Sure, someone with an older than dirt machine will now have a 'torch' to hold up, or maybe he will dive in and actually try the install. Good for them. And I will agree with you that it is an achievement to actually have this working in this configuration.
But other than that it is purely an academic exercise. The level of usefulness is what is at the core of this argument, IMHO.
If such a machine were available to you - disconnected from the net - and you had the choice of running: 1) a severely stripped copy of Windows that took 15 minutes to boot *to a useful state* (none of this '4 minutes to the desktop, dude!' bloviating), could not run more than one application at a time without severely slowing the system or crashing it, made you watch every element appear one-by-one while it painted the window for you, and had a really high probability of not having compatible drivers for your hardware; or 2) a decently augmented modern Linux distro, that operated moderately snappily, with several hundred apps available, that could run two or more apps concurrently with relative ease, had the support and encouragement of someone who might be moderately interested in your [attempt|system|problems], and had a very high probability that drivers were either already available for your hardware, or they could be implemented by you or someone interested in doing it for you.
I have been in corporate and government situations were I have been forced by management to do 1), after explaining at length why 2) was the better way to go. It is not pretty. And the volume of user complaints are absolutely absurd. The argument always comes down to "We have a [corporate|government branch|section] blanket license from Microsoft for XX version of XX. We pay good money for it, so let's get our money's worth. Besides, the employees run it at home, and they're familiar with it."
I have also in the past ran an ISP that had a *single box* do everything: a Cyrix PR100, 16MB RAM, and a 1GB 3400RPM Full Height brick that ran 48+ 33.6 and 56k modems running on BocaBoard serial port expanders, PPP/SLIP/CSLIP servers, a telnet BBS, ftp site, Apache serving local user homepages, sendmail server, UseNET news feed synced every hour, IRC server, local shell access for users, a 128kbps 2B+D ISDN CENTRIX pipe directly to our ISP, and a friggin MUD! This was with kernel 1.3.19 monolithic on slakware. Stable as a rock, booted in 45 seconds (when we did reboot), moved like greased lightning. No GUI most of the time, to be sure, but we could run up fvwm occasionally to view a page in Netscape without slowing it down too much (3.+ load average).
We had *compliments* about how fast our services were compared to other local ISPs.
This was at a time when a local BBS advertised in our area's free computer trade mag that they had 16 WinNT4 servers running practically the same offerings, except IRC and shell accounts. Their ad said that due to "newer technology" they would "be back up only 13 minutes after a crash!" Yes, that is an actual quote, exclamation point and all. I still have the mag around here somewhere.
Information cannot be sold, it lacks the fundamental characteristics for it to be so.
What? How about this for a fundamental characteristic: I have the information, you don't. You either want or need that information. As long as you cannot derive that information for yourself or from another source, I can either not give you the information, give you the information, or I can sell you the information and profit. In case you didn't realise, humanity is in the buisness of survival, individual survival is paramount to us all (except for people who really, really need to see a psyciatrist). The ultimate raison d'être relies upon each of us knowing what keeps us alive - our technology skills for earning a living for most of us here. My employer knows he cannot get the information I hold in my head without paying me, information that keeps his buisness running, and thus keeps him alive. Paychecks come in handy for keeping me alive - how about you? You can't even live off the land anymore without having information about crops, hunting, seasons, shelter construction, water purification, etc. Who's going to tell you that stuff for free anymore (not counting family relations that actually still have that knowledge)? So you get the information from someone selling it. Whether you pay for it in dollars or deer skins, it'll cost you.
The above information just cost you your lunch money. Now shutup and gimme your luch money, kid!
"Coach seats on U.S. domestic flights are usually either 17.2 or 18 inches wide; on longer flights, economy-class seats on wide-bodied planes tend to be slightly larger, up to 18.5 inches."
Is it just me, or can no-one forsee trying to put a 20" laptop into a 16-inch-wide economy class airline seat not gonna work?
(16" is the correct width for US economy class standard IIRC)
It just goes to show people in and around Richmond, and especially Henrico County, are really, really wierd people. Trust me when I say that of the rest of the state is not like that, until of course you get to the DC beltway.
- Go to eBay and buy one. (wait for the DRMO auction for the 7-track unit) - Build a box to acess the drive - not real hard for a good hardware hacker - build a Linux driver to access it (presuming no driver exists already for the card you connect it to) - get the tapes via FOIA
Conclusion: get the data for next to nothing.
Oh, yeah, one last step:
- ship the 245,000 smackers you didn't use to my house, in.9999 gold coins please.
You've never had any experience trying to get the government to actually do anything concrete, have you?
You don't get it. Even though Presedent Kenedy was very popular in government circles (Senators, Reps, et al), even he did not have the muscle (or 'political capital' if you like) to get the space program to the moon. Only by motivating the public, 'the mob' to use the ancient Roman term, into a frenzy of thinking of that single goal as a nation was he able to finally get it started - and continued after his death. Sure there's the symapathy factor for the continuation argument, but still that effort took millions of man-hours and billions of dollars - and in all that time and money did anyone screach at the top of thier lungs that the money and effort should go elsewhere?
My argument boils down to this: it is not the government trying to do it, but the popular oppinion forcing the government to do it.
A. Your right to privacy from the US Government extends only to information held by the US Governemnt, then only personally identifying information.
B. The domain registration system has not been the perview of the US Government since the NSF turned over the system to Network Solutions (now Verisign).
C. Your privacy relies upon the individual company's privacy policies. There are laws that govern the dessemination of private information from a public company, but they only go so far, and a generally reseved for credit or bank based businesses. Standard busniesses not engaged in finance have no real incentive to keep your information private other than your patronage.
"Michael K. Powell is Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Powell was nominated by President William J. Clinton to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on November 3, 1997. He was designated chairman by President George W. Bush on January 22, 2001."
I think this has been going on longer than you think.
BTW, interesting links to those PDFs... care to give a veiw through the mist of leagalease? I can't make much out of them. For instance, what are "Computer Inqury rules", and how would they apply here?
OK, so the only MMPOG I have not seen mentioned is World War II On-Line. I know it has 'ghetto' graphics, and the initial learning curve makes climbing the north face of K2 look easy by comparrison, but it's got legs.
Consider: It has been around since mid-2001; there is an active and vibrant community; it is not condusive to the "quaker" or bunny-hopping crew, so older gamers without super-reflexes can wrap thier heads around it too; you can play alongside people from anywhere (there are people from all over Eroupe, India, South Africa, various South American countries, Japan and throughout Asia, Australia, etc.); it has people that have been in the game (regular subscribers) for the entire run; most of these people at one time or another (some cases multiple times) have either left for another MMOPG and/or dual subscribed and found the other games to be wanting (and subsiquently came back); the compatriotism and friendliness of players to one another is so phenominal that the publisher, Cornered Rat Software, hired the most popular person from each of the two sides to be community reps/liasons; the dev team not only listens and *resonds to* to suggestions, complaints, and compliments, they sometimes do so *in game*; the new soundset makes it seem as if you are "in the trenches" in a WWII battle; and the game is constantly updated, to the point that they are going to release a new theater (North Africa) using new dev tools, then go back and *re-do* the original current theater with the new dev tools.
Oh, yeah, one last thing: The developer releases *concurent*, interoperable versions for Win** and MacOSX. They don't run a seperate server for Mac users, they don't leave out functions/graphics on the Mac platform. That in itself is almost unique in the MMOPG world. As for Linux, yes the Win** version will run under WineX/Cedega (at least I can get it to), and there is a Sourceforge page for an easy (Perl-based?) launcher.
Did anyone notice on Dr. Ng's webpage about the invention of the optical mouse? The text states, as well as the two links he provides, that the optical mouse was invented by Agilent in 1999. Umm... I guess the Genius optical mouse I bought for my Amiga in 1995 was a figment of my imagination? (it was switchable between PC, Mac, and Amiga/Atari protocols... ah, the days) And the fact that I bought it USED and abused? And that I had wanted an optical for years before that (since 1990 IIRC; I think I remember seeing one in Compute magazine for use with the C=128 with GEOS)?
Now, it may well be that it was Agilent's sensor in it, but it was well before 1999! Is my MMU going, or does anyone else remember these things?
Can reverse engineering a virus lead to better ways of detecting, preventing, and recovering from a virus and its future variants?
Or more importantly, can reverse engineering a computer virus get you in trouble with the DMCA? Could the virus writer then turn around and sue you? Seems like a plausable scenario and a valid income stream to me, if an extremely unethical and twisted one... Imagine the corporate virus-writing teams hired to take down a smaller rival, and the other guy not being able to counter for fear of being sued.
"If all they're doing is putting APs in each neighborhood, why use BPL at all? Just run standard cox or fiber optics to each AP."
Ummm... Becuase they are the POWER COMPANY, not the cable or telephone company, and they want to make you think they are leveraging a new technology based on the stuff you already have in your home, or outside already on a pole. It doesn't matter if the signal comes into your house through the light socket or a WiFi card, so long as they can advertise it as new and easy to use. It's all in the Madison Avenue spin, man.
FYI, when I had Cox Buisness cable internet service installed into my home a year ago, the cable company had to run a new line from the street to my demarcation point (the house). The same thing is happening to my father's house now, of whom had brand-spankin-new RG-6 laid to his house just 2 years ago to upgrade the lines for Cox cable phone service. Why does the cable company feel they need to tear up the yard to replace the feeder line every time you get a new service? Wasn't the line they laid last time supposed to be good for every service they could concievably put into your home? It looks like the same damn RG-6 they laid lst time, even down to the wire markings! And you didn't bring a new wire to my street box from the neihgborhood's cable demarcation point - what about THAT wire? It's gotta be 25-30 years old now!
IMHO this cable fiasco is one of the major reasons that someone would go with a technology that was already in thier home, like power lines. I am sure that I will be told in a couple years that my RG-6 feeder is not up to snuff for digital cable, or some new oddity, and they'll dig it up again.
Uh, hello? What about the trucks, trains, and planes used to transport all the nice things you need? Like food, sundries, clothing, and that computer you posted with?
Cripes the stupidity of some people just makes me want to SCREAM!!
Decrease our need for foreign oil? Two words: Drill ANWR. (OK, so one word and an acronym.) Really, folks, it isn't brain surgery. Two or three wells drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could significantly reduce our need for foreign oil. And don't give me the "it would destroy all the wildlife in the entire ANWR area". Fact one: An oil well drilling site takes up about 10-15 acres. ANWR is 1.5 MILLION acres. Fact two: the oil drilling industry is already so regulated that it would impossible to get away with what the environmentalists propose. Fact three: It is so remote no-one goes there by choice anyway. John Kerry said that ANWR is a "national treasure". Oh yeah? Have you ever even been there, Mr. Kerry? I'll admit I haven't, but all the photos I've seen make the place look like a desolate, bleak, perma-frost tundra that only scrub grass can grow on. Wanna build your house there? I think not. Even the freakin' buffalo looked like they wanted to be elsewhere.
I keep hearing that some of the elected officials in our country want to release the National Petroleum Reserves to decrease our foreign oil dependence. What crap! Those supplies were only meant to last three months for critical infrastructure needs only. That means no going to the grocery store or movies, people with oil heat have to turn it down, reduce you electricity usage (kill the home server farms...how well will that go over with the Slashdot crowd?), etc. Maybe we will all have to get stickers on our windshields again, just like during WWII. Got an "A" car? No? Then you get to stay home today, take public transport, or get a ticket with a hefty fine - one beefy enough that makes it not worth the risk. Maybe you only get to drive on alternating weeks of the month, with no-one allowed to drive on Sundays. Critical infrastructure means trucks, trains and planes that move our country's supplies of food, clothing, toilet paper, Jolt, Twinkies, you name it - and yes, oil. Besides, the last time that the oil reserves were "released" how far did gas prices drop then? Almost a penny, as I recall. Wow. Is your memory that short, America? Makes me sick, all of the damned politics surrounding this. Look at the facts, man.
You still watch TV? TV shows are nothing but one big advertisment these days. The quality of TV programming took a big nosedive a few years back as TV execs shoved anything onto the airwaves they could to get more advertising dollars. Sure there are a couple diamonds in the rough ('24' is probably my only current favorite on a regular network, but I borrow a friend's tape after he's finished removing commercials). Even my beloved Discovery Channel and Cartoon Netowrk are getting seriously annoying with the adverts. I've taken to just reading a book whenever I need entertainment. Yes, the paper-and-ink kind. Let me see them insert a 30 second spot there.
Choice quote from the story link http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-144.htm from the House Commitee on Science:
------------------- "DEBATE ON REGULATING SPACE TOURISM HEATS UP
WASHINGTON, D.C., Novenber 5, 2003 - Commercial human space flight (space tourism) is a burgeoning industry in need of some degree of government regulation and oversight a panel of witnesses told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee today. Witnesses varied widely, however, on the extent of regulations and the need for government indemnification of space tourism launches."
---------------------
"Space tourism?" In reference to "commercial human space flight?" Their mindset is all wrong here... "Goverment indemnification?" The government is indemnified for pretty much anything they want to be indemnified for. That's why they have these things called "insurance companies." "Regulation and oversight?" Please don't turn the commercial space race into NASA-II.
I thought the topic was most elequently covered (at least to my satisfaction) in James P. Hoagan's "Rockets, Redheads, & Revolution", in the chapter about the race to the moon in the 60's and what it did to the US's economy, focus, and other factors like abandoned projects. (Sorry, I can't recall the chapter name now, and the book is at home... and I call myself a geek! Sheesh!)
---- You don't need to see my sig. This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Slashdot Mirror
One majorly important piece of advice: get it in writing.
CYA, baby.
One word: usefulness.
Sure, someone with an older than dirt machine will now have a 'torch' to hold up, or maybe he will dive in and actually try the install. Good for them. And I will agree with you that it is an achievement to actually have this working in this configuration.
But other than that it is purely an academic exercise. The level of usefulness is what is at the core of this argument, IMHO.
If such a machine were available to you - disconnected from the net - and you had the choice of running:
1) a severely stripped copy of Windows that took 15 minutes to boot *to a useful state* (none of this '4 minutes to the desktop, dude!' bloviating), could not run more than one application at a time without severely slowing the system or crashing it, made you watch every element appear one-by-one while it painted the window for you, and had a really high probability of not having compatible drivers for your hardware;
or
2) a decently augmented modern Linux distro, that operated moderately snappily, with several hundred apps available, that could run two or more apps concurrently with relative ease, had the support and encouragement of someone who might be moderately interested in your [attempt|system|problems], and had a very high probability that drivers were either already available for your hardware, or they could be implemented by you or someone interested in doing it for you.
I have been in corporate and government situations were I have been forced by management to do 1), after explaining at length why 2) was the better way to go. It is not pretty. And the volume of user complaints are absolutely absurd. The argument always comes down to "We have a [corporate|government branch|section] blanket license from Microsoft for XX version of XX. We pay good money for it, so let's get our money's worth. Besides, the employees run it at home, and they're familiar with it."
I have also in the past ran an ISP that had a *single box* do everything: a Cyrix PR100, 16MB RAM, and a 1GB 3400RPM Full Height brick that ran 48+ 33.6 and 56k modems running on BocaBoard serial port expanders, PPP/SLIP/CSLIP servers, a telnet BBS, ftp site, Apache serving local user homepages, sendmail server, UseNET news feed synced every hour, IRC server, local shell access for users, a 128kbps 2B+D ISDN CENTRIX pipe directly to our ISP, and a friggin MUD! This was with kernel 1.3.19 monolithic on slakware. Stable as a rock, booted in 45 seconds (when we did reboot), moved like greased lightning. No GUI most of the time, to be sure, but we could run up fvwm occasionally to view a page in Netscape without slowing it down too much (3.+ load average).
We had *compliments* about how fast our services were compared to other local ISPs.
This was at a time when a local BBS advertised in our area's free computer trade mag that they had 16 WinNT4 servers running practically the same offerings, except IRC and shell accounts. Their ad said that due to "newer technology" they would "be back up only 13 minutes after a crash!" Yes, that is an actual quote, exclamation point and all. I still have the mag around here somewhere.
Uh, okay, not quite sure what this thing actually does?
It attracts those pesky international scientists, of course! Duh!
Information cannot be sold, it lacks the fundamental characteristics for it to be so.
What? How about this for a fundamental characteristic: I have the information, you don't. You either want or need that information. As long as you cannot derive that information for yourself or from another source, I can either not give you the information, give you the information, or I can sell you the information and profit. In case you didn't realise, humanity is in the buisness of survival, individual survival is paramount to us all (except for people who really, really need to see a psyciatrist). The ultimate raison d'être relies upon each of us knowing what keeps us alive - our technology skills for earning a living for most of us here. My employer knows he cannot get the information I hold in my head without paying me, information that keeps his buisness running, and thus keeps him alive. Paychecks come in handy for keeping me alive - how about you? You can't even live off the land anymore without having information about crops, hunting, seasons, shelter construction, water purification, etc. Who's going to tell you that stuff for free anymore (not counting family relations that actually still have that knowledge)? So you get the information from someone selling it. Whether you pay for it in dollars or deer skins, it'll cost you.
The above information just cost you your lunch money. Now shutup and gimme your luch money, kid!
Woah! My bad! That'll teach me to check Google beforehand:
i rline_seat_space00.asp
http://www.viamagazine.com/top_stories/articles/a
"Coach seats on U.S. domestic flights are usually either 17.2 or 18 inches wide; on longer flights, economy-class seats on wide-bodied planes tend to be slightly larger, up to 18.5 inches."
It still gets my suspicious eye...
Is it just me, or can no-one forsee trying to put a 20" laptop into a 16-inch-wide economy class airline seat not gonna work? (16" is the correct width for US economy class standard IIRC)
It just goes to show people in and around Richmond, and especially Henrico County, are really, really wierd people. Trust me when I say that of the rest of the state is not like that, until of course you get to the DC beltway.
Here's a project for ya:
.9999 gold coins please.
- Go to eBay and buy one. (wait for the DRMO auction for the 7-track unit)
- Build a box to acess the drive - not real hard for a good hardware hacker
- build a Linux driver to access it (presuming no driver exists already for the card you connect it to)
- get the tapes via FOIA
Conclusion: get the data for next to nothing.
Oh, yeah, one last step:
- ship the 245,000 smackers you didn't use to my house, in
It's another nail in the coffin of CNN. They are struggling to get back viewer share after the Fox News blitz.
It is entertaining to see the news networks battling each other. It's much more fun than the news they're reporting.
It takes a Terminator to defeat Skynet. It takes a script kiddie and a buffer overflow to defeat Windows.
Just goes to show you Windows is more secure - it takes TWO things to bring it down, not just one.
That those two things could be a (code)monkey and some (buffer)honey are beside the point.
You've never had any experience trying to get the government to actually do anything concrete, have you?
You don't get it. Even though Presedent Kenedy was very popular in government circles (Senators, Reps, et al), even he did not have the muscle (or 'political capital' if you like) to get the space program to the moon. Only by motivating the public, 'the mob' to use the ancient Roman term, into a frenzy of thinking of that single goal as a nation was he able to finally get it started - and continued after his death. Sure there's the symapathy factor for the continuation argument, but still that effort took millions of man-hours and billions of dollars - and in all that time and money did anyone screach at the top of thier lungs that the money and effort should go elsewhere?
My argument boils down to this: it is not the government trying to do it, but the popular oppinion forcing the government to do it.
A. Your right to privacy from the US Government extends only to information held by the US Governemnt, then only personally identifying information.
B. The domain registration system has not been the perview of the US Government since the NSF turned over the system to Network Solutions (now Verisign).
C. Your privacy relies upon the individual company's privacy policies. There are laws that govern the dessemination of private information from a public company, but they only go so far, and a generally reseved for credit or bank based businesses. Standard busniesses not engaged in finance have no real incentive to keep your information private other than your patronage.
This is what the Bush FCC appears to have planned for you.
Oh no! Bias! How can I trust any of this information when you're biased?
Ha ha ha, just kidding.
Really? From Chairman Powell's biography:
"Michael K. Powell is Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Powell was nominated by President William J. Clinton to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on November 3, 1997. He was designated chairman by President George W. Bush on January 22, 2001."
I think this has been going on longer than you think.
BTW, interesting links to those PDFs... care to give a veiw through the mist of leagalease? I can't make much out of them. For instance, what are "Computer Inqury rules", and how would they apply here?
For proof, go stand in front of your microwave oven with the door closed,...
Only if you're in the 'control group' of people who rig the microwave door *open* while it runs.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
OK, so the only MMPOG I have not seen mentioned is World War II On-Line. I know it has 'ghetto' graphics, and the initial learning curve makes climbing the north face of K2 look easy by comparrison, but it's got legs.
Consider: It has been around since mid-2001; there is an active and vibrant community; it is not condusive to the "quaker" or bunny-hopping crew, so older gamers without super-reflexes can wrap thier heads around it too; you can play alongside people from anywhere (there are people from all over Eroupe, India, South Africa, various South American countries, Japan and throughout Asia, Australia, etc.); it has people that have been in the game (regular subscribers) for the entire run; most of these people at one time or another (some cases multiple times) have either left for another MMOPG and/or dual subscribed and found the other games to be wanting (and subsiquently came back); the compatriotism and friendliness of players to one another is so phenominal that the publisher, Cornered Rat Software, hired the most popular person from each of the two sides to be community reps/liasons; the dev team not only listens and *resonds to* to suggestions, complaints, and compliments, they sometimes do so *in game*; the new soundset makes it seem as if you are "in the trenches" in a WWII battle; and the game is constantly updated, to the point that they are going to release a new theater (North Africa) using new dev tools, then go back and *re-do* the original current theater with the new dev tools.
Oh, yeah, one last thing: The developer releases *concurent*, interoperable versions for Win** and MacOSX. They don't run a seperate server for Mac users, they don't leave out functions/graphics on the Mac platform. That in itself is almost unique in the MMOPG world. As for Linux, yes the Win** version will run under WineX/Cedega (at least I can get it to), and there is a Sourceforge page for an easy (Perl-based?) launcher.
Well, am I an anachronism?
How can you have A long WAYS?
Maybe they've been reading too much Robert Jordan.
Did anyone notice on Dr. Ng's webpage about the invention of the optical mouse? The text states, as well as the two links he provides, that the optical mouse was invented by Agilent in 1999. Umm... I guess the Genius optical mouse I bought for my Amiga in 1995 was a figment of my imagination? (it was switchable between PC, Mac, and Amiga/Atari protocols... ah, the days) And the fact that I bought it USED and abused? And that I had wanted an optical for years before that (since 1990 IIRC; I think I remember seeing one in Compute magazine for use with the C=128 with GEOS)?
Now, it may well be that it was Agilent's sensor in it, but it was well before 1999! Is my MMU going, or does anyone else remember these things?
Can reverse engineering a virus lead to better ways of detecting, preventing, and recovering from a virus and its future variants?
Or more importantly, can reverse engineering a computer virus get you in trouble with the DMCA? Could the virus writer then turn around and sue you? Seems like a plausable scenario and a valid income stream to me, if an extremely unethical and twisted one... Imagine the corporate virus-writing teams hired to take down a smaller rival, and the other guy not being able to counter for fear of being sued.
Free is the ultimate expression of innovation and innovation in turn is central to what makes Capitalism so effective.
Tell that to the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, Bill Gates, etc. I'm sure they will approve of your point of view -- and then go right back to the witch-hunts.
(P.S. I completely agree with your narrative, it's just that I couldn't resist...)
"If all they're doing is putting APs in each neighborhood, why use BPL at all? Just run standard cox or fiber optics to each AP."
Ummm... Becuase they are the POWER COMPANY, not the cable or telephone company, and they want to make you think they are leveraging a new technology based on the stuff you already have in your home, or outside already on a pole. It doesn't matter if the signal comes into your house through the light socket or a WiFi card, so long as they can advertise it as new and easy to use. It's all in the Madison Avenue spin, man.
FYI, when I had Cox Buisness cable internet service installed into my home a year ago, the cable company had to run a new line from the street to my demarcation point (the house). The same thing is happening to my father's house now, of whom had brand-spankin-new RG-6 laid to his house just 2 years ago to upgrade the lines for Cox cable phone service. Why does the cable company feel they need to tear up the yard to replace the feeder line every time you get a new service? Wasn't the line they laid last time supposed to be good for every service they could concievably put into your home? It looks like the same damn RG-6 they laid lst time, even down to the wire markings! And you didn't bring a new wire to my street box from the neihgborhood's cable demarcation point - what about THAT wire? It's gotta be 25-30 years old now!
IMHO this cable fiasco is one of the major reasons that someone would go with a technology that was already in thier home, like power lines. I am sure that I will be told in a couple years that my RG-6 feeder is not up to snuff for digital cable, or some new oddity, and they'll dig it up again.
dosboss
Uh, hello? What about the trucks, trains, and planes used to transport all the nice things you need? Like food, sundries, clothing, and that computer you posted with?
Cripes the stupidity of some people just makes me want to SCREAM!!
Decrease our need for foreign oil? Two words: Drill ANWR. (OK, so one word and an acronym.) Really, folks, it isn't brain surgery. Two or three wells drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could significantly reduce our need for foreign oil. And don't give me the "it would destroy all the wildlife in the entire ANWR area". Fact one: An oil well drilling site takes up about 10-15 acres. ANWR is 1.5 MILLION acres. Fact two: the oil drilling industry is already so regulated that it would impossible to get away with what the environmentalists propose. Fact three: It is so remote no-one goes there by choice anyway. John Kerry said that ANWR is a "national treasure". Oh yeah? Have you ever even been there, Mr. Kerry? I'll admit I haven't, but all the photos I've seen make the place look like a desolate, bleak, perma-frost tundra that only scrub grass can grow on. Wanna build your house there? I think not. Even the freakin' buffalo looked like they wanted to be elsewhere.
I keep hearing that some of the elected officials in our country want to release the National Petroleum Reserves to decrease our foreign oil dependence. What crap! Those supplies were only meant to last three months for critical infrastructure needs only. That means no going to the grocery store or movies, people with oil heat have to turn it down, reduce you electricity usage (kill the home server farms...how well will that go over with the Slashdot crowd?), etc. Maybe we will all have to get stickers on our windshields again, just like during WWII. Got an "A" car? No? Then you get to stay home today, take public transport, or get a ticket with a hefty fine - one beefy enough that makes it not worth the risk. Maybe you only get to drive on alternating weeks of the month, with no-one allowed to drive on Sundays. Critical infrastructure means trucks, trains and planes that move our country's supplies of food, clothing, toilet paper, Jolt, Twinkies, you name it - and yes, oil. Besides, the last time that the oil reserves were "released" how far did gas prices drop then? Almost a penny, as I recall. Wow. Is your memory that short, America? Makes me sick, all of the damned politics surrounding this. Look at the facts, man.
hi i'm typing junk in here. la la, fcc and stuff.
Why did you ruin a perfectly good read? Damn, now I'll have to disregard the entire post.
boo. got milk?
Why, no, I don't. You just made me want some, and the fridge is too far from my Slashdot reading!
Seriously, though, it was an excellent overview of one of our Governemnt's millions of minor functions that happen every day.
And I await my intoxication.
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You still watch TV? TV shows are nothing but one big advertisment these days. The quality of TV programming took a big nosedive a few years back as TV execs shoved anything onto the airwaves they could to get more advertising dollars. Sure there are a couple diamonds in the rough ('24' is probably my only current favorite on a regular network, but I borrow a friend's tape after he's finished removing commercials). Even my beloved Discovery Channel and Cartoon Netowrk are getting seriously annoying with the adverts. I've taken to just reading a book whenever I need entertainment. Yes, the paper-and-ink kind. Let me see them insert a 30 second spot there.
Choice quote from the story link http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-144.htm from the House Commitee on Science:
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"DEBATE ON REGULATING SPACE TOURISM HEATS UP
WASHINGTON, D.C., Novenber 5, 2003 - Commercial human space flight (space tourism) is a burgeoning industry in need of some degree of government regulation and oversight a panel of witnesses told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee today. Witnesses varied widely, however, on the extent of regulations and the need for government indemnification of space tourism launches."
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"Space tourism?" In reference to "commercial human space flight?" Their mindset is all wrong here... "Goverment indemnification?" The government is indemnified for pretty much anything they want to be indemnified for. That's why they have these things called "insurance companies." "Regulation and oversight?" Please don't turn the commercial space race into NASA-II.
I thought the topic was most elequently covered (at least to my satisfaction) in James P. Hoagan's "Rockets, Redheads, & Revolution", in the chapter about the race to the moon in the 60's and what it did to the US's economy, focus, and other factors like abandoned projects. (Sorry, I can't recall the chapter name now, and the book is at home... and I call myself a geek! Sheesh!)
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You don't need to see my sig. This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.