Whatever that was in May, it was not a "successful test of its high-speed transportation technology" in the sense of any kind of working prototype. Perhaps they successfully tested the ball bearings intended for use in part of the system. Maybe they were testing a design for part of the brake system. Maybe it was a battery prototype. Whatever it was, it was one very small piece of a very large and complicated system. There was no tube, no vacuum, no elevated rail, no proof of concept for anything that really marks the hyperloop.
It will not take 12 years to build the Sweden-Finland connector. It will take 12 years to finish designing and testing the concept so that we can confidently finance a 500km experiment.
I'm personally interested in the Hyperloop. I'd like to see it progress. But to succeed, we have to proceed with reason, grounded in reality. Hyperbolic claims of accomplishment won't help.
This. I'm also very interested in the hyperloop and would like to see it become a reality. But this article....
How did they calculate a flight duration of 3.5 hours? And the distance? It's a 400 km (250 mi) journey by air. Flight duration is less than an hour (around 50 minutes depending on the wind). All of this you can easily look up. From the PDF, it looks to me as though the hyperloops will have several stops between Stockholm and Helsinki. That adds to the time. And what sort of ticket prices are we looking at? A last-minute flight leaving now with SAS costs around 70-100 USD (to put it simply as the Finns have the Euro and Swedes have the Swedish krona). Booking ahead of time can cost 50 USD and much less when there are sales and deals. Your average person making this journey will be one who probably makes it often and travels light, e.g. for business or commuting for work so the time required to drop off and pick up luggage doesn't need to be factored in. Checking in on the flight is usually done online or via an app with electronic boarding pass. Boarding starts around 20 min before departure, which is when they say you absolutely need to be at the gate by. Security (another topic Slashdotters love) in Sweden and Finland is generally more professional, respectful and streamlined than what you'd find in the US and thus doesn't take very long (but don't take my word for it, go and experience it for yourself). So let's say you arrive at the airport 30 min ahead of departure and the flight is 60 minutes, then we're talking an hour and a half for the journey at a cost of about 50 USD. That's not bad all things considered in the wide world of air travel. Note that I purposely did not factor in transportation to and from the airports because where the actual hyperloops stations will be is still a huge unknown.
I usually don't respond to the threads on/. about piracy; I don't see any point in debating it. I'm pretty much going to do it regardless until they hand over full control of me being able to do what I want with something after I have purchased it. I believe many others out there have the same reasons, so I decided I would post them. 1. It's easy. I turn on the computer, surf over to The Pirate Bay, search for what I want, click on the magnet link and a few minutes later I have it. 2. Freedom. I can then do whatever I want with the file. Put it on my laptop and take it with me, watch it on my 27" monitor, stream it to a TV or run it from a computer connected to TV via HDMI. I can give it to a friend on a USB stick. Save it on my hard drive for later. Pause it in the middle to do something else and resume later. 3. Cost. Buying a new television every few years is expensive. I don't know about you, but I want to retire early. I move around a lot because of work and having a television with me is not an option. Also, in my country of Norway, we have to pay a TV licence fee of around 500 dollars a year if we have one. I hate Norwegian television, it's boring and ethnocentric. The rest of the world seems to be in a television series renaissance, but here it's the same boring shit that no one outside of this small and insignificant country cares about. Mostly about "Big Brother" type of programming and gatherings of celebrities. 4. Advertising and commercials. I don't have to fucking watch them when I download something. Period. 5. The Man. I'm just trying to make my way in this world and I'm sick of people better off than me trying to get their hands in my pockets. I don't want theirs, I just want mine. And to keep it. Knowing that they didn't get it this time gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I will ultimately buy the stuff I really like because I support the artists/authors. I have over 1000 music CDs in storage I've bought since my first CD player in 1993. Now, I try to buy FLAC or 320 kbps MP3s directly from the bands. I have over 400 games on Steam, many from Indy publishers, most I haven't even played. Especially since I gave up computer games as my new year's resolution 2013. But I still buy them because I support what they do, and I like that I will always have them on Steam. Movies? They release them on DVD, then Blue Ray, then a special edition, then an uncut with added scenes, then 20 years later with lost fucking footage. This doesn't make me feel like they give a shit about me getting what I am paying for. Sure, I could forgo films and television series completely, but there's that social aspect of being a part of conversations at work and at gatherings that I would miss out on. I already don't give a damn for sports, might as well drop out of society completely.
If they were to figure out a delivery system like Steam for music, films and books, where I would actually own what I've paid for, I would give up downloading. Imagine buying a film in 1080p and when they decide to upscale it to 4K with new footage and features, it would automatically get updated without you having to dish out more cash. I think that's something we all want. I also want an itunes alternative, a real one, I don't support companies who bully and sue everyone.
I'm an American living in Norway and I was shocked to find that my local library has a large collection of Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games that can be checked out. They also have a sound-proof room where you can play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, as well as a large collection of contemporary music CDs with everything from Metallica to obscure Norwegian music. You can listen to them there or check them out. My wife checked one out and lost it, only finding it several months later and they didn't even make her pay a fee or a late charge. I've been here a while now but back when I had just moved here and was learning Norwegian, I used to go in and use the computers. They had children's games with everything from Oregon Trail-type clones to Harry Potter. It helped me learn vocabulary that wasn't in my books and get a working knowledge of the language, not just the grammatically-correct style that almost no one speaks. One day, a new bitchy librarian decided that I wasn't allowed to use the ones with the games on them because they're "for children", even though there are ten of those PCs and hardly any children in there. Norwegians can be like that, but I digress. I never counted how many PCs they actually have in there, but there are at least 30 for surfing the web, research, or looking through the library's online catalogues. Interestingly, the ones for games run Windows and all the others run Linux.
The reason why they keep losing in court is because of strong privacy laws in Norway. In order to sue anyone for downloading copyrighted material, it would require the ISPs to identify users by IP addresses, something which is a very big no-no here.
We also have an automatic toll system set up in a few places (on highways entering cities, for example) to automatically scan cars' number (license) plates and send bills to the car owners. This information is deleted as soon as the bills are paid and cannot be used by law enforcement. There are also speed cameras all over that take photos of the driver and automatically blur out the passengers. If you get a ticket as the car owner and you were not driving the car, then you don't have to pay it. My wife drives my car and I driver hers, which completely eliminates these sort of fines. Some people drive with burkas and sunglasses! Motorcyclists cannot get fines as they wear helmets. It's quite an interesting system.
Anyway, this topic has been slashdotted several times already, most recently here.
These guys have done exactly what you're aiming to do. You should probably get on their forums and talk to them for some insight. You should also check out their remake, it's a really good game!
Warzone 2100
I second what someone said earlier. If you can get 80 WPM without looking at the keyboard and without making mistakes, then that's spectacular. I took two years of "Word Processing" in high school back in the WordPerfect 5.1 days and 80 WPM is what the teacher could do. I reached that magic point and couldn't really go beyond it. If you're worried about developed carpal tunnel, there isn't much you can do with respect to technique. My advice would be to check out speech recognition. If you're worried about style, hitting the "Y" key with your right hand instead of your left, just do what's most comfortable for you. I've seen some of these stenographers (the court room typists) and they can pull 120 WPM using shorthand. When I moved to a non-English-speaking country, learned the language and had to start typing in it, that was a serious challenge. Keyboards here are QWERTY, but the special vowels are found where the ; ' [ keys are and punctuation is all over the place. It did come after a while, though, and now I'm about as fast in it as I am in English. Nothing like learning a new language and having to type in it to keep your typing skills sharp! Someone else mentioned going to Dworvak and to AZERTY. That's just a bad idea. I spent some time in Belgium and the AZERTY keyboard drove me nuts. It got so annoying, I ended up starting all my emails with: "Hello, just so you know, I'm in Belgium and they use some whacked keyboards here..." and I proceeded to type as I would on a QWERTY keyboard.
It's interesting to me that every single person I've ever met in Norway who lives in Oslo regards the rest of Norway as "the sticks". I have lived in three different parts of Norway, Oslo being one of them. I'm from a large city and Oslo was more like a village than city. I didn't even know how to describe it before a Norwegian called it that. Oslo is okay, there are things happening there and interesting people, there are good restaurants, shops, bars, clubs, cinemas. People outside of Oslo tell me "Oslo is not Norway" whilst people from Oslo tell me "Norway is Oslo". It's all your point of view. I'm reporting on my experiences alone. I have quite a few friends here, but they're all foreigners. I am not intellectually stimulated by Norwegians at the least. The conversations doctors have at lunch revolve around one or two topics. At this time of year, it's cross country skiing. I work with four other doctors in a practice and all we can talk about at lunch is that or swineflu. It was the same when I was working at a major hospital.
The women, in perfect honesty, beat out most American women almost every single time. But I've travelled extensively and I have lived in many places, not just here and in Eastern Europe. The women here pale in comparison to most other European women. Take another country I've lived in, a small one called Iceland. The people there are spectacular. I love them to death. The women? Absolutely fabulous. They refer to Norwegian women as "burger butts". They are a very open and warm people who speak English very well. I felt very accepted there. The bad? Well, they're broke for one. Also, it's impossible to get a job there.
One pet peeve of mine here in Norway is that about 90% of Norwegians don't even try to pronounce my typical English name correctly. When I introduce myself, many of them look down and say "ja vel" (translation: um, okay). It often seems like a put down a lot of the time because many people I have daily dealings with repeatedly mispronounce it. Please. It's a very easy name to pronounce. I've been told that the reason for this is that Norwegians don't like to make mistakes, so they won't try to pronounce my name right for fear of that. When I take a patient into my office for a consultation, about 50% react in the stereotypical xenophobic way when I shake their hands and introduce myself as their doctor and tell them my name. About 30% are embarrassed and try to say it. 10% are just happy I'm there and enthusiastic about getting seen. 10% get it right and become interested in me as a person and ask me where I'm from. I'm of course not here to be asked where I'm from, but it's nice once in a while when someone takes an interest in you. That's a major issue in this culture. I haven't figured out if it's egotism or what, but no one seems interested in each other. I feel like I have good contact with and form a bond with a very small percentage of my patients. There's a good book that describes the people here exactly. I read it in German, the title was Pferden stehlen (Stealing Horses). It might be that in English. Anyway, at one point in the story it's summer and a guy moves into a house out in the country. He looks out his window and sees his neighbour's house and says to himself "hmmm, I think I'll drop by and say hello after Christmas." Haha. To me, that's unbelievable. It takes people here a very long time to warm up to you and people are very happy to stay in the same job in the same place for 30 years. It's almost admired. Someone like me who likes to see the world, experience different cultures, and meet different people are seen with suspicion. I think that having an understand or at least experience with many different cultures is an asset. People here don't see it like that. Since people here travel very little aside from countries like Turkey, Greece, and Spain, they really have nothing to talk about with me.
The other thing that gets me about this first 50% of people who see me with suspicion or loo
Hi, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things about Norway here. I've done this before, you can see a rather lengthy post about Norway here. I hope you find it useful in your immigration plans or at least interesting. I wrote uncommon sense when I posted the article because Norway has the habit of banning everything and making life really boring. Some things do make sense, and I really think my home country, the good old USA, could learn a lot from them. If you've been following the Norwegian news at all, you'll find that Norwegian judges and politicians try to do what they think is best for the people. They're not by any means pro-pirate, but they refuse to give into pressure from big business to make decisions that will compromise the freedom of the people. This is one thing I like about my new home.
I moved to Norway a little more than two years ago. I'm a doctor here, working as a GP/family doctor, I'm originally from the United States. I meet hundreds of Norwegians every week, a new one about every 20 minutes for 9-10 hours a day, so I feel if there's one thing I can comment on, it's the people. In submitting the article, I called it uncommon sense. This is because Norway generally bans everything and brainwashes its people to become suspicious little watch dogs. The fines are so stiff that it scares people into even trying something new or foreign. Take driving, for instance, they are so afraid of going over the speed limit that they drive under it. Norwegian speed limits are notoriously low for the conditions. A straight divided highway in the middle of nowhere will have a speed limit of 80 kph (about 49 mph) and people will drive 70. It drives me insane, especially because I've just switched jobs and have to commute 130 km a day. Turns a 30 min drive into almost an hour. In areas where it's safe and legal to pass, people freak out and call the police because it's something people don't really have the balls to do. I've gotten pulled over a few times for "impolite driving". I know, it sounds ridiculous.
Norway is quite isolated both geographically and socially. This has created a national suspicious and xenophobic attitude towards foreigners and new things. They were also in "unions" with Denmark and Sweden for hundreds of years, which is why they are very nationalistic and haven't joined the European Union. Up until around the 1970s, which is when they found oil, they were little more than farmers without any higher education or purpose. There weren't even roads connecting all the different parts of Norway until the mid 20th century, which is why more than 100 dialects of the Norwegian language survive until today and make learning the Norwegian language difficult. They didn't know a thing about oil so they enlisted an American company to help them find the reserves under the sea and develop the industry. Now they're the richest country in the world. They've avoided the mistakes of other countries and invested the money. Now they're the richest country in the world in terms of money in the bank. They invested a lot of money in socialism, which is why Norwegians don't really worry about anything and have a pretty relaxed attitude towards everything because they're always taken care of.
Health care is also something I can comment on due to my profession, and I believe I've done so here.
Norwegian women are typically not hot. They also suffer from what I call Norway's form of "Westernism". Many of them don't really watch their weight or what they eat. The hot ones know they're hot. Contemporary Norwegian women have also a peculiar trait I'd never seen before moving here, they are much stronger than the Norwegian men and have most of the power in a relationship. This isn't true of the older generation. I lived in Eastern Europe for several years between the US and Norway and those women are the hottest in t
Just to correct a little of what you said. Norway values privacy, but yet publishes everyone's name, age, income, tax paid, and wealth information on the internet that is accessible to everyone. No, I'm not giving out the URL, I'm on there, too. Norway, in theory, values freedom of speech, but enforces divergent opinions and speech socially. If you say something that Norwegians don't like, they'll let you know it through passive aggression.
It is legal to monitor internet use, but they've just stopped renewing the licences given to law firms to do this. Effectively, you could already share files and download as much as you want without fear of prosecution, but now the "large filesharers" don't have to worry, either.
Norway does have a high tax rate. We all pay a minimum of 36% tax, but most people pay 50%. Foreigners are able to take 10% off this up to a certain sum for their first two years here. As of 2003, you are no longer able to import your own car tax and duty free. You can drive a foreign-registered car for up to a year, apply for a one-year extension, but then you're out of luck. The average car here is 3-4x more expensive than in the United States, but it depends on weight, engine size, and CO2 discharge of the car. A new Range Rover that costs 70 000$US will cost almost 500 000$US here.
Health care is not free. Every time you see your GP or go to the "triage" centre for emergencies (legevakt) you have to pay a co-pay (egenandel) that isn't a trivial amount and varies according to the time of day and other things http://www.nav.no/page?id=354 Sick pay and short- and long-term disability is what really sets Norway apart from the rest of the world, but this is seriously abused. You can get a couple of weeks paid time-off for "problems with your neighbours" and very mild miscellaneous psychiatric diagnoses.
The 5-weeks holiday is not exactly mandatory, you do not have to take it, but you will be taxed at 50% for any work you do whilst you should be away, so almost everyone goes away. Depending on where you live, you get, for example, 12% of your salary so that you can go away on holiday. I will not attempt to explain how this works because it's very complicated, look up "ferieloven" if you want to know more.
Maternity leave is 12 months, minimum of 4 weeks for dad. The part about alcohol, which fits in nicely with a discussion about maternity leave, was accurately reported already. A bottle of 20$US spirits (liquor) will cost 100$US here at the State-owned and run off-licence (or liquor store). Interestingly, Sweden has to do away with these now as they are against the European Union's ideas of free trade.
The Winter here is quite depressing ALL THE TIME. If you don't like winter, then seriously do not come to Norway. This last one was hell, even in the southern part of Norway. Snow and cold every day for nearly six months! Dark, overcast days...you're asking for psychological problems if you are in any way affected by the cold and lack of light.
The poster I'm replying to mentioned "hoockers" (sic). You don't need hookers in Norway. It's number one in terms of one night stands. You literally just go out, buy some girls some drinks, and if they're in the mood, they'll ask you to go home with them. If they aren't and you are, then it's slightly more complicated. It involves getting drunk together at least twice.
The problems with Norway that can make living here unbearable are as follows. The Norwegian people up until 30 years ago were just farmers. They had no money, no culture, a poorly expressive language... Now, suddenly, there's a lot of money. The problem is, the farmer mentality prevails. There are, of course, exceptions, but the majority of the country is xenophobic, naïve, and follows the rules blindly. The people are very closed to outsiders, you as a foreigner will never be treated as an equal no matter how long you live here. In order to make Norwegian friends, you wil
Call me pedantic, but I think this one is straightforward. Prisoners sentenced to death by hanging are HANGED by the neck until dead, pictures and art are HUNG on the wall. Juries can be HUNG, there's never been an instance of an entire jury that's been hanged.
Furthermore, it's a fascinating story so I took the time to read all the comments posted under the original story. The second story about the Review-Journal resisting the subpoena misrepresents many of the original comments.
We have strong labour laws where I'm working. I'm a doctor at a medium-sized hospital in a city. This is one of the busier hospitals in the country.
Our work weeks vary, but the law says a working week is 37.5 hours a week. We often work more than that, but our schedule is made so that the six of us who work together rotate. We each get a week of compensatory time off every sixth week. This means that the number of hours we work averages out to 37.5 a week during a six week period. Every hour of overtime we work beyond what we're required by the schedule, we either get paid 1.5x our hourly wage, or we can choose to take that time off later.
If someone calls in sick, and one of us takes that shift, we get paid double our hourly wage. Our night shifts are 19 hours at a time, so that adds up to a lot of money if someone is sick. We all work a lot and we work overtime because the hospital is so busy, so we all get sick, and the cycle continues. I, personally, do not take many extra shifts because I don't like to be sick. Getting a headache after so many hours on the job, or getting a cold or worse isn't worth the extra money to me. Plus, the government taxes us 50% of our overtime earnings. Since I'm American, I'll never get used to that. I don't use the social services here, many of which are great, but there are just as many I don't agree with. So I prefer not to work extra shifts and give the government 50% of what I earn in tax.
Furthermore, we each get 14 days of sick leave a year. The best part is that there's no pressure on you when you're sick. No one asks you about the reasons, gets suspicious, treats you differently, and it's illegal to do so. You get to stay home and recover, the way it should be. Short-term or long-term disability is possible after those 14 days are used up, and you will get paid 100% of your salary. We also each get 5 weeks of paid leave a year, on top of our weeks of compensatory time off. You can imagine how much this costs the state, as they have to employ additional people during the times that we're sick or take off, or pay our colleagues more. I left a life of only work in the States and I've never been happier since doing that. I'll never go back to work in the US, no matter how much doctors there earn.
I'm really looking forward to this game, but I'm not looking forward to buying a Playstation 3 in order to play it. Given their recent history of releasing games only for the Playstation or handhelds, I doubt we'll ever see this come to the PC.
I've been a fan of the Final Fantasy series since the beginning. I'm a happy owner of Final Fantasy VII and VIII for the PC and I've played them both several times. I was never interested in getting a Playstation when it came out. After Super Nintendo, I got a computer and never looked back. Final Fantasy IX certainly tempted me into getting the original PS, but I waited. After X and X-2 came out, it was clear the only way I was going to play these games was either by getting a Playstation 2, or waiting for an emulator. As it turns out, I bought a slimline PS2 a few months after they had hit the shelves. Until this day, the Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games are still the ONLY games I own for the PS2.
I've even played all the Japanese Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games for Famicom and Super Famicom, which could be done on the US consoles with just a cheap adapter:)
I was very surprised to read the following in this article:
"DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years"
For some reason, I thought that both CDs and DVDs each have a shelf life of around 100 years. I think that was one of the benefits of owning a CD over a tape. I remember reading that back in 1992 when I made the decision to buy a CD player and start buying music CDs. Tapes can get de-magnetised, twisted up, caught in tape players etc. But the real reason I started buying CDs is because of the revolutionary "next track" function! I suspect many kids thought the same. Why have to fast-forward when you can immediately get where you want to be on a CD? My apologies for this being a little off-topic, just got a bit nostalgic there.
So film companies want their digital masters to last hundreds of years why? So they can capitalise on them again when our 15 year-old copies have "degraded" and are no-longer watchable? Or will they capitalise on our great-grandchildren in 100 years? If a 15 year shelf-life is indeed true, I feel sorry for all those who went out and purchased tonnes of DVD films. What's been bothering me are these "ultimate collectors' edition" re-packagings that the film companies have been selling. Yes, I love the film Blade Runner, but I swear I'm not going to go out and buy another copy of it. Please just release the original film, the way the director wanted it to be seen. I don't care about owning a six DVD collection of all the different versions of the film. I just want the longest, un-cut and uncensored version available! If they sold it this way, and all us Blade Runner lovers bought a copy, would they need to keep transferring the original to new media every year?
Over 200 000$ a year to take care of one film's digital master seems like a ridiculous amount of money. I'll gladly take on the responsibility of a couple of films for them, and I'll only charge them half what they're paying now. One could build a pretty sweet rig with a nice RAID array for a fraction of the cost and keep a few digital masters there on the hard drives.
I have had the displeasure of living in Poland for the last four years. What you need to understand is that all foreign films/series released to VHS, DVD, and TV are dubbed into Polish BY ONE MAN. Yes, that's right. One guy does ALL the voices for ALL the actors in EVERY movie! If it is decided that a certain film will not be dubbed (and there are many of these), there will never be the possibility of watching this film by Polish-speaking people, unless they speak English. In the large cities, finding someone who speaks English is becoming easier as capitalism takes over, but let me add that when I arrived here four years ago, absolutely no one spoke English! I had to visit the local university's English department to find any. So in order to bring the people of Poland classics like Twin Peaks, and a whole slew of Hollywood and non-Hollywood films, there's a group that focuses on writing subtitles to these films and series. It's basically something anyone can contribute to, and it's just like the Polish police to shut it down.
Every good thing that happens in this country gets shut down. It's completely hypocritical and they are targeting the wrong people. I live in a city of around 700 000 inhabitants and there are eight copy shops within 500 metres in any direction of my flat (I don't even live in the centre). I can go out to any of these copy shops and have a copyrighted textbook photocopied for about 3 cents (US) a page. Some copy shops even keep a library of texts that one can look through and order. Anything you want you can get, whatever subjects you're studying. One guy even has a website where you can order copied books beforehand, pay by credit card, and pick them up at your leisure! Most of the students here in Poland have never owned a real textbook, everyone buys photocopies. While it's true that many Polish students live off of less than 100$US a month (the average salary here is about 300$US a month or 5zl an hour so their parents don't have much to give them), the copy shops are making their living off of copyright infringement. Any day of the week, one can also go down to a special market and purchase bootlegged DVDs, CDs, software, and games. The police don't do much about these people, either.
In order to combat book photocopying, the government started a tax on all photocopies of 3gr a page (about 1 cent US). Now all photocopies are about 4 cents a page, and the tax goes not to the publishers or companies being infringed upon, but to the government. I think it's something like the tax the Canadian government puts on blank computer media. I think it's ridiculous. In typical Polish style, rather than identify the problem and deal with it, they do something completely stupid. For two years after I moved here, there was dog shit all over the pavement/sidewalks wherever people walked. You had to really look where you were going, because you would step in it. Rather than teach people to curb their dogs, or give fines for not picking up after animals, they hired people to go around every morning and clean the sidewalks of dog shit! They need to think about their labour laws and how much people are being paid (in an EU country, no less!), but instead they worry about some young people doing the people of Poland a service by writing subtitles for those who don't know English (or Turkish, or Greek, or Hindi).
You took that completely out of context. It's a legitimate, non-rhetorical question. I don't see you making any attempt to answer it nor do I see you formulating an intelligent response. In Europe, generally speaking, prison is more about rehabilitation than penalising. Since you didn't understand the question, let me rephrase it: How should Gary be rehabilitated and does he need it?
The bottom line is that Gary is British, not American, and the last I checked, is not subject to being extradited to any country where they treat prisoners inhumanely. Do you find that funny, too? How would you feel if someone from your country was extradited to the UK?
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever that was in May, it was not a "successful test of its high-speed transportation technology" in the sense of any kind of working prototype. Perhaps they successfully tested the ball bearings intended for use in part of the system. Maybe they were testing a design for part of the brake system. Maybe it was a battery prototype. Whatever it was, it was one very small piece of a very large and complicated system. There was no tube, no vacuum, no elevated rail, no proof of concept for anything that really marks the hyperloop.
It will not take 12 years to build the Sweden-Finland connector. It will take 12 years to finish designing and testing the concept so that we can confidently finance a 500km experiment.
I'm personally interested in the Hyperloop. I'd like to see it progress. But to succeed, we have to proceed with reason, grounded in reality. Hyperbolic claims of accomplishment won't help.
This. I'm also very interested in the hyperloop and would like to see it become a reality. But this article....
How did they calculate a flight duration of 3.5 hours? And the distance? It's a 400 km (250 mi) journey by air. Flight duration is less than an hour (around 50 minutes depending on the wind). All of this you can easily look up. From the PDF, it looks to me as though the hyperloops will have several stops between Stockholm and Helsinki. That adds to the time. And what sort of ticket prices are we looking at? A last-minute flight leaving now with SAS costs around 70-100 USD (to put it simply as the Finns have the Euro and Swedes have the Swedish krona). Booking ahead of time can cost 50 USD and much less when there are sales and deals. Your average person making this journey will be one who probably makes it often and travels light, e.g. for business or commuting for work so the time required to drop off and pick up luggage doesn't need to be factored in. Checking in on the flight is usually done online or via an app with electronic boarding pass. Boarding starts around 20 min before departure, which is when they say you absolutely need to be at the gate by. Security (another topic Slashdotters love) in Sweden and Finland is generally more professional, respectful and streamlined than what you'd find in the US and thus doesn't take very long (but don't take my word for it, go and experience it for yourself). So let's say you arrive at the airport 30 min ahead of departure and the flight is 60 minutes, then we're talking an hour and a half for the journey at a cost of about 50 USD. That's not bad all things considered in the wide world of air travel. Note that I purposely did not factor in transportation to and from the airports because where the actual hyperloops stations will be is still a huge unknown.
I usually don't respond to the threads on /. about piracy; I don't see any point in debating it. I'm pretty much going to do it regardless until they hand over full control of me being able to do what I want with something after I have purchased it. I believe many others out there have the same reasons, so I decided I would post them.
1. It's easy. I turn on the computer, surf over to The Pirate Bay, search for what I want, click on the magnet link and a few minutes later I have it.
2. Freedom. I can then do whatever I want with the file. Put it on my laptop and take it with me, watch it on my 27" monitor, stream it to a TV or run it from a computer connected to TV via HDMI. I can give it to a friend on a USB stick. Save it on my hard drive for later. Pause it in the middle to do something else and resume later.
3. Cost. Buying a new television every few years is expensive. I don't know about you, but I want to retire early. I move around a lot because of work and having a television with me is not an option. Also, in my country of Norway, we have to pay a TV licence fee of around 500 dollars a year if we have one. I hate Norwegian television, it's boring and ethnocentric. The rest of the world seems to be in a television series renaissance, but here it's the same boring shit that no one outside of this small and insignificant country cares about. Mostly about "Big Brother" type of programming and gatherings of celebrities.
4. Advertising and commercials. I don't have to fucking watch them when I download something. Period.
5. The Man. I'm just trying to make my way in this world and I'm sick of people better off than me trying to get their hands in my pockets. I don't want theirs, I just want mine. And to keep it. Knowing that they didn't get it this time gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I will ultimately buy the stuff I really like because I support the artists/authors. I have over 1000 music CDs in storage I've bought since my first CD player in 1993. Now, I try to buy FLAC or 320 kbps MP3s directly from the bands. I have over 400 games on Steam, many from Indy publishers, most I haven't even played. Especially since I gave up computer games as my new year's resolution 2013. But I still buy them because I support what they do, and I like that I will always have them on Steam. Movies? They release them on DVD, then Blue Ray, then a special edition, then an uncut with added scenes, then 20 years later with lost fucking footage. This doesn't make me feel like they give a shit about me getting what I am paying for. Sure, I could forgo films and television series completely, but there's that social aspect of being a part of conversations at work and at gatherings that I would miss out on. I already don't give a damn for sports, might as well drop out of society completely.
If they were to figure out a delivery system like Steam for music, films and books, where I would actually own what I've paid for, I would give up downloading. Imagine buying a film in 1080p and when they decide to upscale it to 4K with new footage and features, it would automatically get updated without you having to dish out more cash. I think that's something we all want. I also want an itunes alternative, a real one, I don't support companies who bully and sue everyone.
I'm an American living in Norway and I was shocked to find that my local library has a large collection of Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games that can be checked out. They also have a sound-proof room where you can play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, as well as a large collection of contemporary music CDs with everything from Metallica to obscure Norwegian music. You can listen to them there or check them out. My wife checked one out and lost it, only finding it several months later and they didn't even make her pay a fee or a late charge. I've been here a while now but back when I had just moved here and was learning Norwegian, I used to go in and use the computers. They had children's games with everything from Oregon Trail-type clones to Harry Potter. It helped me learn vocabulary that wasn't in my books and get a working knowledge of the language, not just the grammatically-correct style that almost no one speaks. One day, a new bitchy librarian decided that I wasn't allowed to use the ones with the games on them because they're "for children", even though there are ten of those PCs and hardly any children in there. Norwegians can be like that, but I digress. I never counted how many PCs they actually have in there, but there are at least 30 for surfing the web, research, or looking through the library's online catalogues. Interestingly, the ones for games run Windows and all the others run Linux.
The reason why they keep losing in court is because of strong privacy laws in Norway. In order to sue anyone for downloading copyrighted material, it would require the ISPs to identify users by IP addresses, something which is a very big no-no here.
We also have an automatic toll system set up in a few places (on highways entering cities, for example) to automatically scan cars' number (license) plates and send bills to the car owners. This information is deleted as soon as the bills are paid and cannot be used by law enforcement. There are also speed cameras all over that take photos of the driver and automatically blur out the passengers. If you get a ticket as the car owner and you were not driving the car, then you don't have to pay it. My wife drives my car and I driver hers, which completely eliminates these sort of fines. Some people drive with burkas and sunglasses! Motorcyclists cannot get fines as they wear helmets. It's quite an interesting system.
Anyway, this topic has been slashdotted several times already, most recently here.
These guys have done exactly what you're aiming to do. You should probably get on their forums and talk to them for some insight. You should also check out their remake, it's a really good game! Warzone 2100
I second what someone said earlier. If you can get 80 WPM without looking at the keyboard and without making mistakes, then that's spectacular. I took two years of "Word Processing" in high school back in the WordPerfect 5.1 days and 80 WPM is what the teacher could do. I reached that magic point and couldn't really go beyond it. If you're worried about developed carpal tunnel, there isn't much you can do with respect to technique. My advice would be to check out speech recognition. If you're worried about style, hitting the "Y" key with your right hand instead of your left, just do what's most comfortable for you. I've seen some of these stenographers (the court room typists) and they can pull 120 WPM using shorthand. When I moved to a non-English-speaking country, learned the language and had to start typing in it, that was a serious challenge. Keyboards here are QWERTY, but the special vowels are found where the ; ' [ keys are and punctuation is all over the place. It did come after a while, though, and now I'm about as fast in it as I am in English. Nothing like learning a new language and having to type in it to keep your typing skills sharp! Someone else mentioned going to Dworvak and to AZERTY. That's just a bad idea. I spent some time in Belgium and the AZERTY keyboard drove me nuts. It got so annoying, I ended up starting all my emails with: "Hello, just so you know, I'm in Belgium and they use some whacked keyboards here..." and I proceeded to type as I would on a QWERTY keyboard.
It's interesting to me that every single person I've ever met in Norway who lives in Oslo regards the rest of Norway as "the sticks". I have lived in three different parts of Norway, Oslo being one of them. I'm from a large city and Oslo was more like a village than city. I didn't even know how to describe it before a Norwegian called it that. Oslo is okay, there are things happening there and interesting people, there are good restaurants, shops, bars, clubs, cinemas. People outside of Oslo tell me "Oslo is not Norway" whilst people from Oslo tell me "Norway is Oslo". It's all your point of view. I'm reporting on my experiences alone. I have quite a few friends here, but they're all foreigners. I am not intellectually stimulated by Norwegians at the least. The conversations doctors have at lunch revolve around one or two topics. At this time of year, it's cross country skiing. I work with four other doctors in a practice and all we can talk about at lunch is that or swineflu. It was the same when I was working at a major hospital.
The women, in perfect honesty, beat out most American women almost every single time. But I've travelled extensively and I have lived in many places, not just here and in Eastern Europe. The women here pale in comparison to most other European women. Take another country I've lived in, a small one called Iceland. The people there are spectacular. I love them to death. The women? Absolutely fabulous. They refer to Norwegian women as "burger butts". They are a very open and warm people who speak English very well. I felt very accepted there. The bad? Well, they're broke for one. Also, it's impossible to get a job there.
One pet peeve of mine here in Norway is that about 90% of Norwegians don't even try to pronounce my typical English name correctly. When I introduce myself, many of them look down and say "ja vel" (translation: um, okay). It often seems like a put down a lot of the time because many people I have daily dealings with repeatedly mispronounce it. Please. It's a very easy name to pronounce. I've been told that the reason for this is that Norwegians don't like to make mistakes, so they won't try to pronounce my name right for fear of that. When I take a patient into my office for a consultation, about 50% react in the stereotypical xenophobic way when I shake their hands and introduce myself as their doctor and tell them my name. About 30% are embarrassed and try to say it. 10% are just happy I'm there and enthusiastic about getting seen. 10% get it right and become interested in me as a person and ask me where I'm from. I'm of course not here to be asked where I'm from, but it's nice once in a while when someone takes an interest in you. That's a major issue in this culture. I haven't figured out if it's egotism or what, but no one seems interested in each other. I feel like I have good contact with and form a bond with a very small percentage of my patients. There's a good book that describes the people here exactly. I read it in German, the title was Pferden stehlen (Stealing Horses). It might be that in English. Anyway, at one point in the story it's summer and a guy moves into a house out in the country. He looks out his window and sees his neighbour's house and says to himself "hmmm, I think I'll drop by and say hello after Christmas." Haha. To me, that's unbelievable. It takes people here a very long time to warm up to you and people are very happy to stay in the same job in the same place for 30 years. It's almost admired. Someone like me who likes to see the world, experience different cultures, and meet different people are seen with suspicion. I think that having an understand or at least experience with many different cultures is an asset. People here don't see it like that. Since people here travel very little aside from countries like Turkey, Greece, and Spain, they really have nothing to talk about with me.
The other thing that gets me about this first 50% of people who see me with suspicion or loo
Hi, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things about Norway here. I've done this before, you can see a rather lengthy post about Norway here. I hope you find it useful in your immigration plans or at least interesting. I wrote uncommon sense when I posted the article because Norway has the habit of banning everything and making life really boring. Some things do make sense, and I really think my home country, the good old USA, could learn a lot from them. If you've been following the Norwegian news at all, you'll find that Norwegian judges and politicians try to do what they think is best for the people. They're not by any means pro-pirate, but they refuse to give into pressure from big business to make decisions that will compromise the freedom of the people. This is one thing I like about my new home.
I moved to Norway a little more than two years ago. I'm a doctor here, working as a GP/family doctor, I'm originally from the United States. I meet hundreds of Norwegians every week, a new one about every 20 minutes for 9-10 hours a day, so I feel if there's one thing I can comment on, it's the people. In submitting the article, I called it uncommon sense. This is because Norway generally bans everything and brainwashes its people to become suspicious little watch dogs. The fines are so stiff that it scares people into even trying something new or foreign. Take driving, for instance, they are so afraid of going over the speed limit that they drive under it. Norwegian speed limits are notoriously low for the conditions. A straight divided highway in the middle of nowhere will have a speed limit of 80 kph (about 49 mph) and people will drive 70. It drives me insane, especially because I've just switched jobs and have to commute 130 km a day. Turns a 30 min drive into almost an hour. In areas where it's safe and legal to pass, people freak out and call the police because it's something people don't really have the balls to do. I've gotten pulled over a few times for "impolite driving". I know, it sounds ridiculous.
Norway is quite isolated both geographically and socially. This has created a national suspicious and xenophobic attitude towards foreigners and new things. They were also in "unions" with Denmark and Sweden for hundreds of years, which is why they are very nationalistic and haven't joined the European Union. Up until around the 1970s, which is when they found oil, they were little more than farmers without any higher education or purpose. There weren't even roads connecting all the different parts of Norway until the mid 20th century, which is why more than 100 dialects of the Norwegian language survive until today and make learning the Norwegian language difficult. They didn't know a thing about oil so they enlisted an American company to help them find the reserves under the sea and develop the industry. Now they're the richest country in the world. They've avoided the mistakes of other countries and invested the money. Now they're the richest country in the world in terms of money in the bank. They invested a lot of money in socialism, which is why Norwegians don't really worry about anything and have a pretty relaxed attitude towards everything because they're always taken care of.
Health care is also something I can comment on due to my profession, and I believe I've done so here.
Norwegian women are typically not hot. They also suffer from what I call Norway's form of "Westernism". Many of them don't really watch their weight or what they eat. The hot ones know they're hot. Contemporary Norwegian women have also a peculiar trait I'd never seen before moving here, they are much stronger than the Norwegian men and have most of the power in a relationship. This isn't true of the older generation. I lived in Eastern Europe for several years between the US and Norway and those women are the hottest in t
What I'd like to know is, why haven't we PC gamers received the Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC - The Lost and the Damned? We're still waiting.
If you actually understood the opposition, then you would be neither a Slashdotter nor a sensible person.
Just to correct a little of what you said. Norway values privacy, but yet publishes everyone's name, age, income, tax paid, and wealth information on the internet that is accessible to everyone. No, I'm not giving out the URL, I'm on there, too. Norway, in theory, values freedom of speech, but enforces divergent opinions and speech socially. If you say something that Norwegians don't like, they'll let you know it through passive aggression.
It is legal to monitor internet use, but they've just stopped renewing the licences given to law firms to do this. Effectively, you could already share files and download as much as you want without fear of prosecution, but now the "large filesharers" don't have to worry, either.
Norway does have a high tax rate. We all pay a minimum of 36% tax, but most people pay 50%. Foreigners are able to take 10% off this up to a certain sum for their first two years here. As of 2003, you are no longer able to import your own car tax and duty free. You can drive a foreign-registered car for up to a year, apply for a one-year extension, but then you're out of luck. The average car here is 3-4x more expensive than in the United States, but it depends on weight, engine size, and CO2 discharge of the car. A new Range Rover that costs 70 000$US will cost almost 500 000$US here.
Health care is not free. Every time you see your GP or go to the "triage" centre for emergencies (legevakt) you have to pay a co-pay (egenandel) that isn't a trivial amount and varies according to the time of day and other things http://www.nav.no/page?id=354
Sick pay and short- and long-term disability is what really sets Norway apart from the rest of the world, but this is seriously abused. You can get a couple of weeks paid time-off for "problems with your neighbours" and very mild miscellaneous psychiatric diagnoses.
The 5-weeks holiday is not exactly mandatory, you do not have to take it, but you will be taxed at 50% for any work you do whilst you should be away, so almost everyone goes away. Depending on where you live, you get, for example, 12% of your salary so that you can go away on holiday. I will not attempt to explain how this works because it's very complicated, look up "ferieloven" if you want to know more.
Maternity leave is 12 months, minimum of 4 weeks for dad. The part about alcohol, which fits in nicely with a discussion about maternity leave, was accurately reported already. A bottle of 20$US spirits (liquor) will cost 100$US here at the State-owned and run off-licence (or liquor store). Interestingly, Sweden has to do away with these now as they are against the European Union's ideas of free trade.
The Winter here is quite depressing ALL THE TIME. If you don't like winter, then seriously do not come to Norway. This last one was hell, even in the southern part of Norway. Snow and cold every day for nearly six months! Dark, overcast days...you're asking for psychological problems if you are in any way affected by the cold and lack of light.
The poster I'm replying to mentioned "hoockers" (sic). You don't need hookers in Norway. It's number one in terms of one night stands. You literally just go out, buy some girls some drinks, and if they're in the mood, they'll ask you to go home with them. If they aren't and you are, then it's slightly more complicated. It involves getting drunk together at least twice.
The problems with Norway that can make living here unbearable are as follows. The Norwegian people up until 30 years ago were just farmers. They had no money, no culture, a poorly expressive language... Now, suddenly, there's a lot of money. The problem is, the farmer mentality prevails. There are, of course, exceptions, but the majority of the country is xenophobic, naïve, and follows the rules blindly. The people are very closed to outsiders, you as a foreigner will never be treated as an equal no matter how long you live here. In order to make Norwegian friends, you wil
Great, I look forward to seeing an extra ZeniMax screen every time I fire up an ID game.
Just the name Jack Bauer instils fear in broke Pennsylvanian caffeine junkies looking for their next fix.
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I spell differently.
Call me pedantic, but I think this one is straightforward. Prisoners sentenced to death by hanging are HANGED by the neck until dead, pictures and art are HUNG on the wall. Juries can be HUNG, there's never been an instance of an entire jury that's been hanged.
Furthermore, it's a fascinating story so I took the time to read all the comments posted under the original story. The second story about the Review-Journal resisting the subpoena misrepresents many of the original comments.
We have strong labour laws where I'm working. I'm a doctor at a medium-sized hospital in a city. This is one of the busier hospitals in the country. Our work weeks vary, but the law says a working week is 37.5 hours a week. We often work more than that, but our schedule is made so that the six of us who work together rotate. We each get a week of compensatory time off every sixth week. This means that the number of hours we work averages out to 37.5 a week during a six week period. Every hour of overtime we work beyond what we're required by the schedule, we either get paid 1.5x our hourly wage, or we can choose to take that time off later. If someone calls in sick, and one of us takes that shift, we get paid double our hourly wage. Our night shifts are 19 hours at a time, so that adds up to a lot of money if someone is sick. We all work a lot and we work overtime because the hospital is so busy, so we all get sick, and the cycle continues. I, personally, do not take many extra shifts because I don't like to be sick. Getting a headache after so many hours on the job, or getting a cold or worse isn't worth the extra money to me. Plus, the government taxes us 50% of our overtime earnings. Since I'm American, I'll never get used to that. I don't use the social services here, many of which are great, but there are just as many I don't agree with. So I prefer not to work extra shifts and give the government 50% of what I earn in tax. Furthermore, we each get 14 days of sick leave a year. The best part is that there's no pressure on you when you're sick. No one asks you about the reasons, gets suspicious, treats you differently, and it's illegal to do so. You get to stay home and recover, the way it should be. Short-term or long-term disability is possible after those 14 days are used up, and you will get paid 100% of your salary. We also each get 5 weeks of paid leave a year, on top of our weeks of compensatory time off. You can imagine how much this costs the state, as they have to employ additional people during the times that we're sick or take off, or pay our colleagues more. I left a life of only work in the States and I've never been happier since doing that. I'll never go back to work in the US, no matter how much doctors there earn.
I'm really looking forward to this game, but I'm not looking forward to buying a Playstation 3 in order to play it. Given their recent history of releasing games only for the Playstation or handhelds, I doubt we'll ever see this come to the PC. I've been a fan of the Final Fantasy series since the beginning. I'm a happy owner of Final Fantasy VII and VIII for the PC and I've played them both several times. I was never interested in getting a Playstation when it came out. After Super Nintendo, I got a computer and never looked back. Final Fantasy IX certainly tempted me into getting the original PS, but I waited. After X and X-2 came out, it was clear the only way I was going to play these games was either by getting a Playstation 2, or waiting for an emulator. As it turns out, I bought a slimline PS2 a few months after they had hit the shelves. Until this day, the Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games are still the ONLY games I own for the PS2. I've even played all the Japanese Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games for Famicom and Super Famicom, which could be done on the US consoles with just a cheap adapter :)
I thought the headline read "compressed air can nears trial". Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link!
I was very surprised to read the following in this article:
"DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years"
For some reason, I thought that both CDs and DVDs each have a shelf life of around 100 years. I think that was one of the benefits of owning a CD over a tape. I remember reading that back in 1992 when I made the decision to buy a CD player and start buying music CDs. Tapes can get de-magnetised, twisted up, caught in tape players etc. But the real reason I started buying CDs is because of the revolutionary "next track" function! I suspect many kids thought the same. Why have to fast-forward when you can immediately get where you want to be on a CD? My apologies for this being a little off-topic, just got a bit nostalgic there.
So film companies want their digital masters to last hundreds of years why? So they can capitalise on them again when our 15 year-old copies have "degraded" and are no-longer watchable? Or will they capitalise on our great-grandchildren in 100 years? If a 15 year shelf-life is indeed true, I feel sorry for all those who went out and purchased tonnes of DVD films. What's been bothering me are these "ultimate collectors' edition" re-packagings that the film companies have been selling. Yes, I love the film Blade Runner, but I swear I'm not going to go out and buy another copy of it. Please just release the original film, the way the director wanted it to be seen. I don't care about owning a six DVD collection of all the different versions of the film. I just want the longest, un-cut and uncensored version available! If they sold it this way, and all us Blade Runner lovers bought a copy, would they need to keep transferring the original to new media every year?
Over 200 000$ a year to take care of one film's digital master seems like a ridiculous amount of money. I'll gladly take on the responsibility of a couple of films for them, and I'll only charge them half what they're paying now. One could build a pretty sweet rig with a nice RAID array for a fraction of the cost and keep a few digital masters there on the hard drives.
In order to sell more copies in the States, all Rockstar needs to do now is put a big "Banned in Britain" sticker on the box!
That is the salary in Warsaw, which is much higher than the rest of Poland.
Have you tried the MSNBC channel? ;)
I have had the displeasure of living in Poland for the last four years. What you need to understand is that all foreign films/series released to VHS, DVD, and TV are dubbed into Polish BY ONE MAN. Yes, that's right. One guy does ALL the voices for ALL the actors in EVERY movie! If it is decided that a certain film will not be dubbed (and there are many of these), there will never be the possibility of watching this film by Polish-speaking people, unless they speak English. In the large cities, finding someone who speaks English is becoming easier as capitalism takes over, but let me add that when I arrived here four years ago, absolutely no one spoke English! I had to visit the local university's English department to find any. So in order to bring the people of Poland classics like Twin Peaks, and a whole slew of Hollywood and non-Hollywood films, there's a group that focuses on writing subtitles to these films and series. It's basically something anyone can contribute to, and it's just like the Polish police to shut it down.
Every good thing that happens in this country gets shut down. It's completely hypocritical and they are targeting the wrong people. I live in a city of around 700 000 inhabitants and there are eight copy shops within 500 metres in any direction of my flat (I don't even live in the centre). I can go out to any of these copy shops and have a copyrighted textbook photocopied for about 3 cents (US) a page. Some copy shops even keep a library of texts that one can look through and order. Anything you want you can get, whatever subjects you're studying. One guy even has a website where you can order copied books beforehand, pay by credit card, and pick them up at your leisure! Most of the students here in Poland have never owned a real textbook, everyone buys photocopies. While it's true that many Polish students live off of less than 100$US a month (the average salary here is about 300$US a month or 5zl an hour so their parents don't have much to give them), the copy shops are making their living off of copyright infringement. Any day of the week, one can also go down to a special market and purchase bootlegged DVDs, CDs, software, and games. The police don't do much about these people, either.
In order to combat book photocopying, the government started a tax on all photocopies of 3gr a page (about 1 cent US). Now all photocopies are about 4 cents a page, and the tax goes not to the publishers or companies being infringed upon, but to the government. I think it's something like the tax the Canadian government puts on blank computer media. I think it's ridiculous. In typical Polish style, rather than identify the problem and deal with it, they do something completely stupid. For two years after I moved here, there was dog shit all over the pavement/sidewalks wherever people walked. You had to really look where you were going, because you would step in it. Rather than teach people to curb their dogs, or give fines for not picking up after animals, they hired people to go around every morning and clean the sidewalks of dog shit! They need to think about their labour laws and how much people are being paid (in an EU country, no less!), but instead they worry about some young people doing the people of Poland a service by writing subtitles for those who don't know English (or Turkish, or Greek, or Hindi).
Money was at stake? The outcome was obvious!
There is no spoon!
You took that completely out of context. It's a legitimate, non-rhetorical question. I don't see you making any attempt to answer it nor do I see you formulating an intelligent response. In Europe, generally speaking, prison is more about rehabilitation than penalising. Since you didn't understand the question, let me rephrase it: How should Gary be rehabilitated and does he need it?
The bottom line is that Gary is British, not American, and the last I checked, is not subject to being extradited to any country where they treat prisoners inhumanely. Do you find that funny, too? How would you feel if someone from your country was extradited to the UK?