Have you considered the idea of a "prototype"? Just because it isn't the most needed place to set up an elevator doesn't make it useless. There are plenty more resources on the moon than simply He-3 for fusion as well and none of it needs to be hauled back down earth's gravity well to be useful. The manufacturing potential from the materials found on the moon--aluminum, silicon, magnesium, iron, and titanium to name a few--is huge. Why waste enormous sums of money launching your space-bound infrastructure out of earth's gravity well when it can be made on and launched from the moon? Launch circuit boards from earth, launch space frames from the moon.
The mining machines wouldn't necessarily need to be: massive, transported via the tether, and/or come down fully assembled. Not everything has to start out on massive scales. For instance consider the state of global shipping back in the 18th century then compare that to the early 21st. Or farming in the 18th vs. 21st. Normally things start out small and gradually build out as technology and resources develop. Staging things is simply an engineering problem which if Curiosity is any indicator we seem to be getting pretty good at. Even during the Apollo missions we were dropping some pretty serious hardware down onto the moon. Powering these machines can come from any number of technologies from mundane to exotic. We already have well proven solar and RTG technologies, there are a few rather interesting possibilities using in-situ resources as well. For instance using the newly discovered water with the aluminum in the regolith to produce hydrogen for fuel. The Aluminum Hydroxide byproduct has its own interesting uses. The obvious one is of course simply using the mined He-3 for fusion power (whenever we get that one figured out).
Few grand adventures into human frontiers are ever "practical" initially and that unfortunately prevents people from seeing what humanity's pioneers and explorers see. In the 1800's no one got what Charles Babbage saw. During the first half of the 1900's very few saw what Konrad Zuse saw. Today no one can miss it and everyone demands it. People too often are quick to see problems as "too hard", too near-sighted to see possibilities, too self-centered to appreciate the benefits to others. You might not get to holiday on Utopia Planitia, or sail the methane seas of Titan but wouldn't it be awesome to initiate the projects now that make that a reality for your progeny? Both incomprehensible business opportunities and human delights await us on this next frontier. What are we waiting for?
Similar ideas were had about computers and a great many other things. Sometimes the destination is a bit farther from you than your myopic vision permits to be seen. I also didn't say "economical" relative to earth bound alternatives but then you're also making the assumption that we're taking this stuff back to earth.
Let's throw a few points up that you might not be considering:
He-3 is preferable for a fusion fuel since it's aneutronic--no radiation to deal. It comes that way from the moon, the path to producing it on earth does everything but avoid radiation.
He-3 is useful as an advanced fuel in rocket propulsion
Power can be produced in space and beamed down to earth
Many of those rocks we have down here on Earth resulted from really big rocks from space slamming into us. Might be good idea if we have technology, infrastructure and humanity already in space before we're in need of it.
Putting multi-trillions of dollars into the vacuum is preferable to craters into the middle-eastern sand. The same jobs are created but at the end of the day at you have something far more impressive to show for it and far fewer lives expended.
It "might" require an anchor at L1 or L2. We're not used to thinking of building tethers that long and so it seems silly but I'm not sure it's quite as impractical as it sounds. It's just a matter of weaving fibers together until desired length is achieved. Why I say "might" though with respect to needing to anchor at L1 or L2 is that I can see alternatives that compensate. To my understanding all that is required is the ability to hold the tether taut. This can be achieved with length, anchor mass, or I would suggest possibly propulsion. A reaction engine could be used that uses the very aluminum harvested from the regolith as fuel. Or, potentially a solar sail could be used that would effectively turn the anchor into a solar kite.
Well I'm not so sure... It would make transport on and off the surface cheaper. This would in turn make it more economical to conduct mining operations on the the moon--which is presently our easiest to access source of Helium-3.
Unless your father is a geriatric and/or suffers from some mental impairment I'm really struggling with the idea that he shouldn't just be left to suffer his fate and clean up his own mess. Survival of the fittest can be a good thing.
In any case the very first thing that needs to happen and as soon as possibly possible is to
lock his credit file. It will make life more of a pain for him later should he need to use a service requiring a credit inquiry but it will effectively prevent anyone from using his identity to establish credit. Then this incursion needs to be reported to every financial institution he does business with, banks, credit cards, investment, etc.. After that you can start to care about his computer. Which by the way if you wish to be paranoid you might as well throw away and replace. Unless you/he is sentimental and/or budget sensitive the time you'll invest scanning each an every bloody JPEG, PDF, wiping the hard drive(s) with DBAN, and flashing the BIOS, etc. might well not be worth it.
when you choose to "opt-out"? What am I prohibited access from for turning it off? Is this like the "Windows Genuine Advantage" malware where you cannot update/patch unless this is turned on? Or is it like the little dialog that pops up when an app crashes asking if it can send details to HQ?
At least in the US, banks impose a daily ATM withdrawal limit--$300 I think. You could visit 20 different ATMs but after your collective sum totals $300 you're done anyway. But why on earth would you wish to "show up" on the net so many times when just dumping your funds in one go would eliminate future location predictions. Frankly if you're in G-8 country and in a major city odds are there are cameras capable of tracking wherever the hell you go anyway.
The "why not" is because all it would result in is more outsourcing to countries outside of jurisdiction.
Either way, bad software is more of a consequence of bad managers than bad developers. Managers allocate resources to projects--including development talent, managers demand deadlines contrary to software quality. If people should be held accountable it should be the ones running the show not the ones taking orders.
On a desktop platform a touchscreen isn't simply "wrist" movements anymore. People would have to actually exercise their entire arms the whole day. I'm not sure I'd mind too much personally. Given how much I'm chained to my desk any given day, I would like to be able to squeeze some exercise in there. However, sophisticated GUIs such as those of my IDE will need a substantial usability overhaul. There's no way I could efficiently use the high density UI with fingers.
So what you're really saying is that it is just like we've always been saying. Only people with money to pay for games will pay for games. I would have never guessed that the pre-teen and early adolescent crowd couldn't afford to buy your games at the store or make online micro-payments with their personal credit cards. I mean really I'd be quite happy to store my credit card on my kid's Xbox live account and give them carte blanche to buy whatever swag they like. You mean parents don't really do that?
Until you--the legitimate user were--were caught in the mess created by your spamming neighbor. There is no absolute solution to spam. Unfortunately the solution that will be put forth eventually will be to "license" computer users. Unfortunately by the time people realize that this didn't solve anything it will be too late and beyond return. The best solution for spam is to employ artificial intelligence. More specifically AI on the level of Watson and beyond. Regrettably computing power on the caliber necessary to tackle the volume doesn't exist and is presently cost prohibitive. In other words, you're screwed. Spam will be with us for some time yet to come. The best we'll have for the near term is a reasonable firewall from the worst of it using the usual heuristics and blacklist pools.
Building computers isn't just a money saver, these days. Heck, it isn't *even* a money saver. It's a hobbyist thing.
I'll go dollar for dollar with a Dell any day. There's no way in hell they can touch my home brew except maybe at the very bottom pricing points but then there are certain levels of quality that I refuse to go below. They do not.
They sort of do, by way of a lease program but at least with respect to Detroit, they surely aren't "indestructible". Admittedly they've made progress since the days when their vehicles required major repair every 30,000 miles but they still can't hold a candle to Japan or Korea, which ironically assemble more vehicles in the U.S. than they do. Of course why would you wish to lease a common class Detroit auto when their depreciation makes their lease payments nearly identical to Japanese and European luxury class.
Oracle's acquisition of InnoDB was for the express purpose of gaining control over MySQL. To consume InnoDB was to consume a very major component of MySQL. It is quite relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps with women... Then again...
Have you considered the idea of a "prototype"? Just because it isn't the most needed place to set up an elevator doesn't make it useless. There are plenty more resources on the moon than simply He-3 for fusion as well and none of it needs to be hauled back down earth's gravity well to be useful. The manufacturing potential from the materials found on the moon--aluminum, silicon, magnesium, iron, and titanium to name a few--is huge. Why waste enormous sums of money launching your space-bound infrastructure out of earth's gravity well when it can be made on and launched from the moon? Launch circuit boards from earth, launch space frames from the moon.
Forming those rocks into a stepping stone.
The mining machines wouldn't necessarily need to be: massive, transported via the tether, and/or come down fully assembled. Not everything has to start out on massive scales. For instance consider the state of global shipping back in the 18th century then compare that to the early 21st. Or farming in the 18th vs. 21st. Normally things start out small and gradually build out as technology and resources develop. Staging things is simply an engineering problem which if Curiosity is any indicator we seem to be getting pretty good at. Even during the Apollo missions we were dropping some pretty serious hardware down onto the moon. Powering these machines can come from any number of technologies from mundane to exotic. We already have well proven solar and RTG technologies, there are a few rather interesting possibilities using in-situ resources as well. For instance using the newly discovered water with the aluminum in the regolith to produce hydrogen for fuel. The Aluminum Hydroxide byproduct has its own interesting uses. The obvious one is of course simply using the mined He-3 for fusion power (whenever we get that one figured out).
Few grand adventures into human frontiers are ever "practical" initially and that unfortunately prevents people from seeing what humanity's pioneers and explorers see. In the 1800's no one got what Charles Babbage saw. During the first half of the 1900's very few saw what Konrad Zuse saw. Today no one can miss it and everyone demands it. People too often are quick to see problems as "too hard", too near-sighted to see possibilities, too self-centered to appreciate the benefits to others. You might not get to holiday on Utopia Planitia, or sail the methane seas of Titan but wouldn't it be awesome to initiate the projects now that make that a reality for your progeny? Both incomprehensible business opportunities and human delights await us on this next frontier. What are we waiting for?
It "might" require an anchor at L1 or L2. We're not used to thinking of building tethers that long and so it seems silly but I'm not sure it's quite as impractical as it sounds. It's just a matter of weaving fibers together until desired length is achieved. Why I say "might" though with respect to needing to anchor at L1 or L2 is that I can see alternatives that compensate. To my understanding all that is required is the ability to hold the tether taut. This can be achieved with length, anchor mass, or I would suggest possibly propulsion. A reaction engine could be used that uses the very aluminum harvested from the regolith as fuel. Or, potentially a solar sail could be used that would effectively turn the anchor into a solar kite.
Well I'm not so sure... It would make transport on and off the surface cheaper. This would in turn make it more economical to conduct mining operations on the the moon--which is presently our easiest to access source of Helium-3.
Unless your father is a geriatric and/or suffers from some mental impairment I'm really struggling with the idea that he shouldn't just be left to suffer his fate and clean up his own mess. Survival of the fittest can be a good thing.
In any case the very first thing that needs to happen and as soon as possibly possible is to lock his credit file . It will make life more of a pain for him later should he need to use a service requiring a credit inquiry but it will effectively prevent anyone from using his identity to establish credit. Then this incursion needs to be reported to every financial institution he does business with, banks, credit cards, investment, etc.. After that you can start to care about his computer. Which by the way if you wish to be paranoid you might as well throw away and replace. Unless you/he is sentimental and/or budget sensitive the time you'll invest scanning each an every bloody JPEG, PDF, wiping the hard drive(s) with DBAN, and flashing the BIOS, etc. might well not be worth it.
No but it is the poster child representing a substantial portion of the infringements.
With rounded corners. Don't forget the rounded corners...
Well I suppose they could have gone with hexagonal corners...
Can you identify a positive alternative to a "rounded corner"?
I'm pretty sure he's trying to be a pedantic twit...
when you choose to "opt-out"? What am I prohibited access from for turning it off? Is this like the "Windows Genuine Advantage" malware where you cannot update/patch unless this is turned on? Or is it like the little dialog that pops up when an app crashes asking if it can send details to HQ?
At least in the US, banks impose a daily ATM withdrawal limit--$300 I think. You could visit 20 different ATMs but after your collective sum totals $300 you're done anyway. But why on earth would you wish to "show up" on the net so many times when just dumping your funds in one go would eliminate future location predictions. Frankly if you're in G-8 country and in a major city odds are there are cameras capable of tracking wherever the hell you go anyway.
Assuming you have not been made the aforementioned enemy of the state.
The "why not" is because all it would result in is more outsourcing to countries outside of jurisdiction.
Either way, bad software is more of a consequence of bad managers than bad developers. Managers allocate resources to projects--including development talent, managers demand deadlines contrary to software quality. If people should be held accountable it should be the ones running the show not the ones taking orders.
No no no, since this involves a Mormon it should be "Keep sweet"...
On a desktop platform a touchscreen isn't simply "wrist" movements anymore. People would have to actually exercise their entire arms the whole day. I'm not sure I'd mind too much personally. Given how much I'm chained to my desk any given day, I would like to be able to squeeze some exercise in there. However, sophisticated GUIs such as those of my IDE will need a substantial usability overhaul. There's no way I could efficiently use the high density UI with fingers.
So what you're really saying is that it is just like we've always been saying. Only people with money to pay for games will pay for games. I would have never guessed that the pre-teen and early adolescent crowd couldn't afford to buy your games at the store or make online micro-payments with their personal credit cards. I mean really I'd be quite happy to store my credit card on my kid's Xbox live account and give them carte blanche to buy whatever swag they like. You mean parents don't really do that?
Isn't documentation antithetical to the very nature of Slackware? It's a bit like Steve Jobs serving meals at a homeless shelter.
Until you--the legitimate user were--were caught in the mess created by your spamming neighbor. There is no absolute solution to spam. Unfortunately the solution that will be put forth eventually will be to "license" computer users. Unfortunately by the time people realize that this didn't solve anything it will be too late and beyond return. The best solution for spam is to employ artificial intelligence. More specifically AI on the level of Watson and beyond. Regrettably computing power on the caliber necessary to tackle the volume doesn't exist and is presently cost prohibitive. In other words, you're screwed. Spam will be with us for some time yet to come. The best we'll have for the near term is a reasonable firewall from the worst of it using the usual heuristics and blacklist pools.
Building computers isn't just a money saver, these days. Heck, it isn't *even* a money saver. It's a hobbyist thing.
I'll go dollar for dollar with a Dell any day. There's no way in hell they can touch my home brew except maybe at the very bottom pricing points but then there are certain levels of quality that I refuse to go below. They do not.
They sort of do, by way of a lease program but at least with respect to Detroit, they surely aren't "indestructible". Admittedly they've made progress since the days when their vehicles required major repair every 30,000 miles but they still can't hold a candle to Japan or Korea, which ironically assemble more vehicles in the U.S. than they do. Of course why would you wish to lease a common class Detroit auto when their depreciation makes their lease payments nearly identical to Japanese and European luxury class.
Oracle's acquisition of InnoDB was for the express purpose of gaining control over MySQL. To consume InnoDB was to consume a very major component of MySQL. It is quite relevant.