I'm not saying it's a bad business decision, I just can't imagine the project proposal... *picture businessmen gathered around a cliche table with big leather chairs acting all serious, then imaging them talking about "getting perpendicular"*
I remember 7 years ago when I got 20 GB harddrive and thought "I'm never going to fill this up"... needless to say, 3 and a half years later I had a nice big 80 GB drive. Again, I thought to myself "I don't think I'll ever fill up 80 GB -- even with all my music and games, if I ever run out of space I can always just uninstall something". 2 years ago I bought a second drive for my main machine (160 GB) to act as a music/movie/game storage device... The 240 GB of space on my main machine are about 70% used, in addition to the 750 GB of harddrive space currently on my file server being almost 85% used, it's safe to say that a 750 GB drive could be extremely useful to me (then I could throw 4 of them in my file server). "If you give them the disk space, they will fill it... with pr0n!".
Actually, they used box-cutters. The likelyhood that a similar event could be pulled off now is slim-to-none. Before 9/11, a "routine" hijacking was where a terrorist or group of terrorists would simply commandeer the aircraft (with passengers) to make some kind of political bargain, that's one of the reasons none of the passengers on 9/11 did anything (except Flight 93, which learned of the other flights via phone conversations with family/friends). Now, no passengers will sit back from a mildly threatening entity -- there was a case a while after 9/11 where a passenger was making threats and a half-dozen people tackled him and tied him up. Passengers don't take crap anymore -- just like the passengers on Flight 93 when they learned of their possible fate.
Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." I think those words ring just as true today as they did 200 years ago.
Not to sound like a jerk, but you're dead wrong. "American kids thinking that they can get away with anything, interested solely in themselves, and getting something for nothing." If you said "almost everyone" instead of "American kids", I would have agreed with you, but I have problems with both the "American" and the "kid" parts.
First off, the easy one -- kids. Kids are NOT the only people who try to get away with anything, are interested solely in themselves, or try to get something for nothing -- here are a couple good ones: news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527/ap_on_fe_st/he licopter_fireworks (a woman shoots fireworks at a police helicopter because it was annoying her by being there -- now she's charged with a felony), news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060525/od_nm/court _strangle_dc (a defendant on trial for murder tries to strangle his own lawyer IN THE COURTROOM), www.dumbcriminals.com/drugs/dil-doh/ (a couple steals sex toys and enhancement pills repeatedly from an adult store, they end up being caught on one of their many return trips and when they are caught, the "goods" are in a bag NEXT TO THEIR 3 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER), and last but not least - EVERY drunk driver EVER.
Now for the "American" part. Stupidity is not a trait restricted to Americans -- PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE IDIOTS: news.com.com/Worm+traps+alleged+child+porn+offen der/2100-7348_3-6002302.html?tag=html.alert (A German child pornographer turns himself in after getting an e-mail virus telling him he was under investigation.
And finally, to prove that not just American kids commit crimes -- www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1772630.html?menu=ne ws.quirkies.strangecrime (Austrian kids steal a bunch of stuff so they can afford after-school prostitutes).
I think I've made my point. Sorry, I just get a little riled up when people make broad generalizations with negative connotations.
The most viable option is something I got the idea for while at the mall... space escalators! There would be a stripe down the middle to seperate the "just stand there" side from the "I'm in a hurry so I'm walkin' up this thing" side. Now... If only I could figure out a way to make humans breathe in space.
In all seriousness -- a space elevator IS possible. The article just says that it has the possibility of becoming damaged really easily... well, wikipedia states "Modern rocketry gives prices that are on the order of thousands of U.S. dollars per kilogram for transfer to low earth orbit, and roughly twenty thousand dollars per kilogram for transfer to geosynchronous orbit. For a space elevator, the price could be on the order of a few hundred dollars per kilogram, or possibly much less." As long as it is cheaper to build (or 'repair') the space elevator vs. a rocket-based space system, the idea remains appealing. Using algebra, $20,000/kg divided by $500/kg = 40. So given that rough approximation, it would be economically viable for quite a few repairs/new space elevators....now all we have to do is get the technology behind it to work.
'The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory'. Even if people were all nutso about documents opening fast, I still don't see how MS can say that it's "not satisfactory". How much does Office '03 cost? The professional version is around $180. Lets say it provides X satisfaction. Open Office costs $0 dollars. Let's assume (according to MS) it provides X (less than X). Divide the cost by the satisfaction (for this example we'll say OO is half as satisfactory as MS): MS = $180/x. OO = $0/.5x. The result is that (all things else considered equal), it still makes more fiscal sense to go with OO (why buy the cow when you get the milk for free... except the milk [OO] in this case is SOOOOO much better than the cow. The milk is like Bawls and the cow is like a rat [that gives rats bad names]).
Agreed. When my parents bought a Dell (I was away at college but still offered to build a cheap rig for them, they went with Dell because of a "free flat panel monitor upgrade" through their Educator's discout [they're teachers]). I went home for a weekend and saw it, formatted it for them (it was slow as... slow) and threw on a clean install of XP (they didn't want Linux) along with all the programs they needed. It actually runs decent now (considering it was a $700 buy with monitor). I don't see why computer companies throw so much slop-ware on computers they sell... wouldn't it make more sense to make a computer FASTER to the consumer by leaving off all the unnecessary software (I work at a university helpdesk, and HP and Compaq seem to be the worst when it comes to this -- the best seem to be the "unknown" manufacturers like Averatec... but I'm guessing that will change when they get big enough and create a "useless software" deptartment).
I saw students bring in computers with token-ring cards when I worked at a University Helpdesk. They would come in and say "My computers broken, I plugged 'the internet' in but it won't connect" (we would troubleshoot over the phone and they would want us to come up to their room, after much repeating our policies they would cave and bring it down because they wanted to download their pr0n). I was baffled when it would turn out to be a token-ring card... I was like "Where the HELL did they get this?". I'm convinced it's part of the worldwide conspiracy to drive me insane.
What about a co-axial bus connection? VAMPIRE TAPS!!! WEEEEEE. Come on, someone else has to remember those. It was like playing "Operation" except if you "touched the sides" and screwed the tap too far in, you broke the cable. Fun to the max!
Not to knock their plan... but let's say it does take 36 more years. We will assume the following variables: the scientists working on it are PhD's, meaning we can also assume they spent 8 years in college. Average college starting age of 18, + 8 years, means the average college-graduation-age of these scientists should be around 26. Now, assume the likely fact that these men (and women!) are probably not all immediatelly being pulled into the project from college, rather they probably have a good ten years or so working in related fields. Add 10 years of work experience to the 26 year old's life and you get 36. If the project is suppossed to take 36 years, add that to the person's age now and you get... (no, don't open up "calculator", you can do it in your head)... 72. So, it's a (VERY) wild estimate that the median age for these scientists will be 72 when this project is suppossed to be complete. Doesn't that seem illogical? I mean, they probably WON'T be working on this project when they're 72. This means the project (especially the upper-management people who are probably even older than 36) will likely have important positions change hands (maybe even more than once). This has the potential to create political clashes (in the work environment, I'm not talking about 'dubya vs. *insert whatever here*). It seems like this is QUITE the undertaking. Quite the undertaking indeed.
On a further note, something I just realized is that maybe the reason the "expected project length" is so long is because the first group of scientists is going to slack off (i.e./. all day) and then when they retire, the second wave will have to haul butt to get the project done "on time".
I just pray the day never comes when robots learn our most dear secret -- THE SHOCKER. Once they learn how to please our women, we are doomed! What do our fleshy human bodies have to offer a woman that an indestructible killing/loving machine cannot?
So the MPAA gets all "That's illegal!!!" when people commit grey-area "crimes" (i.e. filesharing), but they don't have a problem with full-blow black-area hacking? But... the MPAA are our friends, right? Why would they do something bad...
Actually, no ones KNOWS how the universe was created. My theory is that that the great Squirrel God was bored so he created the universe as his plaything. Now he carries the universe around in his mouth. Also, he says the universe tastes like licorice.
Another fun bar to add to my bro... oh wait, I use Firefox (not to mention I'm not a case of PEBKAC). I rarely see the situation where this could be remotely helpful (as in, I would rather take the few seconds to look up the number via the hundreds of online phonebooks then to have an ugly bar clunking up my interface). E-bay and Yahoo, please dispose of bars in the proper location, your... well... you know.
There are WORM (I think that's the acronoym) write-once read-many tags which can only be written to once (by the end-user, kind of like how you can print on a piece of paper just once but you can read it many times). These are relatively hacker-proof... the only danger is reading the information. Reading information from passive tags (WORM tags usually are) requires them to be very close to the reader (or the reader to be "MORE POWERFUL THAN HULK, HULK SMASH!"), so much so that the only viable scams would be to get people with RFID cards in their wallets to sit on your scanner....do I see Santa Claus stealing little kids' information in the future?
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Agreed. Do I really want to see the 16 year old boy in his underoos cry when I'm administering a healthy dose of pain?
They should hire those kids who automated their dormroom http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/midas.html. It's not like they have anything important to do.
I'm not saying it's a bad business decision, I just can't imagine the project proposal... *picture businessmen gathered around a cliche table with big leather chairs acting all serious, then imaging them talking about "getting perpendicular"*
I remember 7 years ago when I got 20 GB harddrive and thought "I'm never going to fill this up"... needless to say, 3 and a half years later I had a nice big 80 GB drive. Again, I thought to myself "I don't think I'll ever fill up 80 GB -- even with all my music and games, if I ever run out of space I can always just uninstall something". 2 years ago I bought a second drive for my main machine (160 GB) to act as a music/movie/game storage device... The 240 GB of space on my main machine are about 70% used, in addition to the 750 GB of harddrive space currently on my file server being almost 85% used, it's safe to say that a 750 GB drive could be extremely useful to me (then I could throw 4 of them in my file server). "If you give them the disk space, they will fill it... with pr0n!".
oh man, I just posted the same link. my question is, how did the funding for that animation get approved?
Please tell me you've seen this, http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_h ead/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html
Additionally; up until 9/11, most of the EU had much tougher air travel security than the U.S.
Actually, they used box-cutters. The likelyhood that a similar event could be pulled off now is slim-to-none. Before 9/11, a "routine" hijacking was where a terrorist or group of terrorists would simply commandeer the aircraft (with passengers) to make some kind of political bargain, that's one of the reasons none of the passengers on 9/11 did anything (except Flight 93, which learned of the other flights via phone conversations with family/friends). Now, no passengers will sit back from a mildly threatening entity -- there was a case a while after 9/11 where a passenger was making threats and a half-dozen people tackled him and tied him up. Passengers don't take crap anymore -- just like the passengers on Flight 93 when they learned of their possible fate.
Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." I think those words ring just as true today as they did 200 years ago.
I was hoping to RTFA and see "now the rover is a battlebot -- soon, Biohazard will be sent to face it; the winner goes to the finals".
Not to sound like a jerk, but you're dead wrong. "American kids thinking that they can get away with anything, interested solely in themselves, and getting something for nothing." If you said "almost everyone" instead of "American kids", I would have agreed with you, but I have problems with both the "American" and the "kid" parts.
e licopter_fireworks (a woman shoots fireworks at a police helicopter because it was annoying her by being there -- now she's charged with a felony),t _strangle_dc (a defendant on trial for murder tries to strangle his own lawyer IN THE COURTROOM),
n der/2100-7348_3-6002302.html?tag=html.alert (A German child pornographer turns himself in after getting an e-mail virus telling him he was under investigation.
e ws.quirkies.strangecrime (Austrian kids steal a bunch of stuff so they can afford after-school prostitutes).
First off, the easy one -- kids. Kids are NOT the only people who try to get away with anything, are interested solely in themselves, or try to get something for nothing -- here are a couple good ones:
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527/ap_on_fe_st/h
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060525/od_nm/cour
www.dumbcriminals.com/drugs/dil-doh/ (a couple steals sex toys and enhancement pills repeatedly from an adult store, they end up being caught on one of their many return trips and when they are caught, the "goods" are in a bag NEXT TO THEIR 3 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER),
and last but not least - EVERY drunk driver EVER.
Now for the "American" part. Stupidity is not a trait restricted to Americans -- PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE IDIOTS:
news.com.com/Worm+traps+alleged+child+porn+offe
And finally, to prove that not just American kids commit crimes -- www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1772630.html?menu=n
I think I've made my point. Sorry, I just get a little riled up when people make broad generalizations with negative connotations.
I guess they didn't know that meeting the people you're trying to extort in person IS A BAD IDEA!
The most viable option is something I got the idea for while at the mall... space escalators! There would be a stripe down the middle to seperate the "just stand there" side from the "I'm in a hurry so I'm walkin' up this thing" side. Now... If only I could figure out a way to make humans breathe in space. In all seriousness -- a space elevator IS possible. The article just says that it has the possibility of becoming damaged really easily... well, wikipedia states "Modern rocketry gives prices that are on the order of thousands of U.S. dollars per kilogram for transfer to low earth orbit, and roughly twenty thousand dollars per kilogram for transfer to geosynchronous orbit. For a space elevator, the price could be on the order of a few hundred dollars per kilogram, or possibly much less." As long as it is cheaper to build (or 'repair') the space elevator vs. a rocket-based space system, the idea remains appealing. Using algebra, $20,000/kg divided by $500/kg = 40. So given that rough approximation, it would be economically viable for quite a few repairs/new space elevators. ...now all we have to do is get the technology behind it to work.
Also, I'd probably like a dog that ate children -- I could use it to extort people for money :D
I said "all things else equal". If the dog I paid $180 for pissed in my beer and ate my kids, then yes, the free dog would be better.
'The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory'. Even if people were all nutso about documents opening fast, I still don't see how MS can say that it's "not satisfactory". How much does Office '03 cost? The professional version is around $180. Lets say it provides X satisfaction. Open Office costs $0 dollars. Let's assume (according to MS) it provides X (less than X). Divide the cost by the satisfaction (for this example we'll say OO is half as satisfactory as MS): MS = $180/x. OO = $0/.5x. The result is that (all things else considered equal), it still makes more fiscal sense to go with OO (why buy the cow when you get the milk for free... except the milk [OO] in this case is SOOOOO much better than the cow. The milk is like Bawls and the cow is like a rat [that gives rats bad names]).
Agreed. When my parents bought a Dell (I was away at college but still offered to build a cheap rig for them, they went with Dell because of a "free flat panel monitor upgrade" through their Educator's discout [they're teachers]). I went home for a weekend and saw it, formatted it for them (it was slow as... slow) and threw on a clean install of XP (they didn't want Linux) along with all the programs they needed. It actually runs decent now (considering it was a $700 buy with monitor). I don't see why computer companies throw so much slop-ware on computers they sell... wouldn't it make more sense to make a computer FASTER to the consumer by leaving off all the unnecessary software (I work at a university helpdesk, and HP and Compaq seem to be the worst when it comes to this -- the best seem to be the "unknown" manufacturers like Averatec... but I'm guessing that will change when they get big enough and create a "useless software" deptartment).
I saw students bring in computers with token-ring cards when I worked at a University Helpdesk. They would come in and say "My computers broken, I plugged 'the internet' in but it won't connect" (we would troubleshoot over the phone and they would want us to come up to their room, after much repeating our policies they would cave and bring it down because they wanted to download their pr0n). I was baffled when it would turn out to be a token-ring card... I was like "Where the HELL did they get this?". I'm convinced it's part of the worldwide conspiracy to drive me insane.
What about a co-axial bus connection? VAMPIRE TAPS!!! WEEEEEE. Come on, someone else has to remember those. It was like playing "Operation" except if you "touched the sides" and screwed the tap too far in, you broke the cable. Fun to the max!
Not to knock their plan... but let's say it does take 36 more years. We will assume the following variables: the scientists working on it are PhD's, meaning we can also assume they spent 8 years in college. Average college starting age of 18, + 8 years, means the average college-graduation-age of these scientists should be around 26. Now, assume the likely fact that these men (and women!) are probably not all immediatelly being pulled into the project from college, rather they probably have a good ten years or so working in related fields. Add 10 years of work experience to the 26 year old's life and you get 36. If the project is suppossed to take 36 years, add that to the person's age now and you get... (no, don't open up "calculator", you can do it in your head)... 72. So, it's a (VERY) wild estimate that the median age for these scientists will be 72 when this project is suppossed to be complete. Doesn't that seem illogical? I mean, they probably WON'T be working on this project when they're 72. This means the project (especially the upper-management people who are probably even older than 36) will likely have important positions change hands (maybe even more than once). This has the potential to create political clashes (in the work environment, I'm not talking about 'dubya vs. *insert whatever here*). It seems like this is QUITE the undertaking. Quite the undertaking indeed. On a further note, something I just realized is that maybe the reason the "expected project length" is so long is because the first group of scientists is going to slack off (i.e. /. all day) and then when they retire, the second wave will have to haul butt to get the project done "on time".
I just pray the day never comes when robots learn our most dear secret -- THE SHOCKER. Once they learn how to please our women, we are doomed! What do our fleshy human bodies have to offer a woman that an indestructible killing/loving machine cannot?
So the MPAA gets all "That's illegal!!!" when people commit grey-area "crimes" (i.e. filesharing), but they don't have a problem with full-blow black-area hacking? But... the MPAA are our friends, right? Why would they do something bad...
Actually, no ones KNOWS how the universe was created. My theory is that that the great Squirrel God was bored so he created the universe as his plaything. Now he carries the universe around in his mouth. Also, he says the universe tastes like licorice.
Another fun bar to add to my bro... oh wait, I use Firefox (not to mention I'm not a case of PEBKAC). I rarely see the situation where this could be remotely helpful (as in, I would rather take the few seconds to look up the number via the hundreds of online phonebooks then to have an ugly bar clunking up my interface). E-bay and Yahoo, please dispose of bars in the proper location, your... well... you know.
There are WORM (I think that's the acronoym) write-once read-many tags which can only be written to once (by the end-user, kind of like how you can print on a piece of paper just once but you can read it many times). These are relatively hacker-proof... the only danger is reading the information. Reading information from passive tags (WORM tags usually are) requires them to be very close to the reader (or the reader to be "MORE POWERFUL THAN HULK, HULK SMASH!"), so much so that the only viable scams would be to get people with RFID cards in their wallets to sit on your scanner. ...do I see Santa Claus stealing little kids' information in the future?