Man, I'm terrified. My mother got this and now a whole series of e-mails I sent to her about 3 years ago are suddenly being sent to almost everyone she has ever e-mailed or received e-mail from. People who were CC:ed on things I sent her are receiving personal e-mails I sent to her.
I'm waiting for the one where I said really terrible things about someone to land in the wrong hands and start causing all sorts of disasters. After this, I'm going to be a lot more careful about what I say in e-mails.
My machine is relatively safe, but I can't vouch for the person I'm sending e-mails to. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of relationship get screwed up before this is all over.
Some people may complain that commercializing aspects of the JPL is questionary, but the sad fact is that congress, in its infinite wisdom, does not see fit to provide NASA and JPL with the money they really need. I'm afraid this is probably a necessary move, but perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing.
Personally, I'd like to see NASA as a whole be able to commercialize to some degree to help offset the lack of funding. I'd like to see NASA receive more funding. The money it will cost to pick a fight with Iraq would go a long way at NASA. Hell, it would go a long way to feed a lot of nations, but what can you do other than vote and protest.
Atkins is okay as a diet, but a diet implies temporary. Low carb is a good way to lose weight at a reasonable speed (don't lose more than 8-10 pounds a month). High protein diets can eventually cause kidney stones. Drink lots of water, take vitamins, and eat as many veggies as the diet will allow, but it's also okay to take a break from it every once in a while.
I'm currently in a break from my low-carb, fairly high protein diet. I've lost about 15 pounds in my first 2 months. Most of my carbs came from salads, though. That's really the best way to do it, and you do need multi-vitamins on this diet.
I'm not an expert, and Jane Brody may know a lot, but for a long time, the mainstream doctors have been slamming Atkins and his diet, and a lot of them are starting to have second thoughts about that now.
What it comes down to is that doctors know a hell of a lot less than a lot of them think they do. I remember in the 70's hearing so much about how salt was so bad for you. A lot of people actually tried to cut all the salt out of their diet. What happened? They died of heart attacks caused by a salt deficiency.
Moderation, moderation, moderation (not the Slashdot kind). You can diet, but diet in moderation, and when you're off your diet, eat in moderation, and eat smart.
doesn't mean people are going to use it. MP3s are pretty dug in. I've been hearing about Ogg Vorbis on SlashDot for quite a while now. Maybe I live under a rock or something, but I've never actually heard anything encoded with Ogg Vorbis.
It may be better, it may have better compression, but the fact is, people seem pretty satisfied with MP3 and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
If you asked most people in the know, OS/2 was a much better OS than Windows for a long time, and it was backed up by a major player (major player shrewd marketer). But it never took.
That happens a lot in this industry. Linux is more stable than Windows, but you don't see it on the desktop. Borland had the best development tools, but look at them...
My point is, Ogg can be twice as good, but unless there's a really compelling reason (besides better sound and better compression), I don't see the masses making the change. What kind of compelling reason? I don't know. Maybe if MP3s somehow become "digitally protected" or something.
I disagree with your suggestion that checksums can't work. A way they could work is as follows.
Create a website with logins for the users. Users of this web site can create lists of checksum for the files they create or have downloaded and verified as valid.
Other users can check any given user's list, and perhaps even post comments about the user's list, a form of moderation, if you will.
The validity of any single file on any random user's list would certainly be questionable, but some lists would become "trusted" by the community through trial and error. Others would be recognized as bogus and ignored.
Just a thought. Give me more than a few minutes and I might be able to come up with a better one.
According to this Slashdot article the terrorist networks are already "cloaked".
Man, these stories are only two apart and nobody has connected the dots yet? Obviously these guys are working for the other side and need to be dealt with appropriately.
My boss works insane hours, and I think to some degree he expects that of us sometimes. I don't mind, if we're under a deadline to deliver to a customer, I'll happily work extra hours to help pull a project through, but otherwise I work 40 hour weeks.
For years, working overtime was just part of the job. I then started suffering from severe stress related problems. I have a new policy. I don't work extra hours for the sake of working extra hours. Period. As other intelligent people pointed out, life is too short.
If your manager can't handle that, find a new job, unless you want to do it. Yes, your productivity will go to hell, yes, code quality will sucks, but who cares. Your life will suck, that's what matters. No job is more important than your happiness.
Isn't the more important question: Is the bandwidth meeting your needs? Are you getting it for a good or at least fair price? If it's meeting your needs and you can't do better elsewhere, does it really matter if you're getting every bit of bandwidth that's possible?
If you're starting to strain the limits, then a simple bandwidth meter should be able to tell you how much is being used, at which point it would be pretty obvious if you're getting what you're told.
It's hard to say for sure because there are too many variables to calculate. What you can do is measure over a period of time and then take a best guess at whether or not you're getting reasonable throughput for the price.
But that's just MHO.
Undemocratic? Who cares?
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm sorry, I missed the "The most democratic search engine in the world" quote on the Google web site. Can someone post that link for me?
Google's page rank isn't democratic, and thank God for that. Otherwise I'd have to wade through a bunch of crap that I generally don't want to wade through.
Different search engines are better at searching for different things, but Google is my first choice almost every time. It is, by far, the most effective search engine I've seen. If it wasn't, I don't think it would be the most popular.
Someone explain to me why anyone pays attention to this guy.
We had geckos everywhere where I lived in Mexico. They wouldn't dare try to take on the cockroaches, though. The cockroachers were about twice the size of the geckos. I saw a gecko begin to square off with a cockroach, but he got smart fast and backed down. The cockroaches in Mexico will grab a gecko and fly off with him and have him for dinner.
For those little roaches, I'm sure they're great, though. The were great at getting mosquitos. They're too damn noisy, though. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with this "squeak, squeak, squeak" noise coming out of my closet.
Living back in civilization definitely has its advantages. No big, flying cockroaches, no geckos.
I just submitted a patent for this new thing I've created. It's a round flat thing that I call (my best Doctor Evil finger quotes immitation) "a wheel." As far as I can tell, there is no prior art on this concept, but it's my contention that two or more of these "wheels", when connected by a post of some sort, that I call "an axle" (patent pending), can be used to make it easier to move a load from one location to another.
If anything, China's corrupt government means that it is even more so _our_ responsibility to keep the world clean and stop people from harming themselves.
Since when is it "our" responsibility to keep the Earth clean. I missed that memo. Granted, I think we ought to keep our share of it clean, I like to keep my neighborhood clean. Does that mean I have the responsibility or even the right to come clean up yours?
I have an idea, why don't we, as the United States, simply take over the world and impose our our rules as we see fit on all the people of the world? I mean, it's "our" responsibility to make sure they don't screw up anything. Might as well live up to "our" responsibility.
Okay, first of all, the Chinese are BUYING this stuff. We're not shoving it down their throats. Clearly, THEY WANT IT! We don't. Is it our fault they're screwing up their country by taking it? Do we hold some sort of moral high ground that we ought to tell them they can't buy stuff from us, even if we don't want it?
I mean, sure, we won't sell them stuff that will endanger us. Nuclear arms, etc. But shit, if they want to buy our garbage, more power to them. We sure don't want it. When it gets to the point that nobody else wants it, and we're stuck with disposing of it, we'll probably do it in a safer manner (though not necessarily).
You act like the First World countries are so concerned about the environment. Go rent Erin Brockovich sometime and get an idea of how careful we are with our own groundwater.
These workers are sorting plastic by heating it with a cigarette lighter and sniffing the fumes. They complained of headaches.
Okay, first of all, is the First World supposed to have a monopoly on common sense?
I agree, this is all tragic, but this is hardly the fault of the First World. We're not forcing China to take our old computer parts. They have a government that clearly doesn't care about the people. Unfortunately the only way this is ever going to change in China is for them to have a revolution.
It would be nice if we could do it for them, but the fact is, we can't. Sometimes people must be responsible for their own goverment. We can't realistically overthrow China without serious repercussions. If the people overthrow the government though, I don't think a whole lot of countries are going to be too upset about it.
So, yeah, I'm sorry this is happening, but eventually, it's going to be one thing too many and the people are going to revolt. There's not a whole lot anyone outside of China can do until then. They have to come to terms with the fact that their government doesn't protect them or even care about them.
Does that mean parrots can "speak" like humans, or develop a culture?
I have to agree with this. Culture and "language" were a development of the brain, not speech. After all, sign language provide more than adequate language skills to create and develop culture.
An interesting note of trivia has to do with the indigenous population of the Canary Islands. They lived on the string of islands, but never built boats and thus never actually met. They communicated between islands using whistles. In fact, their entire language was built on whistles. They are the only group of humans known to have a language built on whistles.
Unfortunately, upon colonization of the Canaries, the Spanish all but wiped them out. Supposedly there are still a few descendants of these indigenous people who still whistle the native tongue.
Who are the pros? NASA? These guys can't get their metric/English units converted properly in their software. I doubt Carmack would make that mistake. The European Space Agency? They put the wrong software in an Arianne rocket which ended in its destruction.
Seems to me there's plenty of room for "non" professionals in the field because the pros are making plenty of stupid moves.
Kind of reminds me of my boss. Our software has a wide range of applications but he wants to stick to areas where we have "niche knowledge." Well, the fact is, we won't get "niche knowledge" in other niches unless we actually apply it to other areas. Want to become a pro? You gotta be a novice first. Kudos to Carmack.
So you're going to do what exactly? Glue the CPU to the hull of the boat? That's a great idea... if you never want to use any PCI cards or install more memory, or upgrade your CPU, or connect any hard drives, or other peripheral.
Otherwise, I don't see how the hull of the boat is going to act to cool the CPU. It's not like you can run wires from the CPU pins to the motherboard (there would be a nice stable site, hundreds of wires going from your hull to your motherboard).
The site you listed has something to do with geological formations in the ocean. There's not much about how this "modern invention" cools CPUs. Got a better link?
I had a computer in a very humid beach environment (southern carribean coast of Mexico). Salty air, lots of humidity, no A/C. I had a tower case P200 at the time. It held up just fine for the entire 2 years I was there. My CD player died at one point, but who knows what caused that. Besides, in a salty humid environment, CDs and DVDs are more at risk of CD eating fungus.
A laptop would probably work just fine. Just keep it dry. That's usually easy to do on a sailboat. Use it in the cabin.
You're going to need a lot of 12 volt batteries though, if you plan on being disconnected from land power for any extended period. It's cheap enough to get a DC to AC inverter, but it's going to suck the batteries dry pretty quick.
The salt air will eventually corrode the machine, but I don't think you're going to find a way around that. I think if you have an expectation of a 2-3 year life, your expectations will be met. Otherwise you're really talking about a fairly expensive or difficult to build rig to keep it isolated and protected.
For those that mentioned water colling, remember, water cooling requires a hell of a lot more power than a CPU fan. This guy's running off of car batteries. Water cooling requires a water pump. Air pumps (also known as fans) are much more energy efficient.
Hype = Good (sometimes)
on
What, Me Worry?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Personally, I think this is a subject that's been ignored far too long. Frankly, I'd like the hype to scare the crap out of people because it's an issue we need to address sooner or later, if we want to continue to occupy this little corner of the galaxy. Some day, we're going to be in the crosshairs of an object big enough to wipe out all, or at least, most life on this planet. There is no question about this. It could come at any time and it could come entirely without warning, as we've seen recently. We didn't even notice it until it passed us by.
The point is, we need to address it sooner or later (or accept extinction as part of our future), and the longer we put it off, the better the chance we'll be unprepared when the time arrives.
This isn't something we'll necessarily have a lot of time to prepare for, even if we do discover it before it hits. And even then, how much prep time will we need? What are our options?
I would agree that we need to take care of problems here on Earth, but we also need to address the very real threat that NEOs pose. We need to start mapping them all out so that we can be sure we can at least know at what point we really need to start worrying. As long as only a small fraction of NEOs are mapped out, we're completely vulnerable.
Why would I want a roll-up TV screen? Ever since I moved my 4 computers out of my living room and into the second bedroom, my living room has appeared empty. Now I'm supposed to roll-up my TV when I'm done watching? Maybe if it's on remote control, but otherwise, forget it. I like it the way it is.
I like the "Maps in the field" kinda thing, though. Kinda like Red Planet.
It's kinda cool watching some things from Sci-Fi come to reality. I just wish they'd get working on the damn holodeck. Talk about the ultimate in addictions. I'd never leave.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, I'm terrified. My mother got this and now a whole series of e-mails I sent to her about 3 years ago are suddenly being sent to almost everyone she has ever e-mailed or received e-mail from. People who were CC:ed on things I sent her are receiving personal e-mails I sent to her.
I'm waiting for the one where I said really terrible things about someone to land in the wrong hands and start causing all sorts of disasters. After this, I'm going to be a lot more careful about what I say in e-mails.
My machine is relatively safe, but I can't vouch for the person I'm sending e-mails to. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of relationship get screwed up before this is all over.
Isn't Fortran completely irrelevant in the 21st century anyways?
Absolutely not!!! NASA uses it to slam probes into Mars.
Some people may complain that commercializing aspects of the JPL is questionary, but the sad fact is that congress, in its infinite wisdom, does not see fit to provide NASA and JPL with the money they really need. I'm afraid this is probably a necessary move, but perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing.
Personally, I'd like to see NASA as a whole be able to commercialize to some degree to help offset the lack of funding. I'd like to see NASA receive more funding. The money it will cost to pick a fight with Iraq would go a long way at NASA. Hell, it would go a long way to feed a lot of nations, but what can you do other than vote and protest.
I haven't read all the comments, so someone may have pointed this out, but SETI@Home hit 4 million users yesterday. Pretty impressive.
Atkins is okay as a diet, but a diet implies temporary. Low carb is a good way to lose weight at a reasonable speed (don't lose more than 8-10 pounds a month). High protein diets can eventually cause kidney stones. Drink lots of water, take vitamins, and eat as many veggies as the diet will allow, but it's also okay to take a break from it every once in a while.
I'm currently in a break from my low-carb, fairly high protein diet. I've lost about 15 pounds in my first 2 months. Most of my carbs came from salads, though. That's really the best way to do it, and you do need multi-vitamins on this diet.
I'm not an expert, and Jane Brody may know a lot, but for a long time, the mainstream doctors have been slamming Atkins and his diet, and a lot of them are starting to have second thoughts about that now.
What it comes down to is that doctors know a hell of a lot less than a lot of them think they do. I remember in the 70's hearing so much about how salt was so bad for you. A lot of people actually tried to cut all the salt out of their diet. What happened? They died of heart attacks caused by a salt deficiency.
Moderation, moderation, moderation (not the Slashdot kind). You can diet, but diet in moderation, and when you're off your diet, eat in moderation, and eat smart.
doesn't mean people are going to use it. MP3s are pretty dug in. I've been hearing about Ogg Vorbis on SlashDot for quite a while now. Maybe I live under a rock or something, but I've never actually heard anything encoded with Ogg Vorbis.
It may be better, it may have better compression, but the fact is, people seem pretty satisfied with MP3 and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
If you asked most people in the know, OS/2 was a much better OS than Windows for a long time, and it was backed up by a major player (major player shrewd marketer). But it never took.
That happens a lot in this industry. Linux is more stable than Windows, but you don't see it on the desktop. Borland had the best development tools, but look at them...
My point is, Ogg can be twice as good, but unless there's a really compelling reason (besides better sound and better compression), I don't see the masses making the change. What kind of compelling reason? I don't know. Maybe if MP3s somehow become "digitally protected" or something.
...and am better able to "wrap my head" around things.
That must be some sort of Indian yogi exercising you're doing. I'm pretty sure if I wrapped my head around anything, I wouldn't even abe able to type.
I've purchased dozens of items from E-Bay over a period of years. I've never once been screwed, though I have spotted some obvious fraud in the past.
As for recovering lost bandwidth, you can't, but you can use checksumming along with moderation to improve reliability.
This kind of fraud has happened on eBay, where people give themselves recommendations to mislead future partners
Yeah, and it's run e-bay into the ground. Oh wait, no it hasn't.
I disagree with your suggestion that checksums can't work. A way they could work is as follows.
Create a website with logins for the users. Users of this web site can create lists of checksum for the files they create or have downloaded and verified as valid.
Other users can check any given user's list, and perhaps even post comments about the user's list, a form of moderation, if you will.
The validity of any single file on any random user's list would certainly be questionable, but some lists would become "trusted" by the community through trial and error. Others would be recognized as bogus and ignored.
Just a thought. Give me more than a few minutes and I might be able to come up with a better one.
According to this Slashdot article the terrorist networks are already "cloaked".
Man, these stories are only two apart and nobody has connected the dots yet? Obviously these guys are working for the other side and need to be dealt with appropriately.
My boss works insane hours, and I think to some degree he expects that of us sometimes. I don't mind, if we're under a deadline to deliver to a customer, I'll happily work extra hours to help pull a project through, but otherwise I work 40 hour weeks.
For years, working overtime was just part of the job. I then started suffering from severe stress related problems. I have a new policy. I don't work extra hours for the sake of working extra hours. Period. As other intelligent people pointed out, life is too short.
If your manager can't handle that, find a new job, unless you want to do it. Yes, your productivity will go to hell, yes, code quality will sucks, but who cares. Your life will suck, that's what matters. No job is more important than your happiness.
Isn't the more important question: Is the bandwidth meeting your needs? Are you getting it for a good or at least fair price? If it's meeting your needs and you can't do better elsewhere, does it really matter if you're getting every bit of bandwidth that's possible?
If you're starting to strain the limits, then a simple bandwidth meter should be able to tell you how much is being used, at which point it would be pretty obvious if you're getting what you're told.
It's hard to say for sure because there are too many variables to calculate. What you can do is measure over a period of time and then take a best guess at whether or not you're getting reasonable throughput for the price.
But that's just MHO.
I'm sorry, I missed the "The most democratic search engine in the world" quote on the Google web site. Can someone post that link for me?
Google's page rank isn't democratic, and thank God for that. Otherwise I'd have to wade through a bunch of crap that I generally don't want to wade through.
Different search engines are better at searching for different things, but Google is my first choice almost every time. It is, by far, the most effective search engine I've seen. If it wasn't, I don't think it would be the most popular.
Someone explain to me why anyone pays attention to this guy.
We had geckos everywhere where I lived in Mexico. They wouldn't dare try to take on the cockroaches, though. The cockroachers were about twice the size of the geckos. I saw a gecko begin to square off with a cockroach, but he got smart fast and backed down. The cockroaches in Mexico will grab a gecko and fly off with him and have him for dinner.
For those little roaches, I'm sure they're great, though. The were great at getting mosquitos. They're too damn noisy, though. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with this "squeak, squeak, squeak" noise coming out of my closet.
Living back in civilization definitely has its advantages. No big, flying cockroaches, no geckos.
I just submitted a patent for this new thing I've created. It's a round flat thing that I call (my best Doctor Evil finger quotes immitation) "a wheel." As far as I can tell, there is no prior art on this concept, but it's my contention that two or more of these "wheels", when connected by a post of some sort, that I call "an axle" (patent pending), can be used to make it easier to move a load from one location to another.
I don't know why nobody thought of this before.
If anything, China's corrupt government means that it is even more so _our_ responsibility to keep the world clean and stop people from harming themselves.
Since when is it "our" responsibility to keep the Earth clean. I missed that memo. Granted, I think we ought to keep our share of it clean, I like to keep my neighborhood clean. Does that mean I have the responsibility or even the right to come clean up yours?
I have an idea, why don't we, as the United States, simply take over the world and impose our our rules as we see fit on all the people of the world? I mean, it's "our" responsibility to make sure they don't screw up anything. Might as well live up to "our" responsibility.
Okay, first of all, the Chinese are BUYING this stuff. We're not shoving it down their throats. Clearly, THEY WANT IT! We don't. Is it our fault they're screwing up their country by taking it? Do we hold some sort of moral high ground that we ought to tell them they can't buy stuff from us, even if we don't want it?
I mean, sure, we won't sell them stuff that will endanger us. Nuclear arms, etc. But shit, if they want to buy our garbage, more power to them. We sure don't want it. When it gets to the point that nobody else wants it, and we're stuck with disposing of it, we'll probably do it in a safer manner (though not necessarily).
You act like the First World countries are so concerned about the environment. Go rent Erin Brockovich sometime and get an idea of how careful we are with our own groundwater.
These workers are sorting plastic by heating it with a cigarette lighter and sniffing the fumes. They complained of headaches.
Okay, first of all, is the First World supposed to have a monopoly on common sense?
I agree, this is all tragic, but this is hardly the fault of the First World. We're not forcing China to take our old computer parts. They have a government that clearly doesn't care about the people. Unfortunately the only way this is ever going to change in China is for them to have a revolution.
It would be nice if we could do it for them, but the fact is, we can't. Sometimes people must be responsible for their own goverment. We can't realistically overthrow China without serious repercussions. If the people overthrow the government though, I don't think a whole lot of countries are going to be too upset about it.
So, yeah, I'm sorry this is happening, but eventually, it's going to be one thing too many and the people are going to revolt. There's not a whole lot anyone outside of China can do until then. They have to come to terms with the fact that their government doesn't protect them or even care about them.
Does that mean parrots can "speak" like humans, or develop a culture?
I have to agree with this. Culture and "language" were a development of the brain, not speech. After all, sign language provide more than adequate language skills to create and develop culture.
An interesting note of trivia has to do with the indigenous population of the Canary Islands. They lived on the string of islands, but never built boats and thus never actually met. They communicated between islands using whistles. In fact, their entire language was built on whistles. They are the only group of humans known to have a language built on whistles.
Unfortunately, upon colonization of the Canaries, the Spanish all but wiped them out. Supposedly there are still a few descendants of these indigenous people who still whistle the native tongue.
Who are the pros? NASA? These guys can't get their metric/English units converted properly in their software. I doubt Carmack would make that mistake. The European Space Agency? They put the wrong software in an Arianne rocket which ended in its destruction.
Seems to me there's plenty of room for "non" professionals in the field because the pros are making plenty of stupid moves.
Kind of reminds me of my boss. Our software has a wide range of applications but he wants to stick to areas where we have "niche knowledge." Well, the fact is, we won't get "niche knowledge" in other niches unless we actually apply it to other areas. Want to become a pro? You gotta be a novice first. Kudos to Carmack.
So you're going to do what exactly? Glue the CPU to the hull of the boat? That's a great idea... if you never want to use any PCI cards or install more memory, or upgrade your CPU, or connect any hard drives, or other peripheral.
Otherwise, I don't see how the hull of the boat is going to act to cool the CPU. It's not like you can run wires from the CPU pins to the motherboard (there would be a nice stable site, hundreds of wires going from your hull to your motherboard).
The site you listed has something to do with geological formations in the ocean. There's not much about how this "modern invention" cools CPUs. Got a better link?
I had a computer in a very humid beach environment (southern carribean coast of Mexico). Salty air, lots of humidity, no A/C. I had a tower case P200 at the time. It held up just fine for the entire 2 years I was there. My CD player died at one point, but who knows what caused that. Besides, in a salty humid environment, CDs and DVDs are more at risk of CD eating fungus.
A laptop would probably work just fine. Just keep it dry. That's usually easy to do on a sailboat. Use it in the cabin.
You're going to need a lot of 12 volt batteries though, if you plan on being disconnected from land power for any extended period. It's cheap enough to get a DC to AC inverter, but it's going to suck the batteries dry pretty quick.
The salt air will eventually corrode the machine, but I don't think you're going to find a way around that. I think if you have an expectation of a 2-3 year life, your expectations will be met. Otherwise you're really talking about a fairly expensive or difficult to build rig to keep it isolated and protected.
For those that mentioned water colling, remember, water cooling requires a hell of a lot more power than a CPU fan. This guy's running off of car batteries. Water cooling requires a water pump. Air pumps (also known as fans) are much more energy efficient.
Personally, I think this is a subject that's been ignored far too long. Frankly, I'd like the hype to scare the crap out of people because it's an issue we need to address sooner or later, if we want to continue to occupy this little corner of the galaxy. Some day, we're going to be in the crosshairs of an object big enough to wipe out all, or at least, most life on this planet. There is no question about this. It could come at any time and it could come entirely without warning, as we've seen recently. We didn't even notice it until it passed us by.
The point is, we need to address it sooner or later (or accept extinction as part of our future), and the longer we put it off, the better the chance we'll be unprepared when the time arrives.
This isn't something we'll necessarily have a lot of time to prepare for, even if we do discover it before it hits. And even then, how much prep time will we need? What are our options?
I would agree that we need to take care of problems here on Earth, but we also need to address the very real threat that NEOs pose. We need to start mapping them all out so that we can be sure we can at least know at what point we really need to start worrying. As long as only a small fraction of NEOs are mapped out, we're completely vulnerable.
Why would I want a roll-up TV screen? Ever since I moved my 4 computers out of my living room and into the second bedroom, my living room has appeared empty. Now I'm supposed to roll-up my TV when I'm done watching? Maybe if it's on remote control, but otherwise, forget it. I like it the way it is.
I like the "Maps in the field" kinda thing, though. Kinda like Red Planet.
It's kinda cool watching some things from Sci-Fi come to reality. I just wish they'd get working on the damn holodeck. Talk about the ultimate in addictions. I'd never leave.