This information is rather US-centric and then specific to people who get the the Sci Fi Channel via their cable service provider. Isn't such news better relegated to slashboxes especially when stories like the following don't make it to the front page.
The fact is that B5 is a American production, and the largest market by far for anything B5-related. The rights having been transferred from TNT, which seems to have lost interest in the series, means there's a larger chance of video releases (DVD or VHS). Also, non-US networks are also more likely to pick up the series if it gets attention in the US.
BTW, if any Finns read this, Crusade starts tonight on TV2 at 23.40
If you're interrested in fan-fic you might like Gareth Williams' great alternate universe epic A Dark Distorted Mirror. The technomages play a greater role in these novels than in the series. Everyone should go check this out!
Except that this is not a problem with X fonts. The website actually gives fontsizes in pixels, so the 10px text will look miniscule on any high resolution display (I run my 17" monitor at 1280x1024.) This is pretty indecent for someone who claims to be a webdesigner.
The image of a computer monitor is clearly greater than that of a TV, but we use them differently. You sit a least 3 m away from a TV, while you're 0.5 m away from the computer screen. Obviously it's easier to see flaws of the computer image. GUIs usually use single-pixel lines and shapes, drawn in high contrast colours. TV images are usually of far more organic subjects, in soft lighting and greater number of colors - i.e. TV is highly anti-aliased. This makes it ideal for moving images and photographs, while text and diagrams become almost unusable.
As screen resolution and area grows greater, we see more organic GUIs develop; many GTK/QT themes, MacOS X, the Winamp/xmms skins and so on.
Also, since GEO is directly above the equator, you would not be able to get good images of northern and southern areas of earth (areas of special interrest to potential customers, such as researchers and mining/oil companies). The fact that it's sitting in GEO also means you only get images of one hemisphere, while a low, polar orbit can cover all of the globe in relativly little time (three days in this case).
I think you've got this all wrong - this isn't about impressing foreigners, it's domestic policy. Putting a man in space will create a great deal of nationalist excitement and good will towards the Chinese government, which it needs to deal with coming economic difficulties (the decrepid state-owned industries among other things).
As to the whole China Is Evil, China Is The Enemy thing, I really don't think China has to be an enemy of the USA (and certainly not of Europe). After a century of World War people have gotten so used to having an enemy that it seems they can't handle living in peace anymore. Yes, China's government is pretty bad, but I think cooperation will be more efficent than conflict, and it will probably change things faster, even if it wont be as exciting (no big guns, no nifty BombCams on CNN).
Well, Transmeta seems to be saying we'll see Crusoe-based devices in quantity by next Christmas. Motorola's tech is five years of according to the article (which probably means seven in the Real World).
If Crusoe isn't a wellknown brand by then, it'll never be.
This is metanol we're talking about here. Metanol is made from cellulose (like waste wood or corn cobs). The same amount of CO2 and water would be released when you burn the metanol as when the rawmaterials rot or are burned.
Crusoe is a VLIW (128 bits) processor family designed for low power consumption. It uses "Code Morphing" software to translate from any instructions set (such as x86) to it's own ISA.
Two chips were shown, a 400 MHz chip for internet appliancies and a 700 MHz for ultralight laptops. Using "LongRun" power management the chips use as little as 1 watt of power during average use. A demo showed a 667 MHz chip drawing about 2 watts to play a DVD movie, while an Pentium III 500 used 7 watts. A real world system's supposed to have about twice the battery life of an equivalent Intel-based system. The 667 MHz chip performs like a PIII 500, and the translating software is still being tweaked.
Transmeta will not release the nativer architecture of the chips. Thanks to the efficent emulation software, they can give good x86 performance and still change the silicon without worrying about backwards compatability. The two chips announced have partially different ISAs, but both appear identical to a Pentium to applications.
There's real functioning silicion, shown running both Windows and Linux. IBM will provide semiconductor tech and fabs when manufacturing starts in mid-year.
Transmeta has developed a special "Mobile Linux OS", a mini-distro for diskless handhelds and the like. (note: the OS runs in x86 emulation, not natively) The power management enhancements made to Linux will be merged into future kernel releases.
Your universe is required to follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics. God is not. Hence anything describing your universe as violating its own laws must be false. However God is unaffected by the laws of the universe because he is not bound by the universe.
This of course depends on your definition of universe. One might consider what we percieve as localized phenomenon within something greater (infinite). I read a book a few years ago by Isaac Asimov (I think), where he suggested that the universe is a random bubble of low entrophy in an infinite space of high entrophy.
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The fact is that B5 is a American production, and the largest market by far for anything B5-related. The rights having been transferred from TNT, which seems to have lost interest in the series, means there's a larger chance of video releases (DVD or VHS). Also, non-US networks are also more likely to pick up the series if it gets attention in the US.
BTW, if any Finns read this, Crusade starts tonight on TV2 at 23.40
If you're interrested in fan-fic you might like Gareth Williams' great alternate universe epic A Dark Distorted Mirror . The technomages play a greater role in these novels than in the series. Everyone should go check this out!
Except that this is not a problem with X fonts. The website actually gives fontsizes in pixels, so the 10px text will look miniscule on any high resolution display (I run my 17" monitor at 1280x1024.) This is pretty indecent for someone who claims to be a webdesigner.
As screen resolution and area grows greater, we see more organic GUIs develop; many GTK/QT themes, MacOS X, the Winamp/xmms skins and so on.
Also, since GEO is directly above the equator, you would not be able to get good images of northern and southern areas of earth (areas of special interrest to potential customers, such as researchers and mining/oil companies). The fact that it's sitting in GEO also means you only get images of one hemisphere, while a low, polar orbit can cover all of the globe in relativly little time (three days in this case).
As to the whole China Is Evil, China Is The Enemy thing, I really don't think China has to be an enemy of the USA (and certainly not of Europe). After a century of World War people have gotten so used to having an enemy that it seems they can't handle living in peace anymore. Yes, China's government is pretty bad, but I think cooperation will be more efficent than conflict, and it will probably change things faster, even if it wont be as exciting (no big guns, no nifty BombCams on CNN).
If Crusoe isn't a wellknown brand by then, it'll never be.
This is metanol we're talking about here. Metanol is made from cellulose (like waste wood or corn cobs). The same amount of CO2 and water would be released when you burn the metanol as when the rawmaterials rot or are burned.
Two chips were shown, a 400 MHz chip for internet appliancies and a 700 MHz for ultralight laptops. Using "LongRun" power management the chips use as little as 1 watt of power during average use. A demo showed a 667 MHz chip drawing about 2 watts to play a DVD movie, while an Pentium III 500 used 7 watts. A real world system's supposed to have about twice the battery life of an equivalent Intel-based system. The 667 MHz chip performs like a PIII 500, and the translating software is still being tweaked.
Transmeta will not release the nativer architecture of the chips. Thanks to the efficent emulation software, they can give good x86 performance and still change the silicon without worrying about backwards compatability. The two chips announced have partially different ISAs, but both appear identical to a Pentium to applications.
There's real functioning silicion, shown running both Windows and Linux. IBM will provide semiconductor tech and fabs when manufacturing starts in mid-year.
Transmeta has developed a special "Mobile Linux OS", a mini-distro for diskless handhelds and the like. (note: the OS runs in x86 emulation, not natively) The power management enhancements made to Linux will be merged into future kernel releases.
This of course depends on your definition of universe. One might consider what we percieve as localized phenomenon within something greater (infinite). I read a book a few years ago by Isaac Asimov (I think), where he suggested that the universe is a random bubble of low entrophy in an infinite space of high entrophy.