Governmental agencies ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS whatever power they have. If governmental agencies manage to force cell carriers or Netflix or Spotify to carry their alerts, you can count on the fact that some of those "critical alerts" will be things that are only critical in the eyes of government flunkies.
We need to have iron-clad penalties for abuse or misuse of any governmental alert system, without any "good faith" exceptions when they abuse that authority. Because in general, governmental agencies and personnel NEVER are acting in "good faith".
A major source of airline pilots has always been the military, and the military has been cutting WAY back. To the point that the USAF and the Navy are offering bonuses to keep the pilots that they have - which reduces the number of experienced pilots who are separating from the services and looking for airline jobs.
And while very experienced captains are still very well paid, regional airline salaries have been quite low, and work conditions not all that great. Remember that pilots (and other flight crew) are only paid for FLIGHT time. They don't get paid for sitting on the ground, or waiting for an aircraft to be repaired. So it's not all that it used to be.
It's a matter of simple fact that EVERY technological development in imagery is first used for porn. Portraiture. Sculpture. Photography. Digital imagery; the ubiquitous GIF format was originally designed to allow any computer OS to be able to view any picture. Video; at one point, half of the video tapes in the world were porn. You could even rent a VCR and a handful of videos and view the in the privacy of your own home.
Colors, as in the natural colors of elements and compounds, have existed since shortly after the Big Bang. Nobody was around to NOTICE, but....
I think this article is more focused on the colors of the earliest biological organisms. As such, any claim for "earliest" is transitory, as some other compound may be discovered to have preceded it.
Right now, I need my car. I drive to work, I drive to visit customers, I drive to pick up groceries and all the stuff I need on a day to day basis.
In a couple of years, I'll retire. THEN I might be able to get by with a car service. In theory, it sounds great; hail a little car to take me TO the grocery store, and a bigger one to bring me (and my purchases) home.
But the problems that I foresee aren't so much technical issues as social ones. In Seattle, in San Francisco and in San Jose, companies have deployed dozens or hundreds of electric scooters and bikes; lease the scooters with your phone, and use them as long as you like, and then drop them off anywhere. But vandals and locals concerned with the litter and cluttering of the scooters have been destroying them, throwing them down cliffs, into rivers and ditches, or befouling them.
Will the same thing happen with automated car service vehicles? I can almost guarantee it.
I suppose it is entirely too... "masculine"... to ask "May I sit here?" People don't put their bags, or briefcases, or backpacks on the seat just to piss you off; they put it there because that seat was empty when they sat down.
You need or want that seat. An ADULT would say "Excuse me, my I sit here?" Nine times out of ten, the person will say something like "Oh, excuse me. Sure." and move the bag between his feet. The 10th time is probably some sort of hostile/drunk/drugged out boor, and you probably don't want to sit next to him anyway.
Of course, if it's a woman - as it sometimes is - she'll often say "NO", because she doesn't want to share the seat with me, a man. I sort of understand that, because she can't see that I'm a former Boy Scout, absolutely honorable retired military officer who would sacrifice his own life to save hers. She just sees "Creepy old man!"
No woman would ever refuse to allow another woman to share the seat, of course.
Video games like Quake, Starcraft II, and DOTA have a limited number of possible moves, and the FASTER player is usually victorious. Bots aren't better players; they're just WAY faster.
A woman with a baby asked Benjamin Franklin, during the debates on the Constitution, "What good is your new government?" Franklin replied, "Of what use is your new baby?" Wilbur & Orville Wright built a flying machine in 1903. What good was it? In 1993, when DARPA allowed commercial use of the internet, what use was it?
A permanent lunar base will, for at least 10 years, be totally pointless. After that, we'll FIGURE OUT what it's good for, and we will discover that it is very useful indeed.
I'm certain that He3 will be a critically important energy source for Lunar colonies. Solar will also be important, but (as here on Earth) the Sun is only up for half the time. After 14 "days" of lunar "day", there will be 14 "days" of lunar darkness.
If we ever figure out how to fuse He3 and generate energy, THEN we can start an economic discussion on the costs and benefits of shipping it down to Earth.
The problem is that the Federal government, and especially the court system up to and including the Supreme Court, is far too involved with the day to day lives of people. The Constitution created a government of LIMITED powers, in which the state and LOCAL governments were managing things, and that the INDIVIDUAL was mostly in control of their own destinies.
Now with the Federal government exercising a closer and more intrusive mode of controlling the people, "the people" are beginning to push back.
The genie will never go back into the bottle; the Federal government has become too entrenched and could never be un-involved with the lives of the average people. But something like that MUST happen, or we'll have to go back in time to the point when the Constitution was adopted, either with another Revolution or with another Constitutional Convention.
But SOMEHOW, we need to dial back the amount of control that some people have over other people.
I believe it was a Heinlein quote; "The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Historically, Americans have been in the second group.
"the earth would fall into the sun in a fiery death."
Perhaps I'm being nitpicky, but this will not happen. The Sun will, at some point, expand to consume the Earth, which is perhaps a difference without much of a distinction. But if the human race (or some successor race after us) exists at that time, we should have the ability to move the Earth out to a more comfortable distance. We already know HOW; we just don't have the technology - YET.
"If an Asteroid decides to come this way then we can't do much about it. A few colonists on Mars won't make any difference -"
Developing the technology to travel to Mars, and to build colonies there, will help us to develop the technology that will allow us to catch such asteroids. We don't want to destroy them; they'll be more useful as raw materials for space habitats. Even if interstellar travel proves to be impossible (which I do not believe), we can develop a number of places where people can live right here in THIS solar system.
And in the far distant future, we'll be able, as the Sun expands into a red giant, to move the Earth to a more comfortable distance out from our star.
And right there you have ANOTHER mission for the new "Space Force". I had previously suggested that the "Space Force" should be structured like the Coast Guard; in that role, preventing or removing "hazards to navigation" would be right in their wheelhouse. SAR. Maintenance of navigational beacons. Removing - harvesting, more likely - junk or derelict satellites.
Rather than the US Space Force being a purely military organization, it would make sense to have a Space Force structured like, and with similar missions as, the US Coast Guard. As people and businesses move into space, we're going to NEED some sort of spaceborne Search and Rescue organization, perhaps with vessel inspection capabilities and missions. Perhaps the Space Force can be tasked with inspecting commercial spacecraft and satellites and ensuring that they aren't hiding military equipment.
And in the event of hostilities, the Space Force would, similar to the Coast Guard, become part of the Navy.
ADM Hyman Rickover never accepted ANY physics majors to the Naval Reactors program; he preferred Mechanical Engineers. Rickover's approach was that he wanted people who would FOLLOW THE BOOK PRECISELY, and not think "Well, I know a lot about nuclear physics, so THIS ought to work..." Wikipedia doesn't specify what branch of engineering Carter was in, just that he had a BS in "engineering".
Wikipedia also indicates that much of Carter's antipathy toward nuclear power developed while he was working to decommission the Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories NDX reactor, which had experienced a partial melt-down. I can certainly see that this experience might have left a sour taste in his mouth concerning nuclear power. Carter was in training for the US nuclear submarine program, but left the service before the boat he was assigned to was completed.
A Carter-era cartoon depicted Carter's approach to the Navy with Carter as the captain of an aircraft carrier, with him saying "Men, I'm a naval officer, I've been in submarines, and I know what I'm doing! TAKE HER DOWN!" Certainly as President, Carter did no favors at all to either the country or to the Navy. President Carter was a general failure as President; he may have been a good PERSON, but he was a terrible PRESIDENT.
So no, I don't grant Carter any sort of special expertise in the realm of nuclear power or nuclear physics. My own (very old) degree in Engineering Physics probably wouldn't grant me any special consideration either, but my training is both more recent and more relevant, even if only marginally in each case.
Slashdot Mirror
Governmental agencies ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS whatever power they have. If governmental agencies manage to force cell carriers or Netflix or Spotify to carry their alerts, you can count on the fact that some of those "critical alerts" will be things that are only critical in the eyes of government flunkies.
We need to have iron-clad penalties for abuse or misuse of any governmental alert system, without any "good faith" exceptions when they abuse that authority. Because in general, governmental agencies and personnel NEVER are acting in "good faith".
A major source of airline pilots has always been the military, and the military has been cutting WAY back. To the point that the USAF and the Navy are offering bonuses to keep the pilots that they have - which reduces the number of experienced pilots who are separating from the services and looking for airline jobs.
And while very experienced captains are still very well paid, regional airline salaries have been quite low, and work conditions not all that great. Remember that pilots (and other flight crew) are only paid for FLIGHT time. They don't get paid for sitting on the ground, or waiting for an aircraft to be repaired. So it's not all that it used to be.
It's a matter of simple fact that EVERY technological development in imagery is first used for porn. Portraiture. Sculpture. Photography. Digital imagery; the ubiquitous GIF format was originally designed to allow any computer OS to be able to view any picture. Video; at one point, half of the video tapes in the world were porn. You could even rent a VCR and a handful of videos and view the in the privacy of your own home.
Why would VR or AR be any different?
Colors, as in the natural colors of elements and compounds, have existed since shortly after the Big Bang. Nobody was around to NOTICE, but....
I think this article is more focused on the colors of the earliest biological organisms. As such, any claim for "earliest" is transitory, as some other compound may be discovered to have preceded it.
Humans are the only AI systems that can be constructed with primitive materials using unskilled labor.
And how is this significantly different from Amazon's "Mechanical Turk"? Same basic concept; get people to do what AI cannot yet do.
Here, here! I certainly agree. I raised my children using cloth diapers.
Magellan himself did not survive the voyage, but others of his crew did. The point being that the SHIP went around the world using wind energy.
Right now, I need my car. I drive to work, I drive to visit customers, I drive to pick up groceries and all the stuff I need on a day to day basis.
In a couple of years, I'll retire. THEN I might be able to get by with a car service. In theory, it sounds great; hail a little car to take me TO the grocery store, and a bigger one to bring me (and my purchases) home.
But the problems that I foresee aren't so much technical issues as social ones. In Seattle, in San Francisco and in San Jose, companies have deployed dozens or hundreds of electric scooters and bikes; lease the scooters with your phone, and use them as long as you like, and then drop them off anywhere. But vandals and locals concerned with the litter and cluttering of the scooters have been destroying them, throwing them down cliffs, into rivers and ditches, or befouling them.
Will the same thing happen with automated car service vehicles? I can almost guarantee it.
I suppose it is entirely too ... "masculine" ... to ask "May I sit here?" People don't put their bags, or briefcases, or backpacks on the seat just to piss you off; they put it there because that seat was empty when they sat down.
You need or want that seat. An ADULT would say "Excuse me, my I sit here?" Nine times out of ten, the person will say something like "Oh, excuse me. Sure." and move the bag between his feet. The 10th time is probably some sort of hostile/drunk/drugged out boor, and you probably don't want to sit next to him anyway.
Of course, if it's a woman - as it sometimes is - she'll often say "NO", because she doesn't want to share the seat with me, a man. I sort of understand that, because she can't see that I'm a former Boy Scout, absolutely honorable retired military officer who would sacrifice his own life to save hers. She just sees "Creepy old man!"
No woman would ever refuse to allow another woman to share the seat, of course.
Power Squid.
https://smile.amazon.com/Accel...
Video games like Quake, Starcraft II, and DOTA have a limited number of possible moves, and the FASTER player is usually victorious. Bots aren't better players; they're just WAY faster.
A woman with a baby asked Benjamin Franklin, during the debates on the Constitution, "What good is your new government?" Franklin replied, "Of what use is your new baby?" Wilbur & Orville Wright built a flying machine in 1903. What good was it? In 1993, when DARPA allowed commercial use of the internet, what use was it?
A permanent lunar base will, for at least 10 years, be totally pointless. After that, we'll FIGURE OUT what it's good for, and we will discover that it is very useful indeed.
I'm certain that He3 will be a critically important energy source for Lunar colonies. Solar will also be important, but (as here on Earth) the Sun is only up for half the time. After 14 "days" of lunar "day", there will be 14 "days" of lunar darkness.
If we ever figure out how to fuse He3 and generate energy, THEN we can start an economic discussion on the costs and benefits of shipping it down to Earth.
The problem is that the Federal government, and especially the court system up to and including the Supreme Court, is far too involved with the day to day lives of people. The Constitution created a government of LIMITED powers, in which the state and LOCAL governments were managing things, and that the INDIVIDUAL was mostly in control of their own destinies.
Now with the Federal government exercising a closer and more intrusive mode of controlling the people, "the people" are beginning to push back.
The genie will never go back into the bottle; the Federal government has become too entrenched and could never be un-involved with the lives of the average people. But something like that MUST happen, or we'll have to go back in time to the point when the Constitution was adopted, either with another Revolution or with another Constitutional Convention.
But SOMEHOW, we need to dial back the amount of control that some people have over other people.
I believe it was a Heinlein quote; "The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Historically, Americans have been in the second group.
"the earth would fall into the sun in a fiery death."
Perhaps I'm being nitpicky, but this will not happen. The Sun will, at some point, expand to consume the Earth, which is perhaps a difference without much of a distinction. But if the human race (or some successor race after us) exists at that time, we should have the ability to move the Earth out to a more comfortable distance. We already know HOW; we just don't have the technology - YET.
"If an Asteroid decides to come this way then we can't do much about it. A few colonists on Mars won't make any difference -"
Developing the technology to travel to Mars, and to build colonies there, will help us to develop the technology that will allow us to catch such asteroids. We don't want to destroy them; they'll be more useful as raw materials for space habitats. Even if interstellar travel proves to be impossible (which I do not believe), we can develop a number of places where people can live right here in THIS solar system.
And in the far distant future, we'll be able, as the Sun expands into a red giant, to move the Earth to a more comfortable distance out from our star.
Nobody could do the reducto et absurdum like Penn & Teller, and here's their episode on Recycling.
https://vimeo.com/216389085
And right there you have ANOTHER mission for the new "Space Force". I had previously suggested that the "Space Force" should be structured like the Coast Guard; in that role, preventing or removing "hazards to navigation" would be right in their wheelhouse. SAR. Maintenance of navigational beacons. Removing - harvesting, more likely - junk or derelict satellites.
Yes, they do. Re-read the final line of my original post.
Moties!
Rather than the US Space Force being a purely military organization, it would make sense to have a Space Force structured like, and with similar missions as, the US Coast Guard. As people and businesses move into space, we're going to NEED some sort of spaceborne Search and Rescue organization, perhaps with vessel inspection capabilities and missions. Perhaps the Space Force can be tasked with inspecting commercial spacecraft and satellites and ensuring that they aren't hiding military equipment.
And in the event of hostilities, the Space Force would, similar to the Coast Guard, become part of the Navy.
Eudora's source code has recently been made open-source. I'm SINCERELY hoping that somebody will re-release it.
Eudora was the best over-all email program ever written.
ADM Hyman Rickover never accepted ANY physics majors to the Naval Reactors program; he preferred Mechanical Engineers. Rickover's approach was that he wanted people who would FOLLOW THE BOOK PRECISELY, and not think "Well, I know a lot about nuclear physics, so THIS ought to work..." Wikipedia doesn't specify what branch of engineering Carter was in, just that he had a BS in "engineering".
Wikipedia also indicates that much of Carter's antipathy toward nuclear power developed while he was working to decommission the Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories NDX reactor, which had experienced a partial melt-down. I can certainly see that this experience might have left a sour taste in his mouth concerning nuclear power. Carter was in training for the US nuclear submarine program, but left the service before the boat he was assigned to was completed.
A Carter-era cartoon depicted Carter's approach to the Navy with Carter as the captain of an aircraft carrier, with him saying "Men, I'm a naval officer, I've been in submarines, and I know what I'm doing! TAKE HER DOWN!" Certainly as President, Carter did no favors at all to either the country or to the Navy. President Carter was a general failure as President; he may have been a good PERSON, but he was a terrible PRESIDENT.
So no, I don't grant Carter any sort of special expertise in the realm of nuclear power or nuclear physics. My own (very old) degree in Engineering Physics probably wouldn't grant me any special consideration either, but my training is both more recent and more relevant, even if only marginally in each case.
If Jimmy Peanut hadn't banned "breeder" reactors, we'd be able to create our own nuclear fuel.