we need to spread

i love stephen hawking. the guy's a genius.

and he always seems to have some good points. this time, it's a point i've talked about before. humanity needs to spread out.

whether it's nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, a meteor or whatever, it greatly raises our odds of survival.

the more self-sufficient human civilizations that we can set up, and the more places we can do it in, the better our chances of species survival.

to paraphrase orson scott card, we need to spread ourselves over a thousand worlds and make peace with each other, and we'll be all but impossible to destroy.

keep asking questions...

--cid

say it ain't so

could it be true?

so far it's just a rumor--apple merging with nintendo?

apple's a company i've got mixed feelings about, but nintendo has more or less stayed true to its consumer base. they've kept their roots strong, they didn't dick people over with prices, and they've continued to strive for creative new ways of interacting with games (motion controllers in the wii, touchscreen on the ds).

while, technologically speaking, i am an apple fan, and i'll even give them style points, but idealogically, i haven't felt at home with an apple product in a long time.

from a marketing standpoint, i think this hypothetical merger could do the nintendo name some good, but i guess that's what worries me. apple is a marketing machine and i shudder to think what would become of nintendo if this happens.

i guess we'll just have to wait and see.

--cid

0wn your console

china accuses the i triple e of strongarming

so, wi-fi's an open book, and wep's like using a proverbial slice of swiss to stop others from reading your book.

well, there're a couple of new standards to take over where wep fell short, but not everybody can seem to agree.

in fact, china just walked out of talks about their wireless encryption standard, wapi. they said that the ieee (i triple e) uses dirty tactics to push their standards. they said that since the talks clearly weren't really accomplishing anything, the whole setup was unfair, and there was no point in continuing.

*shrugs*

--cid