Ummm.. anyone notice this? http://www.angelhalo.com/banner.htm
The Broadband.com Company doesn't own the domain name Broadband.com.
It's for sale.
Hrmphp
"If Rip Van Wrinkle went to sleep in 1982 and woke up today, he'd be able to drive our modern computers with no problem because they're essentially unchanged"
It's easy to criticize modern computers, as their user interface is not modern. Designing a legacy human interface was a calculated decision however. People are accustomed to the windows (as in the object, not the MS software) interface, and when things change people get scared. When people get scared, money stops flowing.
From a human interface standpoint, computers might as well be aliens from another planet. We taught them to speak to us with windows about 20 years ago (don't nitpick time with me:) and now that is the de facto standard. Computers that don't "speak that language" are considered toys in the public eye (see PS2, furbies, games on cell phones).
The essence of the speakers' complaints was that computer engineers have spent the last five decades designing computers around the newest technology--not for the people who use the machines.
I don't think it is appropriate for them to suggest computer interfaces have become obsolete because no one was paying attention, or because no one cared to advance the interface. On the contrary there is a great deal of research on the subject, any computer science student has probably taken a human interface course or pieces therein (I did).
I think another big problem is that it's posh to be one of the "tech elite" in the business world. Someone who can handle their computer is generally considered more skillful, and seems to have more potential than one who can't. Logically this is because they are able to learn new things, and have no difficulties with abstraction. That is important in business, and in life.
Are CD's at 4.75 inches in diameter and negligable thickness really that inconvenient?
Yes, I think so. I don't know who else agrees with me, but:
CD's don't fit into pockets.
CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.
That's just off the top of my head anyway. It's a format that is targeted at data storage in general.
The dataplay marketing machine at least is doing it's job well. Prop-a-ganda worked for me! (read as hooked-on-phonics)
I think you might have missed two key points on the web site.
1. If you look at their "General Assumptions" for Los Angeles, they set the distances between stations to an average of 3 miles. The LA Freeways at the moment have on ramps about every 1/4 mile at the most. So you're decreasing the number of access points by a factor of 12.
Also people converge on these access points without the aid of a computer. Granted, once they are at an access point, the computer would be a significant aid in easing congestion, but it takes time to get there.
I see it somewhat like the lines at a crowded supermarket. Once you are being checked out, it's an automated and thus rather speedy process.
While everyone is converging on that spot it's a mess.
2. Speed during switching is 20 mph. This is slower than the 35mph merge lanes on modern highways. That's all there is to it. The line to get into the merge lanes on modern highways are slow, but those lines are analogous to the lines that access the "merge points" of this system (before the computers take over).
Let us be fair here. The concept is nice. Not particularly original, but nice. As far as practicality is concerned, it would be easier (and safer?) to land a man on the sun.
How on earth can one expect 10,000 vehicles (an exceedingly SMALL estimate for a major metropolitan area) to line up on tracks leading into a city?? The vehicles need to merge in order to be mounted the tracks in an orderly manner behind eachother in an interlocking fashion.
Merging in traffic is the slowest aspect of a commute, and this system makes it slower and more complicated. There's a reason cities like Los Angeles and New York have multiple 16 lane highways and double merge lanes. Expecting an increase in traffic flow from a decrease in merge efficiency is not just silly.
To quote the egg wave informerical man "it's flippin impossible".
AMEN!!
Anyone crying about freedom of speech and such needs to face facts: Trading copyrighted songs is illegal whether you like the music industry or not.
I hate McDonalds, but you don't see me breaking into their restaurants at night, stealing their "beef" patties and giving them away on the street the next day.
Suck it up. Yes, the current music distribution methods are antiquated. Perhaps they should even be updated. There are other ways to let those in charge know about this.
And maybe, *just maybe*, since the music industry is a growing multi-billion dollar business, they're still doing something right.
If those Napster users didn't break the law in the first place, we would not have to listen to idiots complain about the music industry stepping into a possible legal quagmire and complaining to the police.
What IS Earthball?
I lost a game of trivial pursiut to some damn question about what sport uses the largest ball...
The answer of course was Earthball...
...but I still have no idea what it is. I am also unable to find references to a sport named earthball at google. Is this proof of nonexistence?:)
It was a political landing, btw. We (the USA) can now lay more of a claim to it than anyone else.
Obviously there is no law governing this area properly (old exploratory laws will probably not hold sway in this case), but one can assume that with asteroids, and the mining that will eventually take place on them, whoever lands a probe first gets it.
Using my semi-linear fergulseon trinaric algorithms.
Couple that with a succint arbitrary byte foam agent through a C.K.I. softlense and you're at over 5000:1.
Of course, I won't show anyone anything regarding the science behind these claims.
It's just a claim.
True, if you believe that a thing only has value if it is useful to humans.
value:
1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2 : the monetary worth of something : marketable price
3 : relative worth, utility, or importance
Ummm so yeah, based on the definition, something only has value if it's useful to humans. When some turtles invent their own language with a similar word, I'll recant.
Explain to me wtf the unicorn dream had to do with Deckard's true nature. ..
We know he's a replicant because Gaff makes an origami unicorn and leaves it for Deckard to find. This means that Gaff knows Deckard dreams about unicorns frequently, because it was an implanted memory.
Course, some disagree with this explanation.
Check out the BladeRunner FAQ for other interpretations..
So, we'll say about 500 million to be overly conservative. This company thinks they can add another 300 million in one year to the total.
It's not impossible. If the phone is cheap enough, they'll get a lot of people using them. And they seem to believe production costs and such are within range for the $10 phone.
Can they almost double the cellphone market in one year? Well it's been increasing at a rate of about 60% a year as is...
In the open source world, I find two RDBMS especially good. PostgreSQL and Interbase. They are both fine products and probably near commercial grade RDBMS standard.
Now, would that be Interbase with or without a compiled in superuser backdoor account?:)
Of course, for pure SELECT power, nothing beats MySQL. So if you're not inserting data too often, and you don't mind running ISAMCHK every now and then, and data integrity isn't entirely critical (which does work for a surprising number of people), then yay MySQL!
Moebius has also done production design work on some science fiction films, including Alien, Tron, and The Abyss.
The latter was a rotten movie, but...
The theater version of The Abyss was abyssmal. I urge you to check out the director's cut, however. It's much better. Totally different ending.
"K-Complex" spikes - anything up to 150Hz; very rare, short lived spikes thought by some to be linked to moments of profound insight. Virtually unheard of.
On the contrary, K-complex waves occur almost every night for the average person. A K-complex is a "high voltage EEG activity that consists of a sharp upward component followed by a slower downward component and lasts more than.5 seconds; required for definition of Stage 2 non-REM sleep."
There's no epiphany associated witn K-complex waves when one is not sleeping either. Although I don't disagree with most of the summary above, it appears to be intended for the layman.
Many people are saying that this will not hold up in court, and it won't. But it will still stop small companies that can't afford multimillion dollar court battles from infringing upon it.
Until some other huge tank of a company decides to tread (no pun intended) on this patent, it will hold. And it will hold well. And if CDDB never goes after the big companies, it could last it's entire lifetime.
It's been said before, and I will say it again. Support the EFF.
Ok, so there is a "possible" bug with the chip, and transmeta stock plummets 20%...
Why is this bug such a big deal? Complex microchips are inherently buggy. It would take years to test all the capabilities of a modern microprocessor for errors. It's never done.
So, either this bug is big enough to really warrant a recall, in which case it should have at least been described in the article on yahoo, and likely would have been discovered in previous explorations of the chip, or...
Intel is pissed and wants destroy Transmeta before they become real competition (which is understandable, yay capitalism!:), and needs to take the attention away from how utterly disappointing the P4 is.
It's a fairly well known fact that amoebas and other microscopic unicellular protozoans are too large for the human immune system to deal with. They and other parasites can infect human and other mammalian bodies for decades (sometimes forever), living in the bloodstream itself, and the immune system can not deal with the problem. It is somewhat analagous to a housefly trying to engulf an elephant.
In fact, there is a serious medical condition (whose name escapes me.. any biologists wanna fill in the blanks) associated with a certain type of amoeba that enters the bloodstream, and crosses the blood-brain barrier (cause it just eats it's way through) and happily munches on brain tissue for ever. There have been perhaps 12 or so cases of this in the US in the past few decades, it is exceedingly rare.
But the point is, large enough "nano" bots will not even have to worry about the human immune system cells stopping them. They'll be too big.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm.. anyone notice this? http://www.angelhalo.com/banner.htm
The Broadband.com Company doesn't own the domain name Broadband.com.
It's for sale.
Hrmphp
FYI the year is embedded in the URL. See:m l
http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/30/0920220.sht
which is the article you cited. It's 11/30/1998.
It's easy to criticize modern computers, as their user interface is not modern. Designing a legacy human interface was a calculated decision however. People are accustomed to the windows (as in the object, not the MS software) interface, and when things change people get scared. When people get scared, money stops flowing.
From a human interface standpoint, computers might as well be aliens from another planet. We taught them to speak to us with windows about 20 years ago (don't nitpick time with me :) and now that is the de facto standard. Computers that don't "speak that language" are considered toys in the public eye (see PS2, furbies, games on cell phones).
The essence of the speakers' complaints was that computer engineers have spent the last five decades designing computers around the newest technology--not for the people who use the machines.
I don't think it is appropriate for them to suggest computer interfaces have become obsolete because no one was paying attention, or because no one cared to advance the interface. On the contrary there is a great deal of research on the subject, any computer science student has probably taken a human interface course or pieces therein (I did).
I think another big problem is that it's posh to be one of the "tech elite" in the business world. Someone who can handle their computer is generally considered more skillful, and seems to have more potential than one who can't. Logically this is because they are able to learn new things, and have no difficulties with abstraction. That is important in business, and in life.
Anyone agree?
Yes, I think so. I don't know who else agrees with me, but:
- CD's don't fit into pockets.
- CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
- Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
- CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.
That's just off the top of my head anyway. It's a format that is targeted at data storage in general.The dataplay marketing machine at least is doing it's job well. Prop-a-ganda worked for me! (read as hooked-on-phonics)
1. If you look at their "General Assumptions" for Los Angeles, they set the distances between stations to an average of 3 miles. The LA Freeways at the moment have on ramps about every 1/4 mile at the most. So you're decreasing the number of access points by a factor of 12.
Also people converge on these access points without the aid of a computer. Granted, once they are at an access point, the computer would be a significant aid in easing congestion, but it takes time to get there.
I see it somewhat like the lines at a crowded supermarket. Once you are being checked out, it's an automated and thus rather speedy process.
While everyone is converging on that spot it's a mess.
2. Speed during switching is 20 mph. This is slower than the 35mph merge lanes on modern highways. That's all there is to it. The line to get into the merge lanes on modern highways are slow, but those lines are analogous to the lines that access the "merge points" of this system (before the computers take over).
Hope this explains it a little better. -Matt
Let us be fair here. The concept is nice. Not particularly original, but nice. As far as practicality is concerned, it would be easier (and safer?) to land a man on the sun.
How on earth can one expect 10,000 vehicles (an exceedingly SMALL estimate for a major metropolitan area) to line up on tracks leading into a city?? The vehicles need to merge in order to be mounted the tracks in an orderly manner behind eachother in an interlocking fashion.
Merging in traffic is the slowest aspect of a commute, and this system makes it slower and more complicated. There's a reason cities like Los Angeles and New York have multiple 16 lane highways and double merge lanes. Expecting an increase in traffic flow from a decrease in merge efficiency is not just silly.
To quote the egg wave informerical man "it's flippin impossible".
a "mole" of molecules can weigh up to...Damn, I can't remember, and I can't find it either, I believe it's several tons, anybody know?
:)
Ramex® is an Ultrahigh Molecular Weight Polyethylene having a molecular weight range between 3 and 6 million.
So 6 million grams = 6.613867865546328 US Tons
So "several" was a good estimate
AMEN!!
Anyone crying about freedom of speech and such needs to face facts: Trading copyrighted songs is illegal whether you like the music industry or not.
I hate McDonalds, but you don't see me breaking into their restaurants at night, stealing their "beef" patties and giving them away on the street the next day.
Suck it up. Yes, the current music distribution methods are antiquated. Perhaps they should even be updated. There are other ways to let those in charge know about this.
And maybe, *just maybe*, since the music industry is a growing multi-billion dollar business, they're still doing something right.
If those Napster users didn't break the law in the first place, we would not have to listen to idiots complain about the music industry stepping into a possible legal quagmire and complaining to the police.
Of course, I still like playing Earthball.
...but I still have no idea what it is. I am also unable to find references to a sport named earthball at google. Is this proof of nonexistence? :)
What IS Earthball?
I lost a game of trivial pursiut to some damn question about what sport uses the largest ball...
The answer of course was Earthball...
Anyone have an answer for me?
It was a political landing, btw. We (the USA) can now lay more of a claim to it than anyone else.
Obviously there is no law governing this area properly (old exploratory laws will probably not hold sway in this case), but one can assume that with asteroids, and the mining that will eventually take place on them, whoever lands a probe first gets it.
Nasa just made a trillion dollars!
Using my semi-linear fergulseon trinaric algorithms.
Couple that with a succint arbitrary byte foam agent through a C.K.I. softlense and you're at over 5000:1.
Of course, I won't show anyone anything regarding the science behind these claims.
It's just a claim.
Anyone know a good V.C.?
True, if you believe that a thing only has value if it is useful to humans.
value:
1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2 : the monetary worth of something : marketable price
3 : relative worth, utility, or importance
Ummm so yeah, based on the definition, something only has value if it's useful to humans. When some turtles invent their own language with a similar word, I'll recant.
Go eat some sprouts hippie.
As CNN says: Spacecraft may take off after landing on asteroid.
Course, what else could it do if it stayed there? Take repeated pictures of the same spot? Makes sense.
I say they pogo stick it around for a while...
Explain to me wtf the unicorn dream had to do with Deckard's true nature. . .
We know he's a replicant because Gaff makes an origami unicorn and leaves it for Deckard to find. This means that Gaff knows Deckard dreams about unicorns frequently, because it was an implanted memory.
Course, some disagree with this explanation.
Check out the BladeRunner FAQ for other interpretations..
Cingular was Cellular One
Verizon was GTE and Bell Atlantic
if i remember correctly...
One in 12 people on the planet now has a cell phone.
So, we'll say about 500 million to be overly conservative. This company thinks they can add another 300 million in one year to the total.
It's not impossible. If the phone is cheap enough, they'll get a lot of people using them. And they seem to believe production costs and such are within range for the $10 phone.
Can they almost double the cellphone market in one year? Well it's been increasing at a rate of about 60% a year as is...
...that we (citizens of the US) produce 25% of the world's climate affecting pollution!
:)
I mean we DO produce 10-25% of the world's food....
In the open source world, I find two RDBMS especially good. PostgreSQL and Interbase. They are both fine products and probably near commercial grade RDBMS standard.
:)
Now, would that be Interbase with or without a compiled in superuser backdoor account?
Of course, for pure SELECT power, nothing beats MySQL. So if you're not inserting data too often, and you don't mind running ISAMCHK every now and then, and data integrity isn't entirely critical (which does work for a surprising number of people), then yay MySQL!
I use it.
Moebius has also done production design work on some science fiction films, including Alien, Tron, and The Abyss. The latter was a rotten movie, but ...
The theater version of The Abyss was abyssmal. I urge you to check out the director's cut, however. It's much better. Totally different ending.
"K-Complex" spikes - anything up to 150Hz; very rare, short lived spikes thought by some to be linked to moments of profound insight. Virtually unheard of.
.5 seconds; required for definition of Stage 2 non-REM sleep."
On the contrary, K-complex waves occur almost every night for the average person. A K-complex is a "high voltage EEG activity that consists of a sharp upward component followed by a slower downward component and lasts more than
There's no epiphany associated witn K-complex waves when one is not sleeping either. Although I don't disagree with most of the summary above, it appears to be intended for the layman.
Slashdot is not populated by laymen.
That would be a song by "Rockwell", if I remember correctly.
Of course, I could Google it to be sure, but I'm too lazy.
Microsoft can easily charge less for their software.
that this patent even exists!
Many people are saying that this will not hold up in court, and it won't.
But it will still stop small companies that can't afford multimillion dollar court battles from infringing upon it.
Until some other huge tank of a company decides to tread (no pun intended) on this patent, it will hold. And it will hold well. And if CDDB never goes after the big companies, it could last it's entire lifetime.
It's been said before, and I will say it again.
Support the EFF.
Ok, so there is a "possible" bug with the chip, and transmeta stock plummets 20%...
:), and needs to take the attention away from how utterly disappointing the P4 is.
Why is this bug such a big deal? Complex microchips are inherently buggy. It would take years to test all the capabilities of a modern microprocessor for errors. It's never done.
So, either this bug is big enough to really warrant a recall, in which case it should have at least been described in the article on yahoo, and likely would have been discovered in previous explorations of the chip, or...
Intel is pissed and wants destroy Transmeta before they become real competition (which is understandable, yay capitalism!
It's a fairly well known fact that amoebas and other microscopic unicellular protozoans are too large for the human immune system to deal with. They and other parasites can infect human and other mammalian bodies for decades (sometimes forever), living in the bloodstream itself, and the immune system can not deal with the problem. It is somewhat analagous to a housefly trying to engulf an elephant.
In fact, there is a serious medical condition (whose name escapes me.. any biologists wanna fill in the blanks) associated with a certain type of amoeba that enters the bloodstream, and crosses the blood-brain barrier (cause it just eats it's way through) and happily munches on brain tissue for ever. There have been perhaps 12 or so cases of this in the US in the past few decades, it is exceedingly rare.
But the point is, large enough "nano" bots will not even have to worry about the human immune system cells stopping them. They'll be too big.
But it's nanovaporware!.
So we'll see...