As a young whippersnapper in the late 70's/early 80's reading about SETI and their magical hydrogen line, I wondered this:
Terrestrial sources avoid using this frequency precisely because it is so useful to science
A giant sattelite broadcasting a powerful omnidirectional signal in this band would essentially ruin the science of radio astronomy
If we are broadcasting a powerful omnidirectional signal on a given frequency, how can we look for signals in that frequency range?
Therefore, why would alien intelligences use this frequency? It would not only affect their own ability to do astronomical science, it would destroy their ability to look for signals from us. The only application for communications on this line is directed signalling of a specific planet that may have developed radio astronomy but not be actively looking for alien signals. (A warning... `We accidentally shot a planet in your direction during a mega-stellar touch-football game, sorry about that.'?)
If you really think about it, the idea of omnidirectional radio beacons for interstellar signalling is dumb, but if I were to do it, I would choose a radio band that was extremely unlikely to be produced by any space gases or stars or whatever. A more reasonable tack might be to devote our efforts to finding decent planets around decent stars in a decent age range, then taking a directed broadband listen. The neat thing is that then all the acceleration mumbo-jumbo is sort of known, and we can get a decent clear snapshot of the planet's emissions.
There will be plenty of money to go around when Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Tampax start advertising on the internet.
These type of last-foot advertisers are the rock on which the TV advertising model is built. How often do you buy a new server cluster or a calendar? How likely are you to interupt your actrivities to click-though and buy a mug? Will an ad that doesn't mention the URL or even the companies name effectively modify your future buying habits?
These unrealistic expectations by advertisers, the lack of last-foot type advertising, and the glut of advertising for free products have led to the banner ad bubble that popped this year.
Competition and natural monopolies are not mutually exclusive concepts. The kernel and Apache have natural monopolies because they were on the point, and continue to advance to the satisfaction of their users. If they were to falter, it is competition that would bring forth a competitor to topple them. Aside from HURD and other ossible kernel competitors, there exist multiple minor kernel forks as patches and development continues on old branches of the tree, so Linus' kernel really doesn't have a stifling monopoly that prevents competition as you imagine.
Programs can also exist as monopolies within a certain field, while losing out to another program in a different field. For example `ls' reigns supreme in the linux desktop world, while `busybox' holds a relative monopoly for embedded devices. Real or imagined, there exists a perception of multiple playing fields for SQL databases, and until a given database gains enough momentum in all of these fields to naturally draw mindshare and become a monopoly, it does no good to browbeat competitors under the banner of `Unity at All Costs'.
The "die in VR, die in RL" mythos we are stuck with. Its not any different really from the whole dream death thing that a lot of people believe in, and that has graced such pre-VR movies as Nightmare on Elm Street and Dreamscape. I suspect that if real high-quality VR becomes available there will be people who are afraid to "do it" because they could die because of all these movies.
How about if "torinth" had done teh Freshmeat and Google searches, gotten listings for a few packages and asked people to discuss their feelings about them?
As posted, the `Ask Slashdot' we are discussing is no more interesting or worthy of a respone than the homework questions that have made Usenet computer language groups entirely useless.
Could be a long, long time before any TLDs see the light of day.
We have too many TLDs already. TLDs don't increase namespace given the trademark situation, they don't accurately categorize content, and just lead to user confusion and site owner headaches.
Konqueror never crashes on me. I don't use the bleeding edge version though, I use the release one. When there's a stable release of Mozilla, maybe it'll be better too. So let's talk in 2005.
Oh, must I bow to the official standards, lest I be beaten and raped by the jackbooted thugs of the EU?
I can accept litres (hell, I'll make fun of the idiots her in the USofA who call a 2-liter soda bottle a litre and kick their teeth out while laughing hysterically, really) and metres and centimetres, and switching from a base unit of mass that weighs as much a big peice of cheese to one that weighs as much as a big paperclip, but the hell if I'll call anything a fucking milliard, that's just gay.
Besides, there is no reason on earth why we shouldn't be using inches and millinches and pound and kilopounds, so don't try to pretend that the French communist system has some sort of universal meaning that the English system doesn't, aside from easier scale conversions.
Konqueror seems to blow up about 3 times more frequently than Mozilla
Either you visit a different segment of the web (You mean there are servers other than those linked by Slashdot?) than I do, or you're full of horseshit. I have downloaded every milestone of Mozilla and deleted each one after two days of constant crashes (often pulling X down as well). It took me at least 3 days to get a reproducible crash in Konqueror, and it hasn't taken X with it once. The only problems I have with it to this day are:
Poorly scripted sites that think I can't view their content since I refuse to change my user agent string
Netscape plugins that lock up, requiring only a killall nspluginviewer
I signed a NDA, but I can still say its cool
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 1
When you guys finally get to see IT, you will pee your pants, I swear. IT is better than Slashdot, better than nudie anime, better than Britney Spears waiting at home in bed for you and your laptop (and I speak from experience on that last one, really). If you think Napster changed the world, wait till you see IT
pseudomoderation: -1 laziness
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 2
Why am I always having to explain these things to you people?
eBay is not saying that your opt-out choices are an error, they are saying that their defaults were in error. Still, it is questionable for them to reset the accounts that were affected by this "error", but note that you have two weeks to re-customize your preferences before they start sending you emails based on the reset preferences. This letter is yet another example of how the corporate mentality allows for rough treatment of customers to attempt to recover profit opportunities lost through their own mistakes, but its not such an egregious assault as y'all make it out to be.
With all the companies that have lost Hemos' business, its no wonder we're experiencing an economic downturn.:)
If all the Britney Spears and Smashmouth fans strip the tags off their files in hopes of decreasing the aggregate tariff, I pay less for legitimate copies of Beatles' songs, and Paul Mcartney gets a larger percentage of the pool than Britney does.
Yes, everyone is charged per megabyte, but that charge is calculated based on the amount of "tagged" data downloaded in aggregate. If the amount of tagged data goes down, everyone's price goes down. Your favorite artist loses their cut, but the amount all the other artists get is not increased. In fact, given this pricing structure, and given workarounds that would be used by the same musical demographic that uses Napster, flash-in-the-pan pop sensations would see less revenue versus other artists in an inverse corellation to the way CD sales are now.
Geez man, all that it means is that you can't complain when your TV doesn't work due to living next to a radio tower. Part 15:1 says that your neighbor can report you to the FCC if you use your FCC-regulated device improperly and ruin his TV reception, part 15:2 says that you can't get in trouble for ruining his reception if you aren't modifying the operation of your FCC-compliant devices
You will only be able to legitimately view and download music, books, etc. using "approved" applications. What happens when you upgrade to Windows 2004 and your book-reading software is not compatible? You have to buy new book reading software. (And hope that the books you bought are in a compatible format.) What if you use a different OS entirely?
Hard drives don't last as long as vinyl or polycarbonate or paper. Are you okay with paying for a book or music that could become unusable tomorrow if your hard disk fails, since you can't back it up?
How many sectors of your life should megamedia companies have control over? At what point do you finally say "enough"? Will it be too late then?
Are the Olympics becoming the center of all things evil?
Long the playground of the megamedia establishment, the Olympics represent the theft and repackaging of what should be in the public domain that is occuring in all aspects of society. During the past Olympics, internet coverage was not allowed in any real fashion for fear that it would cut into the "profits" of the old media fat cats, for the next Olympics we are now told that only by dividing the internet along national borders can a new media company enter the good graces of the IOC. Yes my friends, the Olympics are a way for all peoples of the world to come together in peaceful celebration of what is best in humanity. Unfortunately, what humans seem to be best at is greed, graft, and division.
You train your house, and everything seems to be going fine, then one day, you do something different, how does the house respond? When you finally get a date after years of solitude and bring her home, does the house start randomly turning lights on and off and scrambling eggs?
Even disregarding the possible faults, what are the benefits? "Oooh, my smart house knows to turn off the lights and turn down the thermostat when I go to bed." How about an "I'm going to bed" switch? Same results, simpler design, more predictable and configurable.
Re:I face similar discrimination in my workplace
on
Racism At Microsoft?
·
· Score: 1
This, my friend was exactly my point. This is why it is stupid, ignorant, selfish, and RACIST for these assholes to try to milk the system for $5 f'n billion dollars.
Re:I face similar discrimination in my workplace
on
Racism At Microsoft?
·
· Score: 1
When was the last time you were jumped and beat because of your skin color? Did you turn them in to someone of authority who then told you to leave and began laughing and conversing with the perpetrator in a language you didn't understand? Don't even start with me, Rosa Parks ain't got nothing on the discrimination I've faced. Had to ride in the back of the bus? How about walking miles home from school because the only other choice was an hour long gauntlet of physical abuse on a school bus full of "minorities" about which the "minority" bus driver and "minority" school administration would do nothing?
Slashdot Mirror
As a young whippersnapper in the late 70's/early 80's reading about SETI and their magical hydrogen line, I wondered this:
Therefore, why would alien intelligences use this frequency? It would not only affect their own ability to do astronomical science, it would destroy their ability to look for signals from us. The only application for communications on this line is directed signalling of a specific planet that may have developed radio astronomy but not be actively looking for alien signals. (A warning... `We accidentally shot a planet in your direction during a mega-stellar touch-football game, sorry about that.'?)
If you really think about it, the idea of omnidirectional radio beacons for interstellar signalling is dumb, but if I were to do it, I would choose a radio band that was extremely unlikely to be produced by any space gases or stars or whatever. A more reasonable tack might be to devote our efforts to finding decent planets around decent stars in a decent age range, then taking a directed broadband listen. The neat thing is that then all the acceleration mumbo-jumbo is sort of known, and we can get a decent clear snapshot of the planet's emissions.
There will be plenty of money to go around when Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Tampax start advertising on the internet.
These type of last-foot advertisers are the rock on which the TV advertising model is built. How often do you buy a new server cluster or a calendar? How likely are you to interupt your actrivities to click-though and buy a mug? Will an ad that doesn't mention the URL or even the companies name effectively modify your future buying habits?
These unrealistic expectations by advertisers, the lack of last-foot type advertising, and the glut of advertising for free products have led to the banner ad bubble that popped this year.
Competition and natural monopolies are not mutually exclusive concepts. The kernel and Apache have natural monopolies because they were on the point, and continue to advance to the satisfaction of their users. If they were to falter, it is competition that would bring forth a competitor to topple them. Aside from HURD and other ossible kernel competitors, there exist multiple minor kernel forks as patches and development continues on old branches of the tree, so Linus' kernel really doesn't have a stifling monopoly that prevents competition as you imagine.
Programs can also exist as monopolies within a certain field, while losing out to another program in a different field. For example `ls' reigns supreme in the linux desktop world, while `busybox' holds a relative monopoly for embedded devices. Real or imagined, there exists a perception of multiple playing fields for SQL databases, and until a given database gains enough momentum in all of these fields to naturally draw mindshare and become a monopoly, it does no good to browbeat competitors under the banner of `Unity at All Costs'.
The "die in VR, die in RL" mythos we are stuck with. Its not any different really from the whole dream death thing that a lot of people believe in, and that has graced such pre-VR movies as Nightmare on Elm Street and Dreamscape. I suspect that if real high-quality VR becomes available there will be people who are afraid to "do it" because they could die because of all these movies.
How about if "torinth" had done teh Freshmeat and Google searches, gotten listings for a few packages and asked people to discuss their feelings about them?
As posted, the `Ask Slashdot' we are discussing is no more interesting or worthy of a respone than the homework questions that have made Usenet computer language groups entirely useless.
Do I lack the ability to perform even the most basic research on my own?
Tommorrow's 'Ask Slashdot':
Will someone please help me answer this C++ programming class assignment?
We have too many TLDs already. TLDs don't increase namespace given the trademark situation, they don't accurately categorize content, and just lead to user confusion and site owner headaches.
Konqueror never crashes on me. I don't use the bleeding edge version though, I use the release one. When there's a stable release of Mozilla, maybe it'll be better too. So let's talk in 2005.
Should she have to wear a scarlet badge that says "alcoholic" for the rest of her life even if she never touches another drop of alcohol?
/* Slashdot link v0.1.2
* copyright 2001
* released under the terms of the GNU Public
* License v2.0 (see LICENSE.TXT)
*/
if ((link.category != MAJOR_NEWS_ORGANIZATION) || ((number_of_comments < 6) || (number_of_comments > 200))){
return SLASHDOTTED;
}
In my experience, any URL will do, given enough chances.
Oh, must I bow to the official standards, lest I be beaten and raped by the jackbooted thugs of the EU?
I can accept litres (hell, I'll make fun of the idiots her in the USofA who call a 2-liter soda bottle a litre and kick their teeth out while laughing hysterically, really) and metres and centimetres, and switching from a base unit of mass that weighs as much a big peice of cheese to one that weighs as much as a big paperclip, but the hell if I'll call anything a fucking milliard, that's just gay.
Besides, there is no reason on earth why we shouldn't be using inches and millinches and pound and kilopounds, so don't try to pretend that the French communist system has some sort of universal meaning that the English system doesn't, aside from easier scale conversions.
Either you visit a different segment of the web (You mean there are servers other than those linked by Slashdot?) than I do, or you're full of horseshit. I have downloaded every milestone of Mozilla and deleted each one after two days of constant crashes (often pulling X down as well). It took me at least 3 days to get a reproducible crash in Konqueror, and it hasn't taken X with it once. The only problems I have with it to this day are:
When you guys finally get to see IT, you will pee your pants, I swear. IT is better than Slashdot, better than nudie anime, better than Britney Spears waiting at home in bed for you and your laptop (and I speak from experience on that last one, really). If you think Napster changed the world, wait till you see IT
It's called a hyperlink:
the article mentioned above
Of course it is slashdotted anyway.
Why am I always having to explain these things to you people?
eBay is not saying that your opt-out choices are an error, they are saying that their defaults were in error. Still, it is questionable for them to reset the accounts that were affected by this "error", but note that you have two weeks to re-customize your preferences before they start sending you emails based on the reset preferences. This letter is yet another example of how the corporate mentality allows for rough treatment of customers to attempt to recover profit opportunities lost through their own mistakes, but its not such an egregious assault as y'all make it out to be.
With all the companies that have lost Hemos' business, its no wonder we're experiencing an economic downturn. :)
If all the Britney Spears and Smashmouth fans strip the tags off their files in hopes of decreasing the aggregate tariff, I pay less for legitimate copies of Beatles' songs, and Paul Mcartney gets a larger percentage of the pool than Britney does.
Yes, everyone is charged per megabyte, but that charge is calculated based on the amount of "tagged" data downloaded in aggregate. If the amount of tagged data goes down, everyone's price goes down. Your favorite artist loses their cut, but the amount all the other artists get is not increased. In fact, given this pricing structure, and given workarounds that would be used by the same musical demographic that uses Napster, flash-in-the-pan pop sensations would see less revenue versus other artists in an inverse corellation to the way CD sales are now.
I hate irrelevant links inserted into a comment just to draw hits for someone's lame attempt at becoming a dot-com millionaire.
Geez man, all that it means is that you can't complain when your TV doesn't work due to living next to a radio tower. Part 15:1 says that your neighbor can report you to the FCC if you use your FCC-regulated device improperly and ruin his TV reception, part 15:2 says that you can't get in trouble for ruining his reception if you aren't modifying the operation of your FCC-compliant devices
Are the Olympics becoming the center of all things evil?
Long the playground of the megamedia establishment, the Olympics represent the theft and repackaging of what should be in the public domain that is occuring in all aspects of society. During the past Olympics, internet coverage was not allowed in any real fashion for fear that it would cut into the "profits" of the old media fat cats, for the next Olympics we are now told that only by dividing the internet along national borders can a new media company enter the good graces of the IOC. Yes my friends, the Olympics are a way for all peoples of the world to come together in peaceful celebration of what is best in humanity. Unfortunately, what humans seem to be best at is greed, graft, and division.
You train your house, and everything seems to be going fine, then one day, you do something different, how does the house respond? When you finally get a date after years of solitude and bring her home, does the house start randomly turning lights on and off and scrambling eggs?
Even disregarding the possible faults, what are the benefits? "Oooh, my smart house knows to turn off the lights and turn down the thermostat when I go to bed." How about an "I'm going to bed" switch? Same results, simpler design, more predictable and configurable.
This, my friend was exactly my point. This is why it is stupid, ignorant, selfish, and RACIST for these assholes to try to milk the system for $5 f'n billion dollars.
When was the last time you were jumped and beat because of your skin color? Did you turn them in to someone of authority who then told you to leave and began laughing and conversing with the perpetrator in a language you didn't understand? Don't even start with me, Rosa Parks ain't got nothing on the discrimination I've faced. Had to ride in the back of the bus? How about walking miles home from school because the only other choice was an hour long gauntlet of physical abuse on a school bus full of "minorities" about which the "minority" bus driver and "minority" school administration would do nothing?