Posts by Rich of Observationz
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<cynicism>Yeah, well on Phil Goff's recent form, he might just not contest the by-election and announce that, really, we should all be backing that nice Mr Key by voting National.</cynicism>
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ren't you confusing coming up with an idea - which I had always understood was original and well enough developed in this case
Clarke proposed the idea of communication satellites in 1945. The technology to actually put a satellite in geostationary orbit didn't exist until the early 1960's. I'd argue that once the technology was there, the use would have become obvious (which is clearly unprovable).
I have *invented* the idea of a system that uses AI to listen to conversations in a call centre, understand them and make appropriate entries in CRM systems. Obviously, this requires strong AI, which doesn't exist. I'd consider my idea to be worthless, as when the likes of Dr Pitt invent general AI, it'll be obvious that that's an application.
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Before even the first world war, a 'geek' named Herbert George Wells read a paper by Ernest Rutherford. He deduced that energy from nuclear reactions could release tremendous amounts of energy which could be turned to military purposes. He wrote a novel called The World Set Free which depicted the first nuclear war. That novel was read by the Hungarian Jewish physicist Leo Szilard in the 1930s, who was at that tine a refugee from Nazism in London. Nobody listened to him. Later, he contacted his friend Albert Einstein who signed a letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning of the dangers of such a weapon in the hands of the Nazis. Thus was born the Manhattan Project.
Th Einstein-Szilard letter wasn't written until 1939, by which time Szilard and Fermi had demonstrated experimentally the feasibility of a chain reaction. Szilard had first conceived of the practical use of nuclear energy in 1933, based, I feel, on his research, not on reading sci-fi. HG Wells also wrote a book describing an attack by invading Martians, which is not a threat we have so far had to deal with. If Wells had written romantic fiction, atomic bombs would still have been invented.
This is one thing that irritates me about "geek culture" - the conflation of entertaining fiction with actual scientific discovery. Like the claim that Arthur C Clarke invented the communications satellite. He didn't, he predicted it. Scientists in the Soviet Union and at NASA made it happen.
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We do have some good beers in this country, they're just not made by DB, or New Zealand Breweries.
I noticed that the bottle of Steiny that someone else was drinking says on it "New Zealand's Number One Beer" or words to that effect. Are the other products of that organisation New Zealand's #2 - #20 beers?
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However, you are right. Having a small number of middle-class, aware people in developed countries make a token gesture isn't going to change anything.
Systematic energy saving measures will. So will building more wind/water poer and shutting down thermal. NZ could be on 120% renewable electricity (e.g. with zero non-renewable power and some fossil fuel replacement) by 2020. Unfortunately we're going backwards for at least the next three years.
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Um, Keith, aren't you out by a factor of 1000?
60W x 3hrs x 365days = 65,700 watt hours = 66KWh ?
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So is a couple appearing with offspring "a scene which is cut so that it is clearly implied that two of the characters had sex".
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unlimited, legal music downloads with your broadband connection. Trouble is, the music was Windows Media DRM and would disappear when the ISP account was terminated.
What I was more suggesting was that people sharing content (on a personal, unpaid basis) in whatever format using mechanisms like torrents would be immune from prosecution or disconnection if they paid their $5 a month fee.
Commercial sites would still need to sort out their licensing just as now.
And if you never share any content, you wouldn't need to pay, but would be subject to sanctions if you lied about it.
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Raw data now! Says Tim Berners-Lee.
He's been saying that for years. All the technology exists, and some of it (like RSS feeds) is being used. But organisations are reluctant to ditch their content and advertising.
For instance, Stats should offer an all-you-can-eat XML file of their published datasets, which those better at technology than they are could make usable. Instead, they are forever trying to build a usable website and failing.
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His name was Lincoln.
Um, civil war between the red and blue states has an odd appeal.
I wouldn't care to live in Illinois, though.