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I read your reply, and wondered, "Where did he get the half million from?" I spent several minutes with Google - until I ran into this. http://home.roadrunner.com/~casualties/ Seems you're right - that 1/4 million that I've been using appears to only account for the first invasion, or at most, only the first weeks of the second invasion.

On the Termination of Species

Already we have toll roads. We have examples of where special lanes are set aside for people who are willing to pay more for better service. So how is complaining about internet providers doing the same different?

Simple. By paying $49.95/month for Road Runner rather than $9.99 for Blue Frog, I am already paying a $40/month "toll" to use the fast lane. I've paid for it, now fork it over.

As for paying a "tiered" toll, I'm already there. I picked the middle tier. I get half the bandwidth for $29.95, or double for some other price ($89.95, I think?).

But none of this, nor your toll road system, exacts a penalty for what I might choose to call my destination.

For those that want to read about the issue deeply, I highly recommend Lawrence Lessig's book: The Future of Ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world.

They'll last untill some rocket-scientist figures out that some bizzare combination of fishoil and hairspray will neutralize the selfdestruct mechanism....which will take place 4.36 days after they get to market.

But really...who cares. Between broadband, DivX;-), the dropping costs of DVD writer/rewriters and the media, hardware DivX;-) cards (I know one or two have been announced) and the social acceptance of Napster....The MPAA is in the process of shitting itself.

Well at least until they get enough senators in their back pocket to pass that SSSCA shit.

virtros

I myself have been stuck in the Verizon loop of insanity. Long story, but to get to the point:

Cable modems are inherently insecure. You are sharing common bandwidth with others. That gives them level 2 access. Talk to RCN and see how well they handle Firewall Support. The reps at Time Warner pass you off from person to person and I have yet to get and answer.

Time Warner is the company I am going through until I can the proper DSL modem. They are very unclear on their policies. Having gone through both the Road runner site and the AOL-TimeWarner site, they do not specify very clearly what their terms of service are. I'm not too worried as I only plan to have them for a couple weeks. You, should check into it more though. A few companies out there... Sprint.... Have some very, evil policies. Like the right to go into your house because you are using thier service, right to dictate what sites you go to, regardless of legality, etc. So I would find all of that out before you consider either.

(In case you ever go through verizon, RA-14 crap out past 11,000 ft. from CO. Only the RA-12 Modems will work past that. Fujitsu has not ETA on when they will fix this issue.)

Basically, as an alternative to chemical rockets, we were developing a nuclear rocket called NERVA.
By the time the project was terminated, their prototypes were giving about 850 seconds of specific impulse, and the engineers believed it wouldnt be too difficult to raise that to about 1200. The theoretical maximum for chemical rockets, however, is something like 400 seconds of specific impulse. If the project hadn't been canned, it is quite possible that our rockets would be three times as efficient as they are today.

The downside was that if a rocket failed during launch, it would be pretty catastrophic. But, as was already mentioned, rockets like this would be great for interplanetary travel.

Some very smart guys at Los Alamos are working on a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket.

This rocket engine will use a fissioning uranium gas plasma to create ungodly amounts of thrust--something on the order of 10,000 SpI. According to the scientist I talked with who has been working on the design, a GCNR-powered ship could be very lightweight, carry hundreds of crew members and thousands of tons of payload, and still travel to Mars within thirty days or so.

This thrust is on the same order as the Freeman Dyson/Stanislaw Ulam "Orion" rocket, basically a bunch of well-timed nuclear explosions transferring kinetic energy to a graphite-coated pressure plate that provides the thrust.

Of course, the antinuclear zealots will try to stop this engine from being built, saying things like "Oh, it'll pollute space with nuclear waste products" or some such tripe. But this technology is too good to pass up.

The biggest obstacle to date in building a GCNR is the computational power needed to model the extraordinarily complex interactions of the reaction, basically the same as modelling a nuclear explosion. Obviously we are getting closer to being about to pull off the analysis, given that we are nearing (or at) the point where we can model explosions and wean ourselves off of underground testing.

I like the idea of a Zubrin-style "live off the land" approach, and maybe we should try that now since that's what we know we can do this minute. But the U.S. should also throw a lot of money at the GCNR, build a ship with enough supplies and crew, and colonize Mars without dicking around.

Here's a link explaining more about the GCNR.

.......... kris

For both posters that were interested in LAME:
The official homepage is at
www.sulaco.org/mp3

Specifically, you can find source and binaries available
here. RPMS for
i586/glibc2.0, i586/glibc2.1 and alpha/glibc2.0 are available.

LAME compiles on Linux, Windows, Mac, and various
un*xes

Anyone intersted in fast, high-quality mp3 encoding should check out LAME. It has better encoding quality than bladeenc and is similar in speed. It also supports variable bitrate (VBR) encoding. It is an open source project.

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I seem to have messed up the URL in the message above. For the page on the LAME encoder, go to this page.

Before we get into legal arguments, I should mention that this encoder is distributed as a patch on the ISO encoder distribution and, as such, does not violate any patents. Compilation of this code in a country that allows software patents is at your own risk, however.

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