.
San Francisco's county supervisors and city Board of Directors have repeatedly called for changes in parking laws to increase revenues from fines. They've institutionalized low-grade entrapment. This is FACT.
I frequently travel to San Francisco for work reasons (I live nearby). I know exactly what I'm talking about. While the post was supposed to be a joke, at its heart it is true. I guess some butthurt SF city employee doesn't like it when his/her/its hand was caught in the cookie jar.
1. Use smartphone app to locate parking
2. Use smartphone to navigate to open spot
3. Park
4. Receive multi-Franklin ticket from waiting police officer for using smartphone while driving
5. Protest ticket in court that the city is encouraging people to use smartphones while driving
6. Have fine increased by dishonest shill San Francisco court which exists only to fill the city's coffers with contrived fines because that's how the city and county of San Francisco does business.
It's also inevitable that people will lie to you, but that won't stop them from being punished when they're caught doing it.
The fact that it's easy to pirate software and media doesn't make it right to pirate software and media, and no amount of rationalization or twisted logic will make downloading a cracked copy of Battelfield 3 a "courageous stand against corporate greed". It's all about cheap entitlement-babies who think that they should be able to take anything that isn't somehow nailed down for free. It's not about culture, it's about online shoplifting.
If you need laws and the treat of property seizure or prison to protect your national culture, your culture deserves to fall. Cultures need to survive on their own merits, and "cultural police" need to learn that dangling from a length of rope can be "cultural" too.
The best thing you can do to reduce carbon emissions is to not procreate.
Seriously, think it through. If you have children, each of them and their descendants will be CO2-producers. They will consume energy, they will buy manufactured goods, they will eat, they will travel. All of these activities create CO2.
Save the earth. Chop your dick off.
Now, about places in the world where population growth is occurring...
If you're Canadian or Ukranian, buy agricultural stocks. Your growing season is about to get a lot longer (enabling multiple harvests per year which used to be limited to lower latitudes), several of your competitors in agricultural products are going to be less productive, and your agricultural lands a LOT more productive.
Joe Barbera (animation producer/director, half of the Hanna-Barbera team) a long while back had a pen with ink with his own DNA embedded in it made; it's his "autograph" pen.
Old news from someone smarter than the a-ver-age bear...
Slashdot Mirror
Many compelling reasons, above and beyond the "we must explore" philosophical position (which is, admittedly, not an axiom). Let's get practical.
How about recovering lost nuclear weapons, maintenance of deep-sea seismic sensors to detect and generate warnings for tsunami-generating underwater landslides? What about transoceanic optical fiber maintenance? Rescue of sailors from submarine accidents? Maritime accident investigation?
This is important stuff. In the U.S. this has (unsurprisingly) typically been a function of the Navy. Their Alvin submarines have been used for undersea exploration, rescue and military investigation work, but they do not have the ability to go to every point on the ocean bottom.
Those of you who are tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists would do well to take note of the Glomar Explorer, which was a ship and diving apparatus that was something of a joint venture between the US Navy and Howard Hughes. One of the covert operations it performed was the recovery of nuclear weapons, cryptographic equipment and dead sailors from a Soviet K-129 submarine, which was lost (with all crew) in 16,000 feet of water in the late 60's. See Project Azorian. I ain't saying Cameron is exactly the type to be embracing the US military, but you can bet there's keen interest.
Disclaimer: I worked there for two years, though I haven't been with OnLive since early 2010 (before the OnLive Desktop). I do not hold any OnLive or Microsoft stock at this time, and therefore don't have a horse in this race. It's just amusing to watch.
Something to consider. Steve Perlman, their CEO, was also the CEO of WebTV, which was sold to Microsoft. He knows the Microsoft execs at the highest level, and has a good business relationship with them. He also isn't stupid. I know that it's trendy to be cynical and hipster-esque about these things, and that it generates page views (and revenue from advertising, hence the motivation for TFA to appear as it did) to make this sort of speculation, but common sense dictates that no company of OnLive's size would do something as blatant and as public as wholesale commercial piracy. There is far too much to lose and very little to gain. In fact, one of OnLive's messages to software publishers is "software installed on OnLive cannot be pirated, because there is no external access to the binaries". Short of a hack that allows access to the back-end servers, you can no more pirate an app from OnLive than you can pirate AutoCAD by taking a photograph of the box. In that context, does any of TFA make sense?
In fact, the entire article seems to come down to "I, random bloggy guy with zero personal access to what's actually happening, am not aware of a licensing program that fits, therefore such a licensing program does NOT exist, and CANNOT exist. I'm not smart enough or educated enough or informed enough know how it works, therefore it cannot work." Pretty thin, if you ask me.
I do not have firsthand knowledge of this, but I know the people involved, at least on the OnLive side. They're not PirateBay; they are thoughtful people who are aware of the consequences of their actions and who want good business relationships with software publishers (including Microsoft). I think it is very likely that there is a deal in place which might not be a boilerplate license. It is also possible that such a license is part of a larger framework.
Indeed, we do remember the Trieste.
Just like going to the moon... something we did in the 60's, we've basically forgotten how to do for the lack of will to do it. So we have to reinvent the wheel, only this time in a more risk-averse environment (and therefore far more expensive to accomplish).
A discussion of the refrigeration laser in Brin's novel "Sundiver" is at the Physics Forum here.
Brin's science fiction writing, by the way, is very good. He's won all the big awards in the field (Hugo, Nebula, Locus), at least in part because he knows his material (B.S. Astrophysics, MSEE, Ph.D in Space Sciences, various post-doctoral honors, NASA exobiologist) . He also has some interesting ideas on sociology and politics, though not all of what he proposes is practical. His website is at davidbrin.com.
With a physical book they have the cost of materials, printing costs, warehousing costs, shipping costs, retail space costs. An ebook has none of those costs.
But an e-book still has the costs of editing, marketing, royalties, a legal department to track copyright issues, a business development department to manage relationships with e-publishers, accountants, payroll... and for the e-publisher you can add data center costs, bandwidth bills, IT personnel costs, etc.
The physical part of a book is actually not the majority of the price of a book, and e-books have some costs that physical books do not. However, people tend not to value something they can't physically hold in their hands, regardless of how much the intangibles actually cost.
One thing the intelligence community has that Wikileaks and the Anonymous script-kiddies will never have is the ability to evacuate the craniums of people who become too much of a threat... and get away with it because it's part of their mission. I really think it's going to take a few Anonymous folk being found dead in a ditch to get the message across: this isn't a fucking game. They're playing with people with guns and prosecutorial immunity who won't hesitate to kill whom they see as a genuine threat, but Anonymous and Wikileaks see it all as one great big joke. One thing that Anonymous has in common with other groups attacking the U.S. is that they are composed of a few smart people surrounding themselves with naive, expendable clueless fools (it's not the leaders of jihadist groups who blow themselves up; it's young, stupid, naive idealists with no clue about how the world actually works).. It's the expendable fools who will (at first) be the ones looking down the barrel of a .45, and the line to join the expendable fools goes around the block.
Whether the pending violent reaction to Anonymous etc. is as it should be is another matter, and is subject to debate. The fact that Anonymous/Wikileaks are messing with people who kill is not subject to debate; it's fact. You can either live (and die) in denial, or realize that this is literally deadly serious business.
"Denialism"?
News for you. Climate change is the religion, not the people who demand scientific rigor, accountability and honesty.
Slashdot, you are full of shit. Again.
What phone is in YOUR pocket, troll?
I think I read it cost about $100 to manufacture one of these phones,
No, it costs a lot more than that to make an iPhone. But what does the EE Times know, right? And that's just the cost of the physical components. Good thing for your argument that R&D, shipping, marketing, software, and all that stuff that isn't something you physically hold in your hand are free, right?
Haters don't go to websites to learn. They go to have people tell them they're superior for being haters.
Haters have a far more serious problem with truth than "fanboys". I simply equate "hater" with "pathological liar".
Experimental are all planes that have not been vetted by proper people.
WRONG. Experimental aircraft, when ready for their first flight, go through an inspection from an FAA representative that is extremely thorough. The build log of the plane (which is required to be detailed) is examined, every system on the plane is demonstrated on the ground, and a provisional airworthiness certificate is granted. At that point, a flight test plan is agreed upon (anywhere from 25 to 60 hours, depending upon whether it's an original design or a well-known kit from a major manufacturer). The test flights, which include operating the aircraft on every maneuver it is expected to perform, flight at the extremes of its weight-and-balance profile, performance measurements, and operation of all flight systems (navigation instruments, flight instruments, etc.) is demonstrated under actual flight. Once these tests are performed and signed off, the aircraft is again inspected, just as rigorously. Then, and only then, is it granted an airworthiness certificate.
Experimental planes ARE vetted by the proper people.
I'm building an experimental plane. I'm a pilot. I know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. You're talking out of your ass.
Speaking as a pilot who is building an experimental-class aircraft (Vans RV-10)...
"Experimental" is what the FAA calls all home-built and kit aircraft. It is a registration designation (which includes a no-commercial-use clause), little more. There is no assumption of decreased reliability with the designation "experimental". An experimental aircraft can be as reliable, or even better than, "certified" aircraft such as Cessna. As a matter of fact, Cessna bought Lancair recently and began selling their aircraft as Cessna the C400. The Lancair family of aircraft (experimental-class or otherwise) have an excellent service record.
Uninformed media want you to think it's some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption or a one-off; that feeds into the "rich, idle playboy" image they pander to their audiences. Don't buy it. They don't know what they're talking about; neither do you.
"Troll"? Really?
San Francisco's county supervisors and city Board of Directors have repeatedly called for changes in parking laws to increase revenues from fines. They've institutionalized low-grade entrapment. This is FACT.
I frequently travel to San Francisco for work reasons (I live nearby). I know exactly what I'm talking about. While the post was supposed to be a joke, at its heart it is true. I guess some butthurt SF city employee doesn't like it when his/her/its hand was caught in the cookie jar.
1. Use smartphone app to locate parking
2. Use smartphone to navigate to open spot
3. Park
4. Receive multi-Franklin ticket from waiting police officer for using smartphone while driving
5. Protest ticket in court that the city is encouraging people to use smartphones while driving
6. Have fine increased by dishonest shill San Francisco court which exists only to fill the city's coffers with contrived fines because that's how the city and county of San Francisco does business.
It's also inevitable that people will lie to you, but that won't stop them from being punished when they're caught doing it.
The fact that it's easy to pirate software and media doesn't make it right to pirate software and media, and no amount of rationalization or twisted logic will make downloading a cracked copy of Battelfield 3 a "courageous stand against corporate greed". It's all about cheap entitlement-babies who think that they should be able to take anything that isn't somehow nailed down for free. It's not about culture, it's about online shoplifting.
"I see you're wearing an amulet of Mara. Would you like root access to my love-server?"
So, does DoCoMo need to invest more in its infrastructure, or is Android a data hog that needs reigning in?"
Isn't the Slashdot mantra always "It's open source! Therefore, it's someone else's problem when it comes time to pay the bills!"?
The binary tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with the data of patriots.
And tyrants.
It shows that nerds are wrong and Apple is right.
Seriously, you're confronted with an existence-proof.
Come get some.
BTW, the number one emitter of CO2 is not the US; it's China. You can complain about us when you've taken care of them.
If you need laws and the treat of property seizure or prison to protect your national culture, your culture deserves to fall. Cultures need to survive on their own merits, and "cultural police" need to learn that dangling from a length of rope can be "cultural" too.
The best thing you can do to reduce carbon emissions is to not procreate.
Seriously, think it through. If you have children, each of them and their descendants will be CO2-producers. They will consume energy, they will buy manufactured goods, they will eat, they will travel. All of these activities create CO2.
Save the earth. Chop your dick off.
Now, about places in the world where population growth is occurring...
If you're Canadian or Ukranian, buy agricultural stocks. Your growing season is about to get a lot longer (enabling multiple harvests per year which used to be limited to lower latitudes), several of your competitors in agricultural products are going to be less productive, and your agricultural lands a LOT more productive.
For every loser, there is a winner.
Joe Barbera (animation producer/director, half of the Hanna-Barbera team) a long while back had a pen with ink with his own DNA embedded in it made; it's his "autograph" pen.
Old news from someone smarter than the a-ver-age bear...
You know, I think I've figured out why you're having trouble getting a job.