I don't see why there'd need to be too much power for the full 1000 years. The countdown "watcher" could be just a simple logic switch with a stop watch attached to it. My digital watch runs for a year on a tiny little battery. Throw a big huge battery in the Watcher and let it run. Hook it up to something that will trickle-charge it for good measure-- solar, or geotherm, etc. Or do away with electricity all together. Have it hooked up to 100 clockwork devices that will run down in 1000 years if not wound. If 2/3s of them stop, Seed activates. Or get something with a half-life of 1000 years and put it on a pressure switch that will trigger at half-mass.
The trigger mechanism, I concede, would take more power to run, but since it will only turn one once to blow its load, the power source doesn't have to be too plentiful, and it doesn't have to last the full 1000 years. A whole bunch of fuel-powered generators that are turned on by the Watcher. They fire up, expend their energy getting Seed going, and then die.
Now, the real bitch of it all would be if disaster hit, and all the surviving humans knew of the vault was legends of old-- every ten years, valiant warriors must trek to the north to the devise that is to keep the Earth full of life, an wind the Magical Switch to keep The Great One going. =)
Exactly. This is something that should have been built into the system.
I'd much rather see some sort of fail-safe built into this vault. Humans have to periodically check in on the vault and press the button. If they don't press it after, say, 1,000 years, the vault goes into "reseed" mode. It assumes that:
a) Humans are dead, dying, or incapable of reaching the vault
b) Whatever knocked down the humans has dissapated over the last 1000 years, so it is safe for "human friendly" life.
Of course, the 1000 years is arbitrary. I'd let a team of nuke'n'germ warfare folks come up with a number that was greater than the life expectency of thier most powerful kabooms. You could also hook up a Geiger counter to the release switch for an extra layer of protection.
So, after the 1000 years is up, the vault springs into action. It barfs out whatever bacteria is needed to fertilize the land. The it starts shooting seeds-and-spores-and-stuff deployment packages across the globe. The SSS packages burst over land, raining seeds. This may have to be done in stages. Seed the keystone species of plants first, then once those have grown, fire off the strawberries and lilacs.
The objective is to load up the vault with enough human-friendly stuff as possible. Plants that put out oxygen. Trees that have leaves, fruit, roots that are edible by human. Environmental engineer species. If humans are alive, life will get better for them. If humans have been wiped out, the packages should recreate an environment condusive to human life once more. Sure, humans might not be a dominant species for hundreds or hundreds of thousands of years, but the scales would be tipped in their favour.
Heck, while we're at it, we might as well put as much data into the vault as possible. The complete history of humans in as many languages as possible (including all the screw-ups that lead to extinction). Put in as many Rosetta Stones as possible. Put frozen humans in there, too, so future generations (hopefully) don't think aliens seeded the planet.
how do you propose we remove the economic incentive for spam?
Easy enough. Remove the customers. Set up a spam operation selling drugs. Except instead of sending what's advertised, send arsenic. Once all the customers have died, there won't be anyone left to buy spam-stuff. And, as a bonus, you help the genepool.
I don't think Google really can protect against Trojans. There isn't a security system advanced enough to fix a chair-to-keyboard interface error. But they can detect flybys and sites that intend to exploit the user with some sort of auto-run code, or buffer overflow, or something that no legitimate site would do to a user (without warning or proof of concept).
Each of the labels reportedly contributed over $132 million per year to fund industry trade groups, and EMI apparently believes that money could be better spent elsewhere.
Like on increased royalties for the artists, right?
Easy enough. Google has access to a massive amount of IP addresses and computer resources. All they need to do is set up a whole bunch of virtual machines that have no protection on them at all. Those virtual machines can start visiting indexed pages (using a rotating set of IP addresses so the target website doesn't know they're being "tested"). If a machine gets infected, it will be very easy to spot. Something will have installed on that machine. A rootkit or a adware install is fairly obvious, even to a machine. If a VM changes, and the "infection" is machine identifiable, then that site should be dropped. If the machine gets installed on, but can't identify, that site should be flagged. At that point, a human Google engineer loads a VM, visits the site, and takes a human-look at what happened. If it's A Bad Thing, they drop the site and add the signature of the install to their Kill On Site list. Then the VM gets reset, and continues on.
I haven't used it for a while, but there's irate. Basically you connect to a server. The server feeds you music right from the artist's website. You rate it. It starts to figure out the types of music you like, and will feed you more of it. Everything is mp3.
"It's not our shitty Halo 3 game that is to blame but rather our utterly garbage 360 hardware"
Case dismissed...
My friend, you are missing the entirely brilliant stratagem being played out here. Dude sues Microsoft for, like, $100 because Halo crashes. He gets them to admit, on the stand, that it wasn't Halo. It was their *ahem* "utterly garbage 360 hardware". Case is dismissed.
And then the Dude goes right back to the filing office, and sues Microsoft for $100,000,000 because the XBox 360 is utter garbage. His proof? Microsoft said so. In court. Under oath!
Ikea sells something like this. The top is mostly slip-proof plastic. The computer stays still, but I've had not trouble using the mouse on it. The bean-bag pillow is detachable, so you can wash it. And the top is easily washed with a wet cloth. It was a gift, but I think it runs ~$20. The surface is curved, so that it fits comfortably in the lap. I've also found it quite useful for creating a work surface for the laptop. If I take off the beanbag, and turn it the other way around, I can rest my laptop just about anywhere. Very useful if the existing surface is uneven, or dirty, or non-mouse friendly, etc.
Then it becomes a summer blockbuster movie by Michael Bay. Except that the EMPS are visible and make a THOOOOOM noise, and instead of disabling a CPU, it blows the Jesus Q Fuckwad out of the car! IN 3D!!!!!!!!1
Frankly, I've wondered for years why they didn't do something like this. Or mount a piton system in the front of your average police cruiser, that could pneumatically or explosively shoot out a grappling hook that stabbed thru the trunk of the fleeing vehicle and drag it to a stop. Most police chases involve very close pursuit at reasonably slow speeds - so why not nail the guy's trunk and drag him to a halt, instead of trying to PITT him and risking all kinds of damage to both vehicles?
I've wondered the same about putting a giant electromagnet on police helicopters. Swoop down on the fleeing car, yank it a few hundred feet in the air, then deposit it into the impound lot. Drop it between two cement blocks to keep the crook from driving away instantly, and have a couple guys in armor waiting for him.
Oh, and if someone wants to flee the police whilst flying at 100mph at 1500 feet, more power to them.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true, though I thought part of the reason they selected the Arctic was built-in temperatures of -BRRRR Celsius.
The trigger mechanism, I concede, would take more power to run, but since it will only turn one once to blow its load, the power source doesn't have to be too plentiful, and it doesn't have to last the full 1000 years. A whole bunch of fuel-powered generators that are turned on by the Watcher. They fire up, expend their energy getting Seed going, and then die.
Now, the real bitch of it all would be if disaster hit, and all the surviving humans knew of the vault was legends of old-- every ten years, valiant warriors must trek to the north to the devise that is to keep the Earth full of life, an wind the Magical Switch to keep The Great One going. =)
I'd much rather see some sort of fail-safe built into this vault. Humans have to periodically check in on the vault and press the button. If they don't press it after, say, 1,000 years, the vault goes into "reseed" mode. It assumes that:
a) Humans are dead, dying, or incapable of reaching the vault
b) Whatever knocked down the humans has dissapated over the last 1000 years, so it is safe for "human friendly" life.
Of course, the 1000 years is arbitrary. I'd let a team of nuke'n'germ warfare folks come up with a number that was greater than the life expectency of thier most powerful kabooms. You could also hook up a Geiger counter to the release switch for an extra layer of protection.
So, after the 1000 years is up, the vault springs into action. It barfs out whatever bacteria is needed to fertilize the land. The it starts shooting seeds-and-spores-and-stuff deployment packages across the globe. The SSS packages burst over land, raining seeds. This may have to be done in stages. Seed the keystone species of plants first, then once those have grown, fire off the strawberries and lilacs.
The objective is to load up the vault with enough human-friendly stuff as possible. Plants that put out oxygen. Trees that have leaves, fruit, roots that are edible by human. Environmental engineer species. If humans are alive, life will get better for them. If humans have been wiped out, the packages should recreate an environment condusive to human life once more. Sure, humans might not be a dominant species for hundreds or hundreds of thousands of years, but the scales would be tipped in their favour.
Heck, while we're at it, we might as well put as much data into the vault as possible. The complete history of humans in as many languages as possible (including all the screw-ups that lead to extinction). Put in as many Rosetta Stones as possible. Put frozen humans in there, too, so future generations (hopefully) don't think aliens seeded the planet.
Not until tomorrow.
Didn't we just have this discussion in June?
Relax, Homer. At Globex, we don't believe in walls.
Hrm, I just finished posting my last comment in another thread, and now I'm thinking the quote would have been more appropriate here.
Given Microsoft's attitude towards the process, I'm assuming the response was "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, and fuck you, I'm out!"
Easy enough. Remove the customers. Set up a spam operation selling drugs. Except instead of sending what's advertised, send arsenic. Once all the customers have died, there won't be anyone left to buy spam-stuff. And, as a bonus, you help the genepool.
I don't think Google really can protect against Trojans. There isn't a security system advanced enough to fix a chair-to-keyboard interface error. But they can detect flybys and sites that intend to exploit the user with some sort of auto-run code, or buffer overflow, or something that no legitimate site would do to a user (without warning or proof of concept).
Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook
No, no, no. That's not right at all.
Bill's Ex-CoWorkers Will Fucking Kill Facebook
Or buy it.
Doug? Is that you?
Like on increased royalties for the artists, right?
Guys? Right?
long pause
wankers
Easy enough. Google has access to a massive amount of IP addresses and computer resources. All they need to do is set up a whole bunch of virtual machines that have no protection on them at all. Those virtual machines can start visiting indexed pages (using a rotating set of IP addresses so the target website doesn't know they're being "tested"). If a machine gets infected, it will be very easy to spot. Something will have installed on that machine. A rootkit or a adware install is fairly obvious, even to a machine. If a VM changes, and the "infection" is machine identifiable, then that site should be dropped. If the machine gets installed on, but can't identify, that site should be flagged. At that point, a human Google engineer loads a VM, visits the site, and takes a human-look at what happened. If it's A Bad Thing, they drop the site and add the signature of the install to their Kill On Site list. Then the VM gets reset, and continues on.
350,000 sold x 4 (weeks per month) = 1.4million sold per month
They make 1.8 million a month.
If they're making more than they're selling, why is it so hard to find a console?
I haven't used it for a while, but there's irate. Basically you connect to a server. The server feeds you music right from the artist's website. You rate it. It starts to figure out the types of music you like, and will feed you more of it. Everything is mp3.
My friend, you are missing the entirely brilliant stratagem being played out here. Dude sues Microsoft for, like, $100 because Halo crashes. He gets them to admit, on the stand, that it wasn't Halo. It was their *ahem* "utterly garbage 360 hardware". Case is dismissed.
And then the Dude goes right back to the filing office, and sues Microsoft for $100,000,000 because the XBox 360 is utter garbage. His proof? Microsoft said so. In court. Under oath!
Brilliant.
Ah, this all makes sense. So THAT'S why all the good quests in WoW are raids and not solo. Damn you, parent groups!
Yeah? Well, I call dibs on the process of changing energy states and levels. What's that your electrons are doing, hrmm? Money, please!
Ikea sells something like this. The top is mostly slip-proof plastic. The computer stays still, but I've had not trouble using the mouse on it. The bean-bag pillow is detachable, so you can wash it. And the top is easily washed with a wet cloth. It was a gift, but I think it runs ~$20. The surface is curved, so that it fits comfortably in the lap. I've also found it quite useful for creating a work surface for the laptop. If I take off the beanbag, and turn it the other way around, I can rest my laptop just about anywhere. Very useful if the existing surface is uneven, or dirty, or non-mouse friendly, etc.
Will it have hookers? And blackjack?
And you just know some dumbass is going to ruin a perfectly good transmission trying to scratch/rap to the song.
Then it becomes a summer blockbuster movie by Michael Bay. Except that the EMPS are visible and make a THOOOOOM noise, and instead of disabling a CPU, it blows the Jesus Q Fuckwad out of the car! IN 3D!!!!!!!!1
I've wondered the same about putting a giant electromagnet on police helicopters. Swoop down on the fleeing car, yank it a few hundred feet in the air, then deposit it into the impound lot. Drop it between two cement blocks to keep the crook from driving away instantly, and have a couple guys in armor waiting for him.
Oh, and if someone wants to flee the police whilst flying at 100mph at 1500 feet, more power to them.
I haven't yet found a copy of Fatal Frame II for less than $40 (used) for the XBox.