User:Codeczero/notes

Vacation

Trying to get away from it all? Visit scenic Antinewyork, 19984599 meters from the Empire State Building (if you believe Thaddeus Vincenty). Êňjøy da lòvely oceǎn (and more ocean). Just go to Windy Harbor, Australia (a place so small it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry) then head 1098057 m bearing 230.228°. It's just that easy.

Extremely small categories

Movies whose credits scroll in reverse

• THX 1138
• Irréversible

Movies in which Gary Oldman's character admitted to being a "monster"

• Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, "You're a monster Zorg." "I know.", The Fifth Element
• Spider Smith, "You can't kill the monster, without becoming him." Lost in Space
• (Perhaps he also did in the Harry Potter franchise, if so please edit this entry)

Architectural genres which are confusingly similar

• Art deco
• Streamline Moderne
• German Expressionism

Errors frequently made in predictions of the future

Commonly Cited

• Ventilation systems do not provide access to all parts of the building/structure/aircraft/spacecraft. It's remotely possible to gain access to a neighboring room, but in most cases ventilation ducts will not support the weight of an adult human. (On a related note, suspended ceilings will not support the weight of a person. Representative Violator: Jurassic Park)
• Short of a totally new and absurdly plentiful source of energy, there will never be flying personal conveyances of any sort. Representative Violator: The Fifth Element

Sometimes Cited

• At no time are all the buildings in a city the same age. Representative Adherer: Blade Runner
• Houses/apartments in the future will have the same amount of variation in styles. Most, if not all, of the styles from the present day will still exist in the future, i.e. minimalist modernism will not replace all styles. Representative Violator: A.I.

Rarely Cited

• For those occupations where working at home is practical, in many cases people will still go to a separate place to work. If nothing else, there is a psychological benefit of switching mindsets by switching locations.
• Countries rarely merge in such a way as to lose identity (e.g. Oceania). The larger and more powerful a country is the less likely it is that the country will be subsumed into another organization. Countries do however form higher-level encompassing government entities (e.g. League of Nations, United Nations, European Union and to a lesser extent NAFTA). Higher-level entities often have very limited power because politicians in the member states are fearful of losing control.
• High security computer systems are not impossible to create. Computer security holes are due to (ordered by descending frequency):
  • User laziness/carelessness (e.g. bad passwords, turning off or failing to turn on security measures)
  • Bugs (e.g. Every program ever written)
  • Programmer carelessness
  • Rushed production, i.e. inadequate time for design and testing (e.g. Windows)
  • Inaccurate authentication systems (Fingerprint readers)
  • Lazy or forgetful programmers (backdoors used for debugging left in)
  • Hostile Programmers (backdoors left intentionally)
  • Overconfidence in poor security measures, e.g. weak encryption (WEP) or inaccurate authentication systems (Fingerprint readers)
• Corollary: A system built by machines (which humans are never meant to access) would probably be perfectly secure. Representative (really only) Violator: The Matrix Franchise

Rule of Thumb

• For any system, governmental, social, computer, etc.; the degree of change in the structure of the system is always limited by some backward compatibility with the previous system. This is reflected in the following maxims:
  • You can't expect everyone to throw out everything and start again at a moments notice.
  • Rome wasn't built in a day.
  • The future has a history too.
  • A Step function is nonphysical because its derivative contains singularities.