...as in, back on usenet in the mid-nineties, when I was trying to get *anyone's* attention to grab Toutatis, which came between the Earth and Moon. It would have been hard but achievable, and, if pushed to geosync, would give us a *real* space station, a place we could put a *lot* of hardware on (instead of many, many separate satellites, and maintenance would be much easier than another launch mission), and provide shielding while above the Van Allen belt.... and from which real spaceships could shuttle, at a much, much lower cost than the stupid one-rocket-to-the-moon-or-Mars.
And btw, if the US had any real space capability left, Toutatis is coming close next year in Dec....
Oh, you meant see-through. Here I thought you meant that they found a way to make mice Clear (tm) without paying Scientology tens of thousands of dollars....
US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
That's ->TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS-, and "SECURING FOR LIMITED TIMES", not "protect innovation".
That exoskeleton is way too vulnerable. On the other hand, think of what Ripley used in Aliens. *That* would be a great use of this: try picking up a pallet in your bare hands....
This reminds me of the early nineties, when Prodigy went to censor newsgroup names. Those naughty names included such rude things as the newsgroups for breast cancer survivors, and survivors of child abuse.
But no, let's get everyone's real name out there, if they are looking to find a community who understands to talk to....
A few years ago, there was a miniseries called Tin Man on the skiffy channel. We discussed it on a techie mailing list I'm on, and decided that the right description was dieselpunk, halfway between steampunk and cyberpunk....
So much for the BBC. Those of us from Philly have known and loathed the traffic circles in New Jersey for scores of years; In Des Plaines, in the Chicago 'burbs, there's one known widely as the Dread Circle of Death, and it's been there for decades, also.
I realize that all the k3wl l33t k1ds gotta have the latest, n33t3st features... even if they don't mean a goddamned thing. The other 95% of us, the ones that made Firefox break IE's monopoly, want a stable, reliable browser that works 99.99% of the time (let's not talk about java webpages). The last upgrade or two - and I'm on 3.6.17 - has broken things that used to work seamlessly, like streaming media, or my stupid webmail.
Fork Mozilla - give us the equivalent of fedora and CentOS. Then all the pre-born adopters can scream over all their crashes, and debug if tor the rest of us, who just want to browse the web.
I just finished a reading a story that involved container ships, where the author made a point that they *deliberately* put the empties on top, knowing that some will get knocked off.
Further, of course they're fastened. However, when a wave comes *over* the ship, or the wind hits gale force, on a nice, compleely non-aerodynamic surface, that's a *hell* of a lot of force. One goes, and it takes more with it.
And then there are the greedy idiot shipping lines who pile them up to insane hights (or haven't y'all seen the picks of the ships that fell over sideways?)
mark
Having wasted over a *month* in getting support on a less-than-one-year-old server the beginning of this year, and that included being handed off to an engineer in Chile for two weeks, whose manager kept putting him on other jobs, so that frequently it was a day or two or three before he could respond to my emails, I would NEVER advise buying Oracle/Sun to anyone... and I've joined my manager and my co-worker in that attitude.
Wait till Oracle dumps Sun, the way they've dumped some of Sun's OSS projects.
Gah! I've been wanting one of these for a long time. Actually, I can't figure out why a mouse beat out something like this: I mean, schools dropping handwriting is stupid, but that being a reason for this being a failure is equally stupid.
Pop quiz: how many here have had to create an electronic signature with a mouse? Or have signed documents, and then sent the jpg of the signed doc?
Or, for that matter, wanted to draw or trace something in, say, Gimp?
Yes, HIPAA applies heavily... but there's the other question: does IT have any *Nix expertise, or are they all Windows (and maybe Mac)? If no *Nix, then the issue is that they have no idea of what to look for, and will a) want to misapply Windows criteria to a *Nix system, and b) want to take it over and make it M$.
"Before 1982, one could only do one thing on a computer at a time". I suppose, then, that multitasking mainframes, or Unix workstation, or some other minicomputers, didn't exist.
I can't imagine that they'd say in a patent application "people who are interested in alternate sexuality", or "people who were abused as children", or "people who belong to a religion other than Christian who live in the Bible Belt (aka the Christian terrorist homeland)"
Let's see, come up with interesting shows... then kill them, or ruin them. Then, you've got a specific niche market that you're targeted at, why not "rebrand" yourself, and try to appeal to an overfull market, while treating the folks who made you viable as ignorant , and chasing them away as hard as you can?
*Great* business plan.
But then, most of them a) don't read SF, b) don't understand it, and c) flunked 5th grade science, and know so much about how the world works that they'd electricute themselves cleaning a toaster (you have to clean them? Really? How? Why?)
And on the sf side, as a lifelong sf fan, it *used* to be that there were 10 year or so cycles, where you'd get more fantasy for 10 years, then more sf; the last 15 or so, it's overwhelmingly fantasy. My take is that with the dumbing down of the educational system, and especially the unravelling of the Space Program, kids don't see a chance for them, so they go off into fantasy worlds where *something* can happen, and maybe they'll win the lottery, too.
mark
Why voice computing will never make it big, #1
on
Talking To Computers?
·
· Score: 1
The disgruntled employee who's being escorted out of the HR office, and yells, "start! run! format c:, YES, YES, YES!!!"
mark "and then there's the English language*
* I read, er, have read, that the leading idea fell like a lead balloon....
Why does google even *carry* "sponsored ads" from Target, who at least 85% of the time will claim a hit on *anything* you're looking for, but if you follow it, they don't have it? I mean, try fabric by the yard. Or chemicals. Or....
On the third hand (if you're counting), some of the names I've seen are a) idiotic, b) ludicrously too long, and c) not allowable, because THERE ARE ALREADY COUNTRY CODE top level domains. I mean,.nyc? As opposed, say, to nyc.ny.us, or maybe nyc.us?
I'd have less sympathy for smuggling in cellphones if the prison system itself wasn't set up to make a big profit... but it is.
About seven years ago, I knew someone in jail in Florida. The way they could call out was:
a) have someone outside pay money to a private company that
the jail had designated as their carrier, including a fee
b) the prisoner could *only* call one number, and that did *not*
include cellphones, or work, it had to be a home number.
Note, of course, that you can't call in. From what I was told, this kept many in there from having any contact with the outside world, one fact among many that contributed to recidivism: they loose contact with everyone, even their kids.
And this is the the state that alleges it believes in free enterprise, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
...as in, back on usenet in the mid-nineties, when I was trying to get *anyone's* attention to grab Toutatis, which came between the Earth and Moon. It would have been hard but achievable, and, if pushed to geosync, would give us a *real* space station, a place we could put a *lot* of hardware on (instead of many, many separate satellites, and maintenance would be much easier than another launch mission), and provide shielding while above the Van Allen belt.... and from which real spaceships could shuttle, at a much, much lower cost than the stupid one-rocket-to-the-moon-or-Mars.
And btw, if the US had any real space capability left, Toutatis is coming close next year in Dec....
mark
Oh, you meant see-through. Here I thought you meant that they found a way to make mice Clear (tm) without paying Scientology tens of thousands of dollars....
mark
US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
That's ->TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS-, and "SECURING FOR LIMITED TIMES", not "protect innovation".
mark
That exoskeleton is way too vulnerable. On the other hand, think of what Ripley used in Aliens. *That* would be a great use of this: try picking up a pallet in your bare hands....
mark
Maybe a sub base?
This reminds me of the early nineties, when Prodigy went to censor newsgroup names. Those naughty names included such rude things as the newsgroups for breast cancer survivors, and survivors of child abuse.
But no, let's get everyone's real name out there, if they are looking to find a community who understands to talk to....
Maybe facebook should go away.
mark
Find a lawyer, and talk to the EFF yesterday, if not sooner. They have lawyers and money, and this is what they *do*.
mark
A few years ago, there was a miniseries called Tin Man on the skiffy channel. We discussed it on a techie mailing list I'm on, and decided that the right description was dieselpunk, halfway between steampunk and cyberpunk....
mark
So much for the BBC. Those of us from Philly have known and loathed the traffic circles in New Jersey for scores of years; In Des Plaines, in the Chicago 'burbs, there's one known widely as the Dread Circle of Death, and it's been there for decades, also.
mark "give me a traffic light, please"
I realize that all the k3wl l33t k1ds gotta have the latest, n33t3st features... even if they don't mean a goddamned thing. The other 95% of us, the ones that made Firefox break IE's monopoly, want a stable, reliable browser that works 99.99% of the time (let's not talk about java webpages). The last upgrade or two - and I'm on 3.6.17 - has broken things that used to work seamlessly, like streaming media, or my stupid webmail.
Fork Mozilla - give us the equivalent of fedora and CentOS. Then all the pre-born adopters can scream over all their crashes, and debug if tor the rest of us, who just want to browse the web.
mark "maybe I should look at konqueror...."
Is when you'll make paper books disappear. And the hands of thousands of folks I know.
mark, who will keep his vinyl records after digitizing, too
I just finished a reading a story that involved container ships, where the author made a point that they *deliberately* put the empties on top, knowing that some will get knocked off.
Further, of course they're fastened. However, when a wave comes *over* the ship, or the wind hits gale force, on a nice, compleely non-aerodynamic surface, that's a *hell* of a lot of force. One goes, and it takes more with it.
And then there are the greedy idiot shipping lines who pile them up to insane hights (or haven't y'all seen the picks of the ships that fell over sideways?)
mark
Having wasted over a *month* in getting support on a less-than-one-year-old server the beginning of this year, and that included being handed off to an engineer in Chile for two weeks, whose manager kept putting him on other jobs, so that frequently it was a day or two or three before he could respond to my emails, I would NEVER advise buying Oracle/Sun to anyone... and I've joined my manager and my co-worker in that attitude.
Wait till Oracle dumps Sun, the way they've dumped some of Sun's OSS projects.
mark
Gah! I've been wanting one of these for a long time. Actually, I can't figure out why a mouse beat out something like this: I mean, schools dropping handwriting is stupid, but that being a reason for this being a failure is equally stupid.
Pop quiz: how many here have had to create an electronic signature with a mouse? Or have signed documents, and then sent the jpg of the signed doc?
Or, for that matter, wanted to draw or trace something in, say, Gimp?
mark
I want this thing, but I need it with 2 ethernet ports. Who needs a firewall/router appliance, when I could stick this in front of a cheap switch?
mark
Way too young. However, either the wikipedia article or all the news stories are wrong. If she was born in '46, she was 65.
mark
Yes, HIPAA applies heavily... but there's the other question: does IT have any *Nix expertise, or are they all Windows (and maybe Mac)? If no *Nix, then the issue is that they have no idea of what to look for, and will a) want to misapply Windows criteria to a *Nix system, and b) want to take it over and make it M$.
mark
"Before 1982, one could only do one thing on a computer at a time". I suppose, then, that multitasking mainframes, or Unix workstation, or some other minicomputers, didn't exist.
mark "can tell tales of punchcards...."
I can't imagine that they'd say in a patent application "people who are interested in alternate sexuality", or "people who were abused as children", or "people who belong to a religion other than Christian who live in the Bible Belt (aka the Christian terrorist homeland)"
mark
Let's see, come up with interesting shows... then kill them, or ruin them. Then, you've got a specific niche market that you're targeted at, why not "rebrand" yourself, and try to appeal to an overfull market, while treating the folks who made you viable as ignorant , and chasing them away as hard as you can?
*Great* business plan.
But then, most of them a) don't read SF, b) don't understand it, and c) flunked 5th grade science, and know so much about how the world works that they'd electricute themselves cleaning a toaster (you have to clean them? Really? How? Why?)
And on the sf side, as a lifelong sf fan, it *used* to be that there were 10 year or so cycles, where you'd get more fantasy for 10 years, then more sf; the last 15 or so, it's overwhelmingly fantasy. My take is that with the dumbing down of the educational system, and especially the unravelling of the Space Program, kids don't see a chance for them, so they go off into fantasy worlds where *something* can happen, and maybe they'll win the lottery, too.
mark
The disgruntled employee who's being escorted out of the HR office, and yells, "start! run! format c:, YES, YES, YES!!!"
mark "and then there's the English language*
* I read, er, have read, that the leading idea fell like a lead balloon....
What if you never found out how I feel?
- Eliza, er, mark
Why does google even *carry* "sponsored ads" from Target, who at least 85% of the time will claim a hit on *anything* you're looking for, but if you follow it, they don't have it? I mean, try fabric by the yard. Or chemicals. Or....
mark
It was invented here. It is worldwide, now.
On the third hand (if you're counting), some of the names I've seen are a) idiotic, b) ludicrously too long, and c) not allowable, because THERE ARE ALREADY COUNTRY CODE top level domains. I mean, .nyc? As opposed, say, to nyc.ny.us, or maybe nyc.us?
mark "reality check time"
I'd have less sympathy for smuggling in cellphones if the prison system itself wasn't set up to make a big profit... but it is.
About seven years ago, I knew someone in jail in Florida. The way they could call out was:
a) have someone outside pay money to a private company that
the jail had designated as their carrier, including a fee
b) the prisoner could *only* call one number, and that did *not*
include cellphones, or work, it had to be a home number.
Note, of course, that you can't call in. From what I was told, this kept many in there from having any contact with the outside world, one fact among many that contributed to recidivism: they loose contact with everyone, even their kids.
And this is the the state that alleges it believes in free enterprise, etc.
mark