At present, spacecraft must use high-powered transmitters and beam signals directly to Earth. Sprinkling a network of repeaters throughout the solar system will enable future missions to use lower powered transmitters and achieve higher bandwidth. It will also allow more flexibility with regards to spacecraft orientation as antennae no longer need to remain pointed at the Earth. There's also the benefit of better fault-tolerance using Internet-style routing--parts of the network can fail without interrupting the data. This no doubt will mean significant cost savings when designing future missions that can take advantage of this network, so the cost of deploying it could very well pay for itself in the long run.
I don't think this is their target market (at least initially). The Google apps seem best suited for smaller offices that don't want to fuss with file server/exchange/etc and are running a dozen or two PCs with shared folders all plugged into a router on as little as a cable modem. This will probably suit their needs nicely.
For larger clients, Google's exposing APIs, so it's only a matter of time till we start seeing Google Apps --> OOo connectors and sync applets to make more efficient use of WAN traffic and handle the offline access problem. I doubt they'll ever let go of the code to allow you to install it on your own server . . . but I bet they will eventually offer an appliance of some kind . ..
I somehow doubt Microsoft would be foolish enough to actually fire off patent suits . . . especially when there are other big players with massive patent portfolios and a vested interest in Linux . ..
Secretary: "Mr. Ballmer, I have a group of IBM attorneys in the lobby asking to see you, shall I let them in?"
Ballmer: "My God Man! Do they want to settle my patent suit against Linux?"
Secretary: "I'm not sure what they want sir . . . but they brought a flag.
Assuming that science gets a neural->digital interface, it shouldn't be that hard.
We already have this. It very easy to digitize brain activity. Making any sense out of it or even submitting a data retrieval request is the hard part.
The second cornerstone of the Fermi paradox is a rejoinder to the argument by scale: given intelligent life's ability to overcome scarcity, and its tendency to colonize new habitats, it seems likely that any advanced civilization would seek out new resources and colonize first their star system, and then surrounding star systems.
This presumes our resources/habitats/etc are of any value to them. Even with our present understanding of physics, it conceivable that one could develop technology that transmutes matter to any element desired given sufficient energy. Should this technology be efficient enough to generate all desired materials with less energy than would be required to travel to other star systems, why bother? Energy becomes the only relevant or necessary resource. Granted, we have a nice energy producing sun, but there are red dwarfs still burning from the first generation of stars. Perhaps these advanced aliens have the means to resupply their star(s) to keep them burning for as long as there's available Hydrogen. That ought to be plenty of room to grow for 13.7 billion years without bumping elbows with our tiny star.
You are assuming we would recognize any evidence of extra terrestrials as such. If advanced ETs exist, we do not know by what means they communicate, travel, their preferred habitats, what resources are of value to them and can only guess what indicators we should look for. If there was an exact duplicate of the present-day Earth with humans and all a mere 3 LY away we'd still have a difficult time finding each other. We give off stronger radio emissions than our star ought to, but it's hard to make sense of any of those signals at such a distance--Arecibo probably isn't sensitive enough to pick out omnidirectional TV and radio signals and with more and more of our communications going digital or over wires, we're getting quieter. We'd probably have to send a powerful, focused and deliberate signal when our counterparts are actually listening to our part of the sky to get noticed. Maybe a space telescope could catch the earth transiting the sun clearly enough to pick out the emission lines of free Oxygen in our atmosphere--a strong indicator of life, but even that's exceedingly difficult and no guarantee. Basically, we're pretty deaf & blind and have little clue what we're supposed to be looking for anyway.
Our galaxy might be teeming with life, it may have even attempted to communicate with us many many times, but with our present ability to observe the universe around us, we very likely wouldn't have noticed.
Agreed. One of the nicest things about space travel is distance isn't all that important in regards to energy and fuel requirements. You need enough fuel to start, stop and do course corrections--that's it. The difference between going 3 LY at 25% C vs. 10 LY at 25% C is going to be pretty marginal since the middle's all coasting.
The fatal flaw in this premise is that we assume we know what an advanced civilization's colonization efforts would look like or that we'd recognize them as such even if we saw them. They don't even need to be actively hiding from us. Maybe they build Dyson's spheres or free-floating structures in the spaces between the stars, travel and communicate by some exotic or otherwise unknown means and leak very little EM radiation. Heck, maybe they emit a ton of EM but it looks like a natural phenomenon to us. We have examined very very little of this galaxy in detail. Much of it is shrouded in dust. The galaxy could be teeming with advanced civilizations, but we're far too blind and deaf to assume otherwise simply because we haven't seen evidence yet.
This is none of Congress's business. Butt out and let my state and local officials make the decisions I've elected them to make rather than a meddlesome and idiotic Senator from Alaska.
What really upsets me is DRMed hardware. DRMed media is bad enough, but I can choose not to purchase it. At the rate things are going, soon we'll only be able to purchase locked-down hardware that's both more expensive due to DRM and less flexible. A bought and paid for tangible device that restricts what I can do according to arbitrary rules devised by companies that treat their customers like thieves is unacceptable to me.
Google should screen against illegal activities in the country of origin.
I don't think that would be wise. The Internet is global. If a child porn site was hosted in some third world country with no laws against it, Google would still be unwise to do business with them--they're a U.S. company and a good bit of any revenue-generating traffic could very well be visitors from within the U.S.
They're just growing them from seeds that have already been brought down to Earth gently. If they really wanted to go the cool novelty route, they should have sent the whole potatoes through re-entry with a delicious mashmellowy ablative coating that would cook them on the way down. I'd buy that!
Granted both are only serving static HTML, but that's all a base install of Apache does. IIS comes with ASP scripting and a whole heckuvalot more switched on by default. Toss in a comparable number of modules for Apache and then do a comparison. This also has little to do with security. (how often do web server exploits surface? It's almost always bad coding in the web application that's to blame.)
The Earth is a very large lump of iron and rock with just enough water for a few puddles to thinly cover 2/3 of its surface. The article is talking about whole planets composed almost entirely of water. Think of a bunch of melted comets that got smooshed together.
The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.
Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded. It's much easier for the box to record the bits directly. Video quality and ease of use are vastly superior to VHS.
TWC get $10 a pop with the HDDVR, they aren't going to lose that by offering a $5 box and not get the ability to do interactive upsells like onDemand.
The box doesn't need to be a DVR to do On Demand. My SD set top box isn't a DVR but can pause/ff/rew on-demand movies, just not regular TV. (I presume it's streaming video from the cable company so it doesn't need a hard drive)
Who is even dumb enough to make their purchases based on spam mail.
Apparently, plenty. It only takes a few suckers to justify the time and effort to set up a spam campaign. I'd like to think that some day everyone will be aware enough that pump-and-dumps, nigeria scams, and the myriad other flavors of spam simply won't work any more because nobody will fall for them. Unfortunately, I do not believe that is a likely outcome.
Why are people still allowed on trains with significant amounts of liquid. Is it because trains are actually less at risk, or because everyone's running around panicking about planes?
Because a passenger airplane can be used as a cruise missile. While I'm sure it can be done, it's a lot harder to take out a building in a densely populated urban area with a train. Also, the kind of explosion one can create with carry-on luggge liquids probably won't kill many people on a train. At best, it would probably only take out that particular car. On a plane, you don't need that large of an explosion to bring the whole thing down.
I'm no fan of the RIAA and by no means condone their actions to defend "their" blessed IP, but there's a key difference between the RIAA and the French Button-Makers. Those who dared innovate with buttons made of cloth would be punished because it completely cut the button makers out of the loop. The RIAA has not yet gone after those who dare produce music (independant bands, labels, social networking, etc.) without being under their auspices.
About the only similarity I see is that both the guilds and the RIAA are asshats and were going after end-users. Beyond that, the analogy breaks down.
"National Security" is no excuse for violating due process. They don't need to publish the warrants on the front page of the NY times, the warrants can be kept classified until trial, but they still *must* go to a judge and obtain the warrant on suitable grounds. Spying on someone because they *might* be a terrorist or talking to a terrorist isn't going to protect anyone.
It's the slippery slope that leads to secret police and being branded a terrorist for speaking out against your government. It's dangerous to not take terrorism seriously, but it's even more dangerous to allow your government to do things behind your back with nobody watching the watchers.
Slashdot Mirror
At present, spacecraft must use high-powered transmitters and beam signals directly to Earth. Sprinkling a network of repeaters throughout the solar system will enable future missions to use lower powered transmitters and achieve higher bandwidth. It will also allow more flexibility with regards to spacecraft orientation as antennae no longer need to remain pointed at the Earth. There's also the benefit of better fault-tolerance using Internet-style routing--parts of the network can fail without interrupting the data. This no doubt will mean significant cost savings when designing future missions that can take advantage of this network, so the cost of deploying it could very well pay for itself in the long run.
I don't think this is their target market (at least initially). The Google apps seem best suited for smaller offices that don't want to fuss with file server/exchange/etc and are running a dozen or two PCs with shared folders all plugged into a router on as little as a cable modem. This will probably suit their needs nicely.
For larger clients, Google's exposing APIs, so it's only a matter of time till we start seeing Google Apps --> OOo connectors and sync applets to make more efficient use of WAN traffic and handle the offline access problem. I doubt they'll ever let go of the code to allow you to install it on your own server . . . but I bet they will eventually offer an appliance of some kind . . .
I somehow doubt Microsoft would be foolish enough to actually fire off patent suits . . . especially when there are other big players with massive patent portfolios and a vested interest in Linux . . .
Secretary: "Mr. Ballmer, I have a group of IBM attorneys in the lobby asking to see you, shall I let them in?"
Ballmer: "My God Man! Do they want to settle my patent suit against Linux?"
Secretary: "I'm not sure what they want sir . . . but they brought a flag.
We already have this. It very easy to digitize brain activity. Making any sense out of it or even submitting a data retrieval request is the hard part.
This presumes our resources/habitats/etc are of any value to them. Even with our present understanding of physics, it conceivable that one could develop technology that transmutes matter to any element desired given sufficient energy. Should this technology be efficient enough to generate all desired materials with less energy than would be required to travel to other star systems, why bother? Energy becomes the only relevant or necessary resource. Granted, we have a nice energy producing sun, but there are red dwarfs still burning from the first generation of stars. Perhaps these advanced aliens have the means to resupply their star(s) to keep them burning for as long as there's available Hydrogen. That ought to be plenty of room to grow for 13.7 billion years without bumping elbows with our tiny star.
You are assuming we would recognize any evidence of extra terrestrials as such. If advanced ETs exist, we do not know by what means they communicate, travel, their preferred habitats, what resources are of value to them and can only guess what indicators we should look for. If there was an exact duplicate of the present-day Earth with humans and all a mere 3 LY away we'd still have a difficult time finding each other. We give off stronger radio emissions than our star ought to, but it's hard to make sense of any of those signals at such a distance--Arecibo probably isn't sensitive enough to pick out omnidirectional TV and radio signals and with more and more of our communications going digital or over wires, we're getting quieter. We'd probably have to send a powerful, focused and deliberate signal when our counterparts are actually listening to our part of the sky to get noticed. Maybe a space telescope could catch the earth transiting the sun clearly enough to pick out the emission lines of free Oxygen in our atmosphere--a strong indicator of life, but even that's exceedingly difficult and no guarantee. Basically, we're pretty deaf & blind and have little clue what we're supposed to be looking for anyway.
Our galaxy might be teeming with life, it may have even attempted to communicate with us many many times, but with our present ability to observe the universe around us, we very likely wouldn't have noticed.
Agreed. One of the nicest things about space travel is distance isn't all that important in regards to energy and fuel requirements. You need enough fuel to start, stop and do course corrections--that's it. The difference between going 3 LY at 25% C vs. 10 LY at 25% C is going to be pretty marginal since the middle's all coasting.
The fatal flaw in this premise is that we assume we know what an advanced civilization's colonization efforts would look like or that we'd recognize them as such even if we saw them. They don't even need to be actively hiding from us. Maybe they build Dyson's spheres or free-floating structures in the spaces between the stars, travel and communicate by some exotic or otherwise unknown means and leak very little EM radiation. Heck, maybe they emit a ton of EM but it looks like a natural phenomenon to us. We have examined very very little of this galaxy in detail. Much of it is shrouded in dust. The galaxy could be teeming with advanced civilizations, but we're far too blind and deaf to assume otherwise simply because we haven't seen evidence yet.
This is none of Congress's business. Butt out and let my state and local officials make the decisions I've elected them to make rather than a meddlesome and idiotic Senator from Alaska.
What really upsets me is DRMed hardware. DRMed media is bad enough, but I can choose not to purchase it. At the rate things are going, soon we'll only be able to purchase locked-down hardware that's both more expensive due to DRM and less flexible. A bought and paid for tangible device that restricts what I can do according to arbitrary rules devised by companies that treat their customers like thieves is unacceptable to me.
I don't think that would be wise. The Internet is global. If a child porn site was hosted in some third world country with no laws against it, Google would still be unwise to do business with them--they're a U.S. company and a good bit of any revenue-generating traffic could very well be visitors from within the U.S.
They're just growing them from seeds that have already been brought down to Earth gently. If they really wanted to go the cool novelty route, they should have sent the whole potatoes through re-entry with a delicious mashmellowy ablative coating that would cook them on the way down. I'd buy that!
Mr. Quayle, is that you?
Granted both are only serving static HTML, but that's all a base install of Apache does. IIS comes with ASP scripting and a whole heckuvalot more switched on by default. Toss in a comparable number of modules for Apache and then do a comparison. This also has little to do with security. (how often do web server exploits surface? It's almost always bad coding in the web application that's to blame.)
I'm curious why you bought one. (Assuming of course, you paid money for it) The price tag is on the order of $350.
The Earth is a very large lump of iron and rock with just enough water for a few puddles to thinly cover 2/3 of its surface. The article is talking about whole planets composed almost entirely of water. Think of a bunch of melted comets that got smooshed together.
Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded. It's much easier for the box to record the bits directly. Video quality and ease of use are vastly superior to VHS.
Yahoo didn't call me a cutie either. =(
sudo su
I had almost forgotten about that song. Thanks a lot, jerk!
The box doesn't need to be a DVR to do On Demand. My SD set top box isn't a DVR but can pause/ff/rew on-demand movies, just not regular TV. (I presume it's streaming video from the cable company so it doesn't need a hard drive)
Apparently, plenty. It only takes a few suckers to justify the time and effort to set up a spam campaign. I'd like to think that some day everyone will be aware enough that pump-and-dumps, nigeria scams, and the myriad other flavors of spam simply won't work any more because nobody will fall for them. Unfortunately, I do not believe that is a likely outcome.
Because a passenger airplane can be used as a cruise missile. While I'm sure it can be done, it's a lot harder to take out a building in a densely populated urban area with a train. Also, the kind of explosion one can create with carry-on luggge liquids probably won't kill many people on a train. At best, it would probably only take out that particular car. On a plane, you don't need that large of an explosion to bring the whole thing down.
I'm no fan of the RIAA and by no means condone their actions to defend "their" blessed IP, but there's a key difference between the RIAA and the French Button-Makers. Those who dared innovate with buttons made of cloth would be punished because it completely cut the button makers out of the loop. The RIAA has not yet gone after those who dare produce music (independant bands, labels, social networking, etc.) without being under their auspices.
About the only similarity I see is that both the guilds and the RIAA are asshats and were going after end-users. Beyond that, the analogy breaks down.
"National Security" is no excuse for violating due process. They don't need to publish the warrants on the front page of the NY times, the warrants can be kept classified until trial, but they still *must* go to a judge and obtain the warrant on suitable grounds. Spying on someone because they *might* be a terrorist or talking to a terrorist isn't going to protect anyone.
It's the slippery slope that leads to secret police and being branded a terrorist for speaking out against your government. It's dangerous to not take terrorism seriously, but it's even more dangerous to allow your government to do things behind your back with nobody watching the watchers.