Interesting, but way out of reach. It would require huge construction sites, and unless you mine materials, you'd need to launch all the parts from earth. It would require an entire moon colony.
Riddle me this: Would it be feasible to launch a moon mission from the ISS?
No. And it wouldn't even make any sense. In fact, it makes no sense whatsoever to use an orbiting space station to launch anything, whether it be to the Moon or to Mars, or any other interplanetary mission. Different missions need highly specific orbit inclinations. And changing your orbit once you've reached orbit requires similar amounts of fuel as you used to reach it in the first place. There is also no advantage whatsoever in docking with a space station first. If your astronauts are going to the Moon or Mars, you don't particularly want them wasting time on a space station before they go. If you want to go somewhere in the solar system, you're best to just go straight there and do it.
Also, what we have learned from the shuttle is that it isn't really worth sending humans up to space for the sake of satellites. Although the shuttle was used a few times to launch some useful satellites early in it's lifetime, it's much better to just use a Delta IV rocket and do the job cheaper. It's only servicing use has been for Hubble, which was specifically designed in the shuttle program. It's not worth servicing anything else, especially not comsats. They're relatively cheap to launch and disposable. Sending people up there is crazy. It would waste billions. It's not even as if the Shuttle could reach Geosync, only GTO (and only in theory).
Put simply, the shuttle is quite poor at delivering satellites, and we have learned that there's no point in sending humans up along with them. Servicing them from a space station is even dumber. (Unless they are immediately vicinity of the space station. A space observatory in the same orbit as the ISS would actually make sense.)
And the ISS depends on the Shuttle for construction and servicing. Which will leave it in a rather interesting postition when the shuttle is retired.:-/
Mainly construction. The ISS was designed to be partly assembled by the shuttle. Supplies are take up by Russian progress capsules. By the time the Shuttle retires it should be somewhat complete, and it will be interesting to see what can be done with the new Ares rockets (Ares V can launch five times the amount the shuttle can to LEO)
Well, you'd have to get there first, insert into lunar orbit, land, launch again, exit lunar orbit, and all to get where you just were. So basically, no.
Yeah so, you'd like to listen to what your Boss, George Bush or Bill Gates tells you is good, because they're the ones who can choose? No thanks, I'd rather people choose themselves which kind of content is worth producing.
Orchestras, if you're looking at the classical type, _are_ playing non-copyrighted material. Somehow they appear to get paid anyway, eh?
Yeah, because we all know that all the musicians do is sell sheet music that's over 70 years old.>/sarcasm> Seriously, if you think that orchestras play exclusively public-domain music, and no new content is produced, then stay out of the discussion. Even for public-domain content, the rights to a certain recording are the only things keeping independent orchestras afloat.
Everything else I'd want to say was said in the comment above me. Free games? High quality? My ass.
I didn't say there aren't faults in the current system, but that copyright is necessary to support the amount of creative content produced today.
Simply put, instead of receiving a small share of the profits, the artists would receive nothing. At least they can produce content and make a living from it. How would they feel if they were told "FU, we're going to sell your work, and if you want money, get a job"
There are certainly ways to fix the system, but saying that copyright is bad for content production is simply wrong. Not all films would see amount of fan following that "Star Wreck" did, and god help us if that's the only kind of content we can expect in the future.
Believe it or not, without copyright many works simply would not be possible today.
Although a few garage bands might be willing to create music for free, many kinds of work cost a lot of money. Say goodbye to movies for a start, as well as games. No more orchestras, all those musicians want paying.
Copyright allows everyone to profit from their work, unlike before when the aristocracy and royalty basically could say what they want creating.
And copyright doesn't mean that the artist keeps getting paid, but that he is the only one who can sell and create "copies" of his work. If people want to enjoy his work so badly, why shouldn't he receive a reward for it? Ask your bro how he'd feel if another band took their songs, or what your friend would think if you started selling copies of their CD for a few bucks.
Comparing your blog and a few garage bands to every other artist is just stupid.
No chance. Once it's there, it won't ever go away. Many people would be frustrated. There wouldn't be any initiative anymore for alternative ways of funding, and most people will just accept it, and probably won't want to donate anything either. I certainly wouldn't donate to something showing ads.
The best solution IMO would be to seek government funding. I mean, come on it's like what, a few million Dollars a year. That's a rediculous amount for something the size of Wikipedia. If a few of the countries with the largest language Wikipedias (U.S., France, Germany) each gave a million Dollars a year, that would be that. Problem solved.
I'd mod you up if I had points. It's good to see someone here who really works to improve the project. Just thought I'd give you a boost since you posted AC.
That's where I disagree, because most people do their work on computers anyway. When I'm doing any work, Wikipedia is at the most 10 seconds away. OTOH, if I had to pull a heavy book out and patiently flick through the pages for every single article, it would drive me insane.
Apart from being better to use, Wikipedia contains a lot more useful information than Britannica, contrary to what you claim. There probably isn't a single piece of information that Britannica contains, and Wikipedia does not, whereas the reverse is true for practically every article.
Of course there's value in printed material, but a one-and-a-half grand, thirty-two volume, one-hundred-and-fifty pound heap of paper is not my idea of practical.
Nah, DRM has been around quite a while, even in the analogue days when some lines of a signal would scramble a tape recording. The original DVD also contained DRM, as did Minidiscs, although I'm not sure if they did from the start.
FWIW, the Atlantis article contains only about roughly 300 more words than the Goethe one, and about 400 less if you take out things like cast and broadcaster lists.
Also comparing an article about a modern tv series to the biography of an author is just stupid. There are at least dozens of people involved, many writers, many actors, millions of dollars, and literally hundreds (I'm pulling this number out of my ass here, but it's probably a minimum) of episodes. There simply is just more that you can write about it.
There is no policy on Wikipedia saying that an article's length should correspond to its importance, which would be just plain stupid.
Most people, especially the younger generation, will probably see little value in a printed volume-based encyclopedia, apart from making a bookshelf look pretty.
The thing about DRM encryption, is that no matter how hard they try, the customer needs to be able to decrypt the signal to display the content. Even if almost every step of the process is tightly controlled, a cracker could still record the signal from whatever controls the pixels in the TV.
Companies are considered people because this enables them to limit their financial liability and encourages their directors to take greater risks. This in turn encourages innovation and is good for the economy.
What has this got to do with calling corporations "people"? The individuals who own a company are protected because they are people. Seriously, is the only point of considering a corporation a person because of financial liability? Why not just do a law about corporate liability?
Giving a company "human rights" is just plain stupid.
In the small print: "Warning, this burger has been prepared in rodent-infested facilities with disregard for basic hygiene precautions, and likely contains a variety of pathogens"
Many stores will have a red Sign saying that you can look at indexed games on request. You just have to ask, and a lady will guide you to a small room where you browse various pornography and violent material, while you're constantly watched by the assistant.
They're not claiming otherwise. They made it clear that the structures depend on the width of the rendered image, and only touched upon the idea that information might be modulated in genetic code, a theory which has been about for much longer.
Ever seen a few "maps" of the Internet? Completely pointless, but it helps people to visualise the scope of the whole thing, even though they can't do anything useful with it. It's mainly art, but it also shows us something we can't understand in a way that is more human than a set of repetitive characters spread over pages.
I mean, you can see a human as a bitmap image, that's gotta be cool, hasn't it?
The Citizendium article is exactly what I do not want to read when I look in an encyclopedia. It's just a hokey writeup, and contains very little information about the subject, but goes on endlessly about philosophical aspects which might be of no interest to the reader.
Compare it to the Wikipedia article, which is considerably shorter, but contains links to different disciplines, history, interactions and diversity. I can click whatever I want and find out about the things that interest me. The title of one part of the CT article is "back to the baby". What's that going to be about? Add to that the craptastic quality of the images (It might be different in a HTML version, same goes for the links. I don't know though, they won't let me look at it)(They include a scan of a public health warning from god knows when to make a point about the benefits of the science. How off-topic is that?!)
The other criticism I have for the project is the reason for it's failure, one which is by far more fundamentally flawed than Wikipedia. They want every article to be checked by an editor, and expect experts to vouluntarily supply them with information and work, from which they then choose what they want to include in their cornball editorials (sorry if this sounds offensive, but this would also be the view of someone who had his hard worked contribution rejected). They want editors to invest their time researching matters that don't interest them, to verify that contributions are genuine, and do this for every single article. The fact that they have only managed one article is confirms all of this. How long will it take until they have an actual encyclopedia, in which you can actually look up something that you happened to come across? And how long until the articles become outdated and needs to be redone? (Britannica 1910 edition is public domain, freer than Wikipedia and a "proper" encyclopedia. Three guesses why it isn't all that popular today.) Maybe they'd have a chance of achieving maturity if they payed people to do the work. See where this is going?
What makes Wikipedia great is the amount of good, serious people, involved, often experts, who want to share their knowledge to the world. Trying to emulate the same kind of (quite arbitrary) complete oversight and authority that a commercial publisher has won't lead anywhere.
There isn't really anything in that article worth citing, but if I did find something, there's no way I'd consider it much more reliable than Wikipedia, where I can see a number of links, the history of edits and a discussion page if I find myself questioning something.
Exactly. This is more revealing about the disappointment of the (early) PS3 visuals than anything. What happened to the days when PC-gamers were drooling over the sparkling-new 3D games that only the PSX could do back in 94?
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, but way out of reach. It would require huge construction sites, and unless you mine materials, you'd need to launch all the parts from earth. It would require an entire moon colony.
No. And it wouldn't even make any sense. In fact, it makes no sense whatsoever to use an orbiting space station to launch anything, whether it be to the Moon or to Mars, or any other interplanetary mission.
Different missions need highly specific orbit inclinations. And changing your orbit once you've reached orbit requires similar amounts of fuel as you used to reach it in the first place.
There is also no advantage whatsoever in docking with a space station first. If your astronauts are going to the Moon or Mars, you don't particularly want them wasting time on a space station before they go.
If you want to go somewhere in the solar system, you're best to just go straight there and do it.
Also, what we have learned from the shuttle is that it isn't really worth sending humans up to space for the sake of satellites. Although the shuttle was used a few times to launch some useful satellites early in it's lifetime, it's much better to just use a Delta IV rocket and do the job cheaper. It's only servicing use has been for Hubble, which was specifically designed in the shuttle program.
It's not worth servicing anything else, especially not comsats. They're relatively cheap to launch and disposable. Sending people up there is crazy. It would waste billions. It's not even as if the Shuttle could reach Geosync, only GTO (and only in theory).
Put simply, the shuttle is quite poor at delivering satellites, and we have learned that there's no point in sending humans up along with them. Servicing them from a space station is even dumber. (Unless they are immediately vicinity of the space station. A space observatory in the same orbit as the ISS would actually make sense.)
Mainly construction. The ISS was designed to be partly assembled by the shuttle. Supplies are take up by Russian progress capsules. By the time the Shuttle retires it should be somewhat complete, and it will be interesting to see what can be done with the new Ares rockets (Ares V can launch five times the amount the shuttle can to LEO)
Well, you'd have to get there first, insert into lunar orbit, land, launch again, exit lunar orbit, and all to get where you just were. So basically, no.
Guess what would happen to your dick in the lunar vacuum.
Yeah so, you'd like to listen to what your Boss, George Bush or Bill Gates tells you is good, because they're the ones who can choose?
No thanks, I'd rather people choose themselves which kind of content is worth producing.
Yeah, because we all know that all the musicians do is sell sheet music that's over 70 years old.>/sarcasm>
Seriously, if you think that orchestras play exclusively public-domain music, and no new content is produced, then stay out of the discussion.
Even for public-domain content, the rights to a certain recording are the only things keeping independent orchestras afloat.
Everything else I'd want to say was said in the comment above me.
Free games? High quality? My ass.
I didn't say there aren't faults in the current system, but that copyright is necessary to support the amount of creative content produced today.
Simply put, instead of receiving a small share of the profits, the artists would receive nothing. At least they can produce content and make a living from it. How would they feel if they were told "FU, we're going to sell your work, and if you want money, get a job"
There are certainly ways to fix the system, but saying that copyright is bad for content production is simply wrong.
Not all films would see amount of fan following that "Star Wreck" did, and god help us if that's the only kind of content we can expect in the future.
Believe it or not, without copyright many works simply would not be possible today.
Although a few garage bands might be willing to create music for free, many kinds of work cost a lot of money. Say goodbye to movies for a start, as well as games. No more orchestras, all those musicians want paying.
Copyright allows everyone to profit from their work, unlike before when the aristocracy and royalty basically could say what they want creating.
And copyright doesn't mean that the artist keeps getting paid, but that he is the only one who can sell and create "copies" of his work. If people want to enjoy his work so badly, why shouldn't he receive a reward for it?
Ask your bro how he'd feel if another band took their songs, or what your friend would think if you started selling copies of their CD for a few bucks.
Comparing your blog and a few garage bands to every other artist is just stupid.
No chance. Once it's there, it won't ever go away. Many people would be frustrated. There wouldn't be any initiative anymore for alternative ways of funding, and most people will just accept it, and probably won't want to donate anything either.
I certainly wouldn't donate to something showing ads.
The best solution IMO would be to seek government funding. I mean, come on it's like what, a few million Dollars a year. That's a rediculous amount for something the size of Wikipedia. If a few of the countries with the largest language Wikipedias (U.S., France, Germany) each gave a million Dollars a year, that would be that. Problem solved.
Actually, he might be thinking of one of these
I'd mod you up if I had points. It's good to see someone here who really works to improve the project.
Just thought I'd give you a boost since you posted AC.
That's where I disagree, because most people do their work on computers anyway. When I'm doing any work, Wikipedia is at the most 10 seconds away.
OTOH, if I had to pull a heavy book out and patiently flick through the pages for every single article, it would drive me insane.
Apart from being better to use, Wikipedia contains a lot more useful information than Britannica, contrary to what you claim. There probably isn't a single piece of information that Britannica contains, and Wikipedia does not, whereas the reverse is true for practically every article.
Of course there's value in printed material, but a one-and-a-half grand, thirty-two volume, one-hundred-and-fifty pound heap of paper is not my idea of practical.
Nah, DRM has been around quite a while, even in the analogue days when some lines of a signal would scramble a tape recording. The original DVD also contained DRM, as did Minidiscs, although I'm not sure if they did from the start.
FWIW, the Atlantis article contains only about roughly 300 more words than the Goethe one, and about 400 less if you take out things like cast and broadcaster lists.
Also comparing an article about a modern tv series to the biography of an author is just stupid. There are at least dozens of people involved, many writers, many actors, millions of dollars, and literally hundreds (I'm pulling this number out of my ass here, but it's probably a minimum) of episodes. There simply is just more that you can write about it.
There is no policy on Wikipedia saying that an article's length should correspond to its importance, which would be just plain stupid.
Most people, especially the younger generation, will probably see little value in a printed volume-based encyclopedia, apart from making a bookshelf look pretty.
I see absolutely no value whatsoever in one.
You should have looked it up in Wikipedia. The only thing that exists is "Encyclopædia Britannica"
The thing about DRM encryption, is that no matter how hard they try, the customer needs to be able to decrypt the signal to display the content. Even if almost every step of the process is tightly controlled, a cracker could still record the signal from whatever controls the pixels in the TV.
What has this got to do with calling corporations "people"? The individuals who own a company are protected because they are people.
Seriously, is the only point of considering a corporation a person because of financial liability? Why not just do a law about corporate liability?
Giving a company "human rights" is just plain stupid.
In the small print: "Warning, this burger has been prepared in rodent-infested facilities with disregard for basic hygiene precautions, and likely contains a variety of pathogens"
Many stores will have a red Sign saying that you can look at indexed games on request. You just have to ask, and a lady will guide you to a small room where you browse various pornography and violent material, while you're constantly watched by the assistant.
http://www.opte.org/maps/
They're not claiming otherwise. They made it clear that the structures depend on the width of the rendered image, and only touched upon the idea that information might be modulated in genetic code, a theory which has been about for much longer.
Ever seen a few "maps" of the Internet? Completely pointless, but it helps people to visualise the scope of the whole thing, even though they can't do anything useful with it. It's mainly art, but it also shows us something we can't understand in a way that is more human than a set of repetitive characters spread over pages.
I mean, you can see a human as a bitmap image, that's gotta be cool, hasn't it?
Mod parent up!!
The Citizendium article is exactly what I do not want to read when I look in an encyclopedia. It's just a hokey writeup, and contains very little information about the subject, but goes on endlessly about philosophical aspects which might be of no interest to the reader.
Compare it to the Wikipedia article, which is considerably shorter, but contains links to different disciplines, history, interactions and diversity. I can click whatever I want and find out about the things that interest me.
The title of one part of the CT article is "back to the baby". What's that going to be about?
Add to that the craptastic quality of the images (It might be different in a HTML version, same goes for the links. I don't know though, they won't let me look at it)(They include a scan of a public health warning from god knows when to make a point about the benefits of the science. How off-topic is that?!)
The other criticism I have for the project is the reason for it's failure, one which is by far more fundamentally flawed than Wikipedia. They want every article to be checked by an editor, and expect experts to vouluntarily supply them with information and work, from which they then choose what they want to include in their cornball editorials (sorry if this sounds offensive, but this would also be the view of someone who had his hard worked contribution rejected).
They want editors to invest their time researching matters that don't interest them, to verify that contributions are genuine, and do this for every single article.
The fact that they have only managed one article is confirms all of this. How long will it take until they have an actual encyclopedia, in which you can actually look up something that you happened to come across? And how long until the articles become outdated and needs to be redone? (Britannica 1910 edition is public domain, freer than Wikipedia and a "proper" encyclopedia. Three guesses why it isn't all that popular today.)
Maybe they'd have a chance of achieving maturity if they payed people to do the work. See where this is going?
What makes Wikipedia great is the amount of good, serious people, involved, often experts, who want to share their knowledge to the world.
Trying to emulate the same kind of (quite arbitrary) complete oversight and authority that a commercial publisher has won't lead anywhere.
There isn't really anything in that article worth citing, but if I did find something, there's no way I'd consider it much more reliable than Wikipedia, where I can see a number of links, the history of edits and a discussion page if I find myself questioning something.
Exactly. This is more revealing about the disappointment of the (early) PS3 visuals than anything. What happened to the days when PC-gamers were drooling over the sparkling-new 3D games that only the PSX could do back in 94?