Hehe, reminds me of my holigan childhood, unplug a couple of vending machines at station or whereever, come back a few hours later after countless people have put their $1.50 in (and not recieved the coke), plug it back in, and bang all those coins come out!:)
I think it is all about PR, I mean their budget goals is what they first have to 'reach' (bad pun intended:), maybe it is so simple that they want to learn what would rekindle interest in more American's, how else could they get approval for the huge amounts of money needed!
If you remember back, the Apollo project was finnished up early partly due to the diminishing public interest!
Unfortunatly your wrong about the ISP's metered costs here, at least in Australia (that's what we're talking about isnt it??) ISP's pay a lot for their bandwith.
Telstra owns a good portion of the pipes to the US (and rest of the world), and only a few years ago they owned them *all*. They charge $0.12/MB (+GST) to everyone, period. But now there are at least 3 other companies with pipe's into the country, so i dont know how much they charge, but telstra certainly hasn't lowered their prices lately!:(
That's the problem, every ISP has to by bandwith from somewhere, and Telstra fill's a lot of the Australian wholesale bandwith market. So with the exception of of course Telstra Bigpond bandwith cost $$..
Of course there are some exceptions, at least one semi-large isp here uses satellites to bring most of it's data in, and telstra lines to go out.
I dont know how it is in the US (obviously not the same), but i would guess most contries are in similar situations. Since the US _is_ the hub of the net, that's where the cost comes, connecting to it!
Yes i agree in light of that post what i said certinaly seems funny, for me aswell actually! In a perfect world the moderation system is quite good IMO, but when you have editors running scripts that essentially make them not just moderators with unlimited points (which is fine) but allow them to 'mass-moderate' a single post!That's disgusting and i agree with you completly!
No, I see this as a very smart move by FastTrack/Kazaa. Think about it, they develop this FastTrack P2P protocol, licences it out to a few companies, and at the same time start their own service to boost its popularity. At the first sign of legal trouble (obviously Kazaa software is more venerable to a lawsuit!) the sell of that part of the business.
Bye-bye lawsuit, hello increased licencing fees!
Now the RIAA can chase after every FastTrack client, but do they have the grounds to sue someone for making the protocol?
If so your looking at Oz for the wrong reason.. Australia as a country is slightly bigger than the USA, but 90% of the population lives on 10% of the land. Remember we only have 20million people.
In this way broadband is generally good (in theory) for the 90% at least, because there is significantly less problems with the good old "last mile".
The problem with Australian broadband stems from the problems we have always had (by creation) in Oz with communications. That is up until only about 10-15 years ago, everything was controlled by a govt Monopoly Telstra (back then Telecom), the past 10-15 years has been spent undoing that monopoly, which has still in some areas been only so effective.
Optus cable is brilliant! I have had it now for two years, and in that time the worst outage was once down for about 36 hours, otherwise i can count ALL of the outages on one hand!
But it can vary, my exchange (carlingford/sydney) is apparantly known as one of the less reliable ones?!? (i have a friend working at Optus@home support)
In terms of the usage cap, your right on! So SO many people (especially here on./) complained when they introduced that cap. What nobody seemed to relise that the cap equates to 600MB / DAY of downloads!! Yes six hundred meg!:)
The only tiny gripe i have with them is the upstream limit, 128k sure is enough to play games, etc, but damn i hate doing big web updates to my US server from home at only 12k/sec!:(
Otherwise I love Optus cable, if you can get it then do so!
No this is not a troll, the problems faced by Aboriginals in Australia is far more complex than your post would suggest.
A friend of my family is married to a 1/4 Aboriginal, she doesnt have any means test ever, and her husband was well paid. She recieved around 40k/year in welfare (this was about 5 years ago) because of two things; she had one child living at home, and she was part-Aboriginal. Me i couldnt even get a measly $60/week Aus-Study allowance because my parents earn "far too much"!
Having said that, i would not necessarily disagree with your comments either, but just for the record it is never so simple.
I disagree that the moderation system is so flawed. The fact that moderators are taken from the whole userbase of Slashdot _means_ that in theory all views, left, right, etc mostly will be represented.
The editors have every right to put their own spin on each article, in this one for example it brought a smile to my face. And I would guess that a considerable (probably majority) of the/. crowd would hold the same view. Yet you still were modd'ed up.
Perhaps your karma level (or lack thereof) is a result of you comments themselves and not the conservative views they contain. My problem with/. comments is the general tendancy to jump on anything petty that is said in the most obscene and abusive way!
Argh, why does this article come as a supprise to people? I mean, you can be absolutly sure that the moment the Chinese got the plane they had their best people combing the thing for bugs!
It is ABSOLUTLY EXPECTED that there would be bugs in the thing! That's why this _incident_ will blow over in a second, and i guarantee there will be no consequences for US companies! Frankly the only thing that would supprise me (although not too much) is if Boeing _actually_ knew what the CIA was doing!
As I can remember it being said in at least one movie: "We bug them, they bug us. That's how it works."
For another example, when that US spy plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory early last year, sure some feathers were ruffled when the chinese basically pulled the thing apart for technology secrets, but as you may have read, back in the late 80's i believe, when a Soviet MIG made a similar emergency landing in Germany (i think it was) the United States sent the plane back AFTER 6 months, IN BOXES! In other words, it is expected, and accounted for _always_.
How does this affect Morpheus and other FastTrack clients I wonder? Well, no news of MusicCity doing the same as yet, and I would assume this does not affect that company at all, as the case was brought against Kazaa.
So, as I'm sure a million others will say, download Morpheus! And enjoy everthing Kazaa does, _minus_ the spyware!
Yes FlexATX is the way if you want small, the standard even has half-height pci slots. So the pci cards are only about 4cm (1.5") high, that i love. But MicroATX cases can get very small aswell! (Although obviously not quite as small!)
Personally i have been planning for a while to make a tiny pc, exactly like this article talks, and FlexATX is the way to go it seems.
But there are some big draw backs ive quickly found. Firstly although FlexATX and halfheight-PCI has been around for over 2 years now, the only manufacture i have seen use it is Dell, and they do it brilliantly in their OptiPlex desktops! But STILL it is near impossible to get any sort of PCI cards at all for them! Actually 6 months ago for said Dell pc (for one of my clients) we needed to get an internal modem, but NOT EVEN DELL could supply a half-height PCI modem! Yes i also work with a reseller (VAR) and we cant get *anything* half height!
So with my project Im now planning on getting a nForce m/b as soon as Asus releases a MicroATX board using a case something like this. Fortunatly MicroATX can be small enough for my needs.
Although having said that, i may just go for a FlexATX case, considering i have no need for PCI slots anyway!:) All my video capture / etc etc will stay in my 'desktop' pc!
I pitty you, but your lucky you dont live in absolute poverty with all your rights dictated by a small few, and where the punnishment for stealing a loaf of bread is your right hand.
Thankfully most of us can see the good that we have worked so hard for over centuries to get where we are.
Such inquisitions were all based on ignorance, and often at the will of certain small groups who using primarily propaganda exploited that ignorance to their own means. Ie the various Inquisitions you mentioned, often it was lead by the Church.
That is the problem with any Anarchy, ignorance. And that is also something our governments take into account. For example, nobody wants more tax's but to pay for your free health care it is needed!
Ignorance is one problem that we dont have to deal with to such an extent anymore, and i believe over time it will dimminish even more-so. Education has that effect, and although not everyone is equally intelligent, as a whole we are 'educated'. So in today's society an inquisition led by say the Cathlic Church, would be highly unlikely.
Unfortunatly we are far from a point where ignorance is rare, in time tho perhaps we will approach such a point.
I don't necessarily think that EVERYONE in society will contribute if given the tools to do so. I'm not even sure if a majority would.
This is an excelent thread!:)
When you look at the Democratic system and its roots, you see that the _idea_ is that everyone has an equal say in everything. BUT the obvious logistics of having 250million congressmen is unworkable. So that is where 'proportional representation' comes from, ie a small group a elected by the whole to represent their views.
That's the theory of course, and to an extent it works, in particular the big issues, say 'should we invade Afganistan', the majority believes YES, so it happens. Of course in many ways it doesnt work, and you have a lot of people in power spending a considerable amount of time keeping themselves in power.
The interesting thought that occured to me is on the issue of logistics. Now and in the past such a decision which would require everyone's opinion would require a referendum, but having a referendum costs a lot of money, time, etc. Hence the logistical problem. But think of the future, one day when a referendum could be as simple as a online poll (disregarding all the tech details, etc) we would be in a position where the logistical hurdles would be virtually non-existant, and hence we would be approaching a situation where, we would no longer need, proportional representation!
Could technology deliver us into a new era of Democracy???
Its not about overthrowing the government! But think of this, if overnight the US govt with say the US Military on their side, over turned the Constitution, and insttituted Marshal Law. Then too actually piss you off (as probably half the US pop wouldnt even notice that), they trippled all tax's.
Then you would get massive upheavals. Protests turing into riots, etc. Of course the reaction would be too clamp down, probably by killing a few thousand civilians (armed or unarmed). What happens next, well i would certainly hope a significant portion of those those holding the actual guns, ie the National Guard / Army would say, "No, were not going to kill our neighbours! And *bang* you've got whats called a cival war, likely with no side having a significant advantage.
Of course this is an extreme extreme, (hey you started with the extremes!:]) a more realistic example would be say the New York Race riots of 91 (or was it 92??), things were wrong, people got angry, etc etc, eventually all was back to normal, EXCEPT somewhere in the halls of power someone is now thinking; "We don't want *that* to happen again." there is the change.
I disagree that it only takes a small percentage to mess it up in the Anarchy system. The system actually takes that into account, that's the 'punishment' part. As long as everyone as said is aware of the system and how it works to weed out those who would mess it up, then that small number could never become large enough to disrupt the whole system.
Thats a big "if" of course, but this is all theoretical anyway. And that the big difference with Anarchy and Communisim, in the latter, in practice, (ie USSR of old) a 'small group' was formed to 'direct' the 'whole', and of course it is far easier to corrupt a small group rather than everyone.
Anarchy _in theory_ is a beautiful system, nothing like what we call anarchy now, such as when we say "Somalia is in a state of Anarchy". Far from it, anarchy in its purest form would have _everyone_ in charge. Everyone answers only too two things; 1. Themselves, and 2. Everyone else. In my opinion this is a Utopian world.
Exactly! Regardless of what MS wants the retailers to do, they have to abide by their own regulations. All you have to do, as you did is be insistent, and you will get what you want.
Depending on where you are it is often illegal even for them to refuse a return / replacement. (Im in Australia, at least here it is AFAIK)
Not that that really stops anything, although because of the region coding on ps2 games and such, it _slows_ its spread dramatically. But like another poster said, X rated movies and such may be banned, but that in no way stops you from walking into one of the hundreds of "Adult book stores" and buying them.
Very rarely would a movie (non-porn) be completly banned, mainly just from tv actually, you dont see much R rated tv movies, except when heavily censored!:( But you can still get them from Blockbuster no problem at all.
From what i remember reading, that's not at all true, since their are no techtonic plates on the moon, the only thing that causes any sort of seismic activity are tidal forces and impacts. But not very large quakes neverless, like 4 on the richter scale.
When you consider that Pioneer 10 at 75AU out, has been traveling for thirty years (since 1972) so far, then you can imagine that 550AU almost eight times further is actually very far.:)
Not that necessarily this detracts from the possibility, new propulsion techniques such as the ion drive discused in the article will bring that time down considerably, but I didnt notice any estimates there in the article. A quick guess would indicate that even at 10x the speed, you would still be looking at a few decades of travel time!:( (ION Drive info)
So I would imagine this being quite a while off yet, neverless it's still a very good idea!
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe, reminds me of my holigan childhood, unplug a couple of vending machines at station or whereever, come back a few hours later after countless people have put their $1.50 in (and not recieved the coke), plug it back in, and bang all those coins come out! :)
If your also sitting in the waiting lounge waiting for that fligt then they would be completly open to you! Same WLAN!
:)
Hey at least it gives us something more interesting to do while waiting for that damn flight!
I think it is all about PR, I mean their budget goals is what they first have to 'reach' (bad pun intended :), maybe it is so simple that they want to learn what would rekindle interest in more American's, how else could they get approval for the huge amounts of money needed!
If you remember back, the Apollo project was finnished up early partly due to the diminishing public interest!
Unfortunatly your wrong about the ISP's metered costs here, at least in Australia (that's what we're talking about isnt it??) ISP's pay a lot for their bandwith.
:(
Telstra owns a good portion of the pipes to the US (and rest of the world), and only a few years ago they owned them *all*. They charge $0.12/MB (+GST) to everyone, period. But now there are at least 3 other companies with pipe's into the country, so i dont know how much they charge, but telstra certainly hasn't lowered their prices lately!
That's the problem, every ISP has to by bandwith from somewhere, and Telstra fill's a lot of the Australian wholesale bandwith market. So with the exception of of course Telstra Bigpond bandwith cost $$..
Of course there are some exceptions, at least one semi-large isp here uses satellites to bring most of it's data in, and telstra lines to go out.
I dont know how it is in the US (obviously not the same), but i would guess most contries are in similar situations. Since the US _is_ the hub of the net, that's where the cost comes, connecting to it!
Yes i agree in light of that post what i said certinaly seems funny, for me aswell actually! In a perfect world the moderation system is quite good IMO, but when you have editors running scripts that essentially make them not just moderators with unlimited points (which is fine) but allow them to 'mass-moderate' a single post!That's disgusting and i agree with you completly!
No, I see this as a very smart move by FastTrack/Kazaa. Think about it, they develop this FastTrack P2P protocol, licences it out to a few companies, and at the same time start their own service to boost its popularity. At the first sign of legal trouble (obviously Kazaa software is more venerable to a lawsuit!) the sell of that part of the business.
Bye-bye lawsuit, hello increased licencing fees!
Now the RIAA can chase after every FastTrack client, but do they have the grounds to sue someone for making the protocol?
If so your looking at Oz for the wrong reason.. Australia as a country is slightly bigger than the USA, but 90% of the population lives on 10% of the land. Remember we only have 20million people.
In this way broadband is generally good (in theory) for the 90% at least, because there is significantly less problems with the good old "last mile".
The problem with Australian broadband stems from the problems we have always had (by creation) in Oz with communications. That is up until only about 10-15 years ago, everything was controlled by a govt Monopoly Telstra (back then Telecom), the past 10-15 years has been spent undoing that monopoly, which has still in some areas been only so effective.
Optus cable is brilliant! I have had it now for two years, and in that time the worst outage was once down for about 36 hours, otherwise i can count ALL of the outages on one hand!
But it can vary, my exchange (carlingford/sydney) is apparantly known as one of the less reliable ones?!? (i have a friend working at Optus@home support)
In terms of the usage cap, your right on! So SO many people (especially here on
The only tiny gripe i have with them is the upstream limit, 128k sure is enough to play games, etc, but damn i hate doing big web updates to my US server from home at only 12k/sec!
Otherwise I love Optus cable, if you can get it then do so!
I think you could also add to that list:
"Most *generous* welfare support in the world."
No this is not a troll, the problems faced by Aboriginals in Australia is far more complex than your post would suggest.
A friend of my family is married to a 1/4 Aboriginal, she doesnt have any means test ever, and her husband was well paid. She recieved around 40k/year in welfare (this was about 5 years ago) because of two things; she had one child living at home, and she was part-Aboriginal. Me i couldnt even get a measly $60/week Aus-Study allowance because my parents earn "far too much"!
Having said that, i would not necessarily disagree with your comments either, but just for the record it is never so simple.
Haha, spot on! I think no country in the world has public servants as lazy as the Aussies!
Yay!
I disagree that the moderation system is so flawed. The fact that moderators are taken from the whole userbase of Slashdot _means_ that in theory all views, left, right, etc mostly will be represented.
/. crowd would hold the same view. Yet you still were modd'ed up.
/. comments is the general tendancy to jump on anything petty that is said in the most obscene and abusive way!
:])
The editors have every right to put their own spin on each article, in this one for example it brought a smile to my face. And I would guess that a considerable (probably majority) of the
Perhaps your karma level (or lack thereof) is a result of you comments themselves and not the conservative views they contain. My problem with
mod: -1 offtopic. (im sure, see it does work?
Argh, why does this article come as a supprise to people? I mean, you can be absolutly sure that the moment the Chinese got the plane they had their best people combing the thing for bugs!
It is ABSOLUTLY EXPECTED that there would be bugs in the thing! That's why this _incident_ will blow over in a second, and i guarantee there will be no consequences for US companies! Frankly the only thing that would supprise me (although not too much) is if Boeing _actually_ knew what the CIA was doing!
As I can remember it being said in at least one movie: "We bug them, they bug us. That's how it works."
For another example, when that US spy plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory early last year, sure some feathers were ruffled when the chinese basically pulled the thing apart for technology secrets, but as you may have read, back in the late 80's i believe, when a Soviet MIG made a similar emergency landing in Germany (i think it was) the United States sent the plane back AFTER 6 months, IN BOXES! In other words, it is expected, and accounted for _always_.
I believe it's called "intelligence" or "Spying".
How does this affect Morpheus and other FastTrack clients I wonder? Well, no news of MusicCity doing the same as yet, and I would assume this does not affect that company at all, as the case was brought against Kazaa.
So, as I'm sure a million others will say, download Morpheus! And enjoy everthing Kazaa does, _minus_ the spyware!
Yes FlexATX is the way if you want small, the standard even has half-height pci slots. So the pci cards are only about 4cm (1.5") high, that i love. But MicroATX cases can get very small aswell! (Although obviously not quite as small!)
:) All my video capture / etc etc will stay in my 'desktop' pc!
Personally i have been planning for a while to make a tiny pc, exactly like this article talks, and FlexATX is the way to go it seems.
But there are some big draw backs ive quickly found. Firstly although FlexATX and halfheight-PCI has been around for over 2 years now, the only manufacture i have seen use it is Dell, and they do it brilliantly in their OptiPlex desktops! But STILL it is near impossible to get any sort of PCI cards at all for them! Actually 6 months ago for said Dell pc (for one of my clients) we needed to get an internal modem, but NOT EVEN DELL could supply a half-height PCI modem! Yes i also work with a reseller (VAR) and we cant get *anything* half height!
So with my project Im now planning on getting a nForce m/b as soon as Asus releases a MicroATX board using a case something like this. Fortunatly MicroATX can be small enough for my needs.
Although having said that, i may just go for a FlexATX case, considering i have no need for PCI slots anyway!
I pitty you, but your lucky you dont live in absolute poverty with all your rights dictated by a small few, and where the punnishment for stealing a loaf of bread is your right hand.
Thankfully most of us can see the good that we have worked so hard for over centuries to get where we are.
Such inquisitions were all based on ignorance, and often at the will of certain small groups who using primarily propaganda exploited that ignorance to their own means. Ie the various Inquisitions you mentioned, often it was lead by the Church.
That is the problem with any Anarchy, ignorance. And that is also something our governments take into account. For example, nobody wants more tax's but to pay for your free health care it is needed!
Ignorance is one problem that we dont have to deal with to such an extent anymore, and i believe over time it will dimminish even more-so. Education has that effect, and although not everyone is equally intelligent, as a whole we are 'educated'. So in today's society an inquisition led by say the Cathlic Church, would be highly unlikely.
Unfortunatly we are far from a point where ignorance is rare, in time tho perhaps we will approach such a point.
I don't necessarily think that EVERYONE in society will contribute if given the tools to do so. I'm not even sure if a majority would.
:)
This is an excelent thread!
When you look at the Democratic system and its roots, you see that the _idea_ is that everyone has an equal say in everything. BUT the obvious logistics of having 250million congressmen is unworkable. So that is where 'proportional representation' comes from, ie a small group a elected by the whole to represent their views.
That's the theory of course, and to an extent it works, in particular the big issues, say 'should we invade Afganistan', the majority believes YES, so it happens. Of course in many ways it doesnt work, and you have a lot of people in power spending a considerable amount of time keeping themselves in power.
The interesting thought that occured to me is on the issue of logistics. Now and in the past such a decision which would require everyone's opinion would require a referendum, but having a referendum costs a lot of money, time, etc. Hence the logistical problem. But think of the future, one day when a referendum could be as simple as a online poll (disregarding all the tech details, etc) we would be in a position where the logistical hurdles would be virtually non-existant, and hence we would be approaching a situation where, we would no longer need, proportional representation!
Could technology deliver us into a new era of Democracy???
Its not about overthrowing the government! But think of this, if overnight the US govt with say the US Military on their side, over turned the Constitution, and insttituted Marshal Law. Then too actually piss you off (as probably half the US pop wouldnt even notice that), they trippled all tax's.
:]) a more realistic example would be say the New York Race riots of 91 (or was it 92??), things were wrong, people got angry, etc etc, eventually all was back to normal, EXCEPT somewhere in the halls of power someone is now thinking; "We don't want *that* to happen again." there is the change.
Then you would get massive upheavals. Protests turing into riots, etc. Of course the reaction would be too clamp down, probably by killing a few thousand civilians (armed or unarmed). What happens next, well i would certainly hope a significant portion of those those holding the actual guns, ie the National Guard / Army would say, "No, were not going to kill our neighbours! And *bang* you've got whats called a cival war, likely with no side having a significant advantage.
Of course this is an extreme extreme, (hey you started with the extremes!
I disagree that it only takes a small percentage to mess it up in the Anarchy system. The system actually takes that into account, that's the 'punishment' part. As long as everyone as said is aware of the system and how it works to weed out those who would mess it up, then that small number could never become large enough to disrupt the whole system.
Thats a big "if" of course, but this is all theoretical anyway. And that the big difference with Anarchy and Communisim, in the latter, in practice, (ie USSR of old) a 'small group' was formed to 'direct' the 'whole', and of course it is far easier to corrupt a small group rather than everyone.
Anarchy _in theory_ is a beautiful system, nothing like what we call anarchy now, such as when we say "Somalia is in a state of Anarchy". Far from it, anarchy in its purest form would have _everyone_ in charge. Everyone answers only too two things; 1. Themselves, and 2. Everyone else. In my opinion this is a Utopian world.
"the way to win the game is to maximize research"
:)
YESS!!! Finally, someone points that out. Now, how do we convince the GOVERNMENT to fund the research?
Because quite simply, the govt knows just as well as we do, that another easy way to win (in Civ) is the destroy everyone else!
Hey maybe your just meeting the wrong chicks? Standards too low perhaps?? :)
:)
Astrophysics is a great hobby. Trust me it even interests girls a heck of a lot more than say; Quake!
Exactly! Regardless of what MS wants the retailers to do, they have to abide by their own regulations. All you have to do, as you did is be insistent, and you will get what you want.
Depending on where you are it is often illegal even for them to refuse a return / replacement. (Im in Australia, at least here it is AFAIK)
Yep good guess, GTA3 is banned down here!
:( But you can still get them from Blockbuster no problem at all.
Not that that really stops anything, although because of the region coding on ps2 games and such, it _slows_ its spread dramatically. But like another poster said, X rated movies and such may be banned, but that in no way stops you from walking into one of the hundreds of "Adult book stores" and buying them.
Very rarely would a movie (non-porn) be completly banned, mainly just from tv actually, you dont see much R rated tv movies, except when heavily censored!
From what i remember reading, that's not at all true, since their are no techtonic plates on the moon, the only thing that causes any sort of seismic activity are tidal forces and impacts. But not very large quakes neverless, like 4 on the richter scale.
When you consider that Pioneer 10 at 75AU out, has been traveling for thirty years (since 1972) so far, then you can imagine that 550AU almost eight times further is actually very far. :)
:( (ION Drive info)
Not that necessarily this detracts from the possibility, new propulsion techniques such as the ion drive discused in the article will bring that time down considerably, but I didnt notice any estimates there in the article. A quick guess would indicate that even at 10x the speed, you would still be looking at a few decades of travel time!
So I would imagine this being quite a while off yet, neverless it's still a very good idea!