NASA, Mr Webster explained, did not want the ailing craft accidentally colliding with Europa, a Jovian moon thought to be covered in a salt-water ocean under a global ice cap.
"Galileo may be carrying Earthly microbes that could contaminate the environment with life. We don't want to seed Europa with anything organic."
Bah.. liars... they are just heeding the warning...
"All these worlds are yours -- except Europa. Attempt no landings there."
I wonder how much more memory bandwidth and/or how much lower the average latency would be if the current PC architecture were changed to access SRAM instead of SDRAM.
Sometime in the near future, we'll be able to get a gig of DRAM-based memory for under $40. Even if SRAM takes *eight* times as much silicon real estate to produce, that's still 640MB of SRAM for under the standard-cost-of-computer-upgrade of $200, and with in mind that 640MB "should be enough for anyone".
I'm curious about this, becuase I really liked MySQL, but our IT management forced us to upgrade to Oracle on the basis that MySQL couldn't store more than 4GB worth of data (they also have the bright idea of storing all of our relevant files in the database instead of just storing the path). From my understanding (IANA-DBA), you can store more than 4GB in MySQL, but it requires a little more administration/configuration.
So now, we're experiencing the learning curve with Oracle, and I must say it's a bit of a beast compared to the lightweight and flexible MySQL.
I especially hate their network-address system. Why can't they just use standard IP addresses and sockets like every other client-server application in existance today? And their junk bloated management software sucks big fat choad.
Our current methods of invoking technological self-sustained thought may be flawed or dead ends, but that's not to say that someone may begin to take a completely new and elemental approach to the problem.
The most fascinating and horrifying thing about computers designing computers is just how fast technology will evolve once that point is reached. Theoretically, software would have no bugs, hardware tolerances would be incredible. We'll laugh at the slowness of Moore's law.
My question is, in a society where everything is designed and built by thinking machines with perfect memory and infinite endurance, what will us humans do? How will the economy work if nobody "works"? I guess we'll just be left to making art and writing fiction, as I doubt that even thinking machines would become fully proficient at that for quite some time.
They had a long hallway that led to their front door. They decorated that hallway with thick fake spider webs, a black light, and a strobe light. They had a CD Player playing constant halloween sound effects fairly loudly, with shrieking, laughing, organ music, etc. all playing at once. But the part that was really spooky is that there was a candy bowl sitting on the ground, with two guys sitting on the stair that steps up to the door just a foot or two feet behind it, one with a ski mask and dark clothes, and the other with the silence of the lamb things going on. They both just sat there and absolutely did not respond to anything, except that they stared at us. The atmosphere of sound and flashing lights was perfect.
So the trick was on us. We had to grab the candy, without knowing what they were going to do, while they both just sat there and stared at us. And the best part is that they did and said nothing and it was spooky as all hell =)
[...] how about backing up your phone to your pc so that when (not if...) your phone breaks you can restore the replacement phone to have the same phone#'s ans setup and other data?
Assuming the original poster is talking about the new Sidekick, 99% of all of the information is stored on the server, not your client device. Several people in a popular Sidekick forum have already mentioned that they put their SIM card into their replacment and all of the info is instantly there just as it was before.
have yet to see one that can... you can send your data to a web-page for editing, but it still costs money to transfer it, and you cant back-up phone settings...
The entire duration of the contract for the SideKick service (1 year) has unlimited data transfer.
As to most of the other counterpoints in this thread, the SDK is coming soon...
You make a very good point. An excellent example of this is the Dish Network digital TV service. I remember when they first started, they could only fit about 4-5 channels on a transponder. Nowadays, they're cramming about 8-11 channels on one, without forcing everybody to upgrade their old dish network receiver hardware.
I remember when they started to add more channels, the quality went down quite a bit, but it has recovered some since then, even with the extra channels...
Most people have upgraded anyway by now, but it still shows an example of how the encoder can be improved, even with the same decoder.
Bah... who needs verbal communication anymore now that the Sidekick is out =)
It has email, AIM, SMS, a decent web browser, and is 24-7 always-on 20-40kbps net connection... I just got one yesterday and I'm in geek heaven.
It's got a very minimal voice plan (200 mins/ 1000 weekend mins), but that doesn't matter to me so much as I rarely used more than 100 mins a month on my old phone, and most of the people I communicate are fairly readily available by some digital medium (email, AIM, or SMS).
This thing is quite kickass though. I was lounging on the couch last night for about three hours just chatting away on AIM, and browsing around. I think this may provide my path to a new level of lazyness.. =)
The problem here is that this action shows signs that eBay would rather accidently exclude legal auctions than to accidently exclude illegal sales.
Sorry.. logic error, let me try again, a little more clearly, as this was my main point: =)
The problem here is that this action shows signs that eBay would rather filter to the extent that they take out a few legal guys along with all of the illegals, rather than filter on the other side, where they may let some illegals slip through and try their best to not cancel any legal auctions.
How is a corporation being a "vigilante" by merely regulating the conduct of its own business?
If a co-operation of companies can effectively create unwritten "laws" by selectively and unfairly granting or denying access to an avenue of mainstream culture, then the corporations are in control, not the citizens, and therefore the government is just symbolic.
I'm not saying that's what this particular situation is, but it's just one example of where we're headed, if we don't complain when these kinds of things happen. This artist should be allowed to sell his CD's that he legally owns on eBay. There is no fair reason for eBay to deny him the same right as everyone else who is legally selling on eBay.
It is quite obvious that what happened here was a mistake. Due to the strongarm tactics of the RIAA, eBay is now being put into the spot of policing CD's much more carefully than they probably would have had there been no RIAA. The problem here is that this action shows signs that eBay would rather accidently exclude legal auctions than to accidently exclude illegal sales. This indicates to me that either the RIAA is just that powerful over eBay, or eBay has sided with the RIAA. Either fact is disturbing and noteworthy.
We must take note of these kinds of tactics and ensure that we let these companies know that we will not tolerate unfair behavior, especially when it is being done in the shadow of greed.
How is that IRONIC? Did Alanis Morresette teach you the English language or something?
I've always wondered if she made that song deliberately containing no irony, therefore making the song itself ironic; or if she had no idea what she was doing, and was actually entirely mistaken, but still making the whole thing ironic, which makes the entire situation meta-ironic.
Do you know of any that are coming? I've been looking for one, but the keywords are a bit ambiguious due to Circuit City's fiasco.
Re:One big problem (literally) with CRT's
on
LCD Round-up
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· Score: 2
I seem to recall someone working on a technology that would essentially have multiple electron guns spread across the screen, so that the screen was a very large array of CRT's, yet you wouldn't be able to tell (ie there wasn't multiple "bubbles", like you'd have if you actually had multiple CRTs). Maybe it was one per pixel, or one per 10x10 grid of pixels, or something like that.
Anyone recall this technology, and/or am I just insane?
Re:The resolution still isn't up to par...
on
LCD Round-up
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· Score: 2
Do you use any multi-monitor tools? On Windows, I've been using nView for quite some time, but for some reason it has this very irritating tendency to add a significant delay to window open events, especially for IE. When I turn nView off, this seems to go away, but then I lose many of the conveniences of nView...
I've tried a quick search for alternatives, but the keywords required to do a good search elude me.
Re:More to the picture than pixel response time
on
LCD Round-up
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Very interesting...
LCD will never be as responsive as CRT because it doesn't "strobe". LCDs always maintain the previous frame until the next update, whereas CRTs always start with a blank slate. Since the chemicals in our eyes are slow-ish to respond, we see it as a continuious image.
So even if a hypothetical (impossible, I know) LCD screen had a 0ms response time, our eyes would still not see the transition (from white to black for example) until after the next update. A CRT will show it before the update because it's always quickly fading to black. For a black to white transition, they would at best, tie.
If your CRT is making noise i have to wonder if perhaps something's wrong with it. Mine makes not a sound.
I haven't heard it much from computer monitors lately, maybe my hearing is not as good as it used to be, or the higher resolutions use a higher frequency, but I used to hear the screen refresh on computer monitors all the time.
Actually, I still hear it on televisions. In college, I can tell if one of the television screens was left on in the classroom (even though it has a black screen and no power indicator LEDs) by *hearing* the refresh. I usually turn them off. The sound doesn't really directly annoy me, but it seems like a sound that would annoy me if I had to hear it for a long time.
The OP also forgot to mention sharper text. At work, I have been using two 17" LCD screens which surround my central 21" CRT. I use my central CRT for coding, where I use a large, basic, bold-ish font (fixedsys), and my side screens are for finer text, web browsers, and terminal windows.
I'm not sure about other models of LCD, but these models (Samsung SyncMaster 770) have a very fine control that has allowed me to tune a 1:1 ratio on the pixels, even though it's over an analog signal. Of course this only works in the exact max resolution of the screen, and it took a bit of time to get right, but it has stayed there, and it's probably just as sharp as a digital connection.
Well they're talking about ultra-high resolutions for things like photographs, and maps.
I'm just glad that they're actually mentioning potential applications which aren't a part of the the current buzzword set. They could have easily shoved in there the usual "wireless devices" drivel...
What would be really great is a water cooling system *bus* which connects water cooling from several PCs all to a line that runs outdoors or somewhere where my A/C isn't going to run all the time due to all of the computers. Has anyone heard of a complex system like this?
Slashdot Mirror
At least with an XML format (assuming everything's not encoded and/or encrypted), I can insert an extra word into the document using vi.
Now if they just use XML as a buzzword encapsulator and base64 encode everything into one big XML chunk, then it's time to put on the flamethrowers...
Bah.. liars... they are just heeding the warning...
"All these worlds are yours -- except Europa. Attempt no landings there."
Sometime in the near future, we'll be able to get a gig of DRAM-based memory for under $40. Even if SRAM takes *eight* times as much silicon real estate to produce, that's still 640MB of SRAM for under the standard-cost-of-computer-upgrade of $200, and with in mind that 640MB "should be enough for anyone".
Yay... Vector graphics makes a comeback, with full color and vengence =)
So now, we're experiencing the learning curve with Oracle, and I must say it's a bit of a beast compared to the lightweight and flexible MySQL.
I especially hate their network-address system. Why can't they just use standard IP addresses and sockets like every other client-server application in existance today? And their junk bloated management software sucks big fat choad.
How did the Amiga Operating System rate on this matter? It always seemed to be very responsive even when heavily loaded down...
That day can be today if you find the right kind of "perscriptions".
The most fascinating and horrifying thing about computers designing computers is just how fast technology will evolve once that point is reached. Theoretically, software would have no bugs, hardware tolerances would be incredible. We'll laugh at the slowness of Moore's law.
My question is, in a society where everything is designed and built by thinking machines with perfect memory and infinite endurance, what will us humans do? How will the economy work if nobody "works"? I guess we'll just be left to making art and writing fiction, as I doubt that even thinking machines would become fully proficient at that for quite some time.
They had a long hallway that led to their front door. They decorated that hallway with thick fake spider webs, a black light, and a strobe light. They had a CD Player playing constant halloween sound effects fairly loudly, with shrieking, laughing, organ music, etc. all playing at once. But the part that was really spooky is that there was a candy bowl sitting on the ground, with two guys sitting on the stair that steps up to the door just a foot or two feet behind it, one with a ski mask and dark clothes, and the other with the silence of the lamb things going on. They both just sat there and absolutely did not respond to anything, except that they stared at us. The atmosphere of sound and flashing lights was perfect.
So the trick was on us. We had to grab the candy, without knowing what they were going to do, while they both just sat there and stared at us. And the best part is that they did and said nothing and it was spooky as all hell =)
Assuming the original poster is talking about the new Sidekick, 99% of all of the information is stored on the server, not your client device. Several people in a popular Sidekick forum have already mentioned that they put their SIM card into their replacment and all of the info is instantly there just as it was before.
The entire duration of the contract for the SideKick service (1 year) has unlimited data transfer.As to most of the other counterpoints in this thread, the SDK is coming soon...
I remember when they started to add more channels, the quality went down quite a bit, but it has recovered some since then, even with the extra channels...
Most people have upgraded anyway by now, but it still shows an example of how the encoder can be improved, even with the same decoder.
It has email, AIM, SMS, a decent web browser, and is 24-7 always-on 20-40kbps net connection... I just got one yesterday and I'm in geek heaven.
It's got a very minimal voice plan (200 mins/ 1000 weekend mins), but that doesn't matter to me so much as I rarely used more than 100 mins a month on my old phone, and most of the people I communicate are fairly readily available by some digital medium (email, AIM, or SMS).
This thing is quite kickass though. I was lounging on the couch last night for about three hours just chatting away on AIM, and browsing around. I think this may provide my path to a new level of lazyness.. =)
1) if you're smart
2) if you're naive and/or promiscuous
Sorry.. logic error, let me try again, a little more clearly, as this was my main point: =)
The problem here is that this action shows signs that eBay would rather filter to the extent that they take out a few legal guys along with all of the illegals, rather than filter on the other side, where they may let some illegals slip through and try their best to not cancel any legal auctions.
If a co-operation of companies can effectively create unwritten "laws" by selectively and unfairly granting or denying access to an avenue of mainstream culture, then the corporations are in control, not the citizens, and therefore the government is just symbolic.
I'm not saying that's what this particular situation is, but it's just one example of where we're headed, if we don't complain when these kinds of things happen. This artist should be allowed to sell his CD's that he legally owns on eBay. There is no fair reason for eBay to deny him the same right as everyone else who is legally selling on eBay.
It is quite obvious that what happened here was a mistake. Due to the strongarm tactics of the RIAA, eBay is now being put into the spot of policing CD's much more carefully than they probably would have had there been no RIAA. The problem here is that this action shows signs that eBay would rather accidently exclude legal auctions than to accidently exclude illegal sales. This indicates to me that either the RIAA is just that powerful over eBay, or eBay has sided with the RIAA. Either fact is disturbing and noteworthy.
We must take note of these kinds of tactics and ensure that we let these companies know that we will not tolerate unfair behavior, especially when it is being done in the shadow of greed.
I've always wondered if she made that song deliberately containing no irony, therefore making the song itself ironic; or if she had no idea what she was doing, and was actually entirely mistaken, but still making the whole thing ironic, which makes the entire situation meta-ironic.
Ugh.. it's still too early in the morning...
Do you know of any that are coming? I've been looking for one, but the keywords are a bit ambiguious due to Circuit City's fiasco.
Anyone recall this technology, and/or am I just insane?
I've tried a quick search for alternatives, but the keywords required to do a good search elude me.
LCD will never be as responsive as CRT because it doesn't "strobe". LCDs always maintain the previous frame until the next update, whereas CRTs always start with a blank slate. Since the chemicals in our eyes are slow-ish to respond, we see it as a continuious image.
So even if a hypothetical (impossible, I know) LCD screen had a 0ms response time, our eyes would still not see the transition (from white to black for example) until after the next update. A CRT will show it before the update because it's always quickly fading to black. For a black to white transition, they would at best, tie.
Actually, I still hear it on televisions. In college, I can tell if one of the television screens was left on in the classroom (even though it has a black screen and no power indicator LEDs) by *hearing* the refresh. I usually turn them off. The sound doesn't really directly annoy me, but it seems like a sound that would annoy me if I had to hear it for a long time.
The OP also forgot to mention sharper text. At work, I have been using two 17" LCD screens which surround my central 21" CRT. I use my central CRT for coding, where I use a large, basic, bold-ish font (fixedsys), and my side screens are for finer text, web browsers, and terminal windows.
I'm not sure about other models of LCD, but these models (Samsung SyncMaster 770) have a very fine control that has allowed me to tune a 1:1 ratio on the pixels, even though it's over an analog signal. Of course this only works in the exact max resolution of the screen, and it took a bit of time to get right, but it has stayed there, and it's probably just as sharp as a digital connection.
I'm just glad that they're actually mentioning potential applications which aren't a part of the the current buzzword set. They could have easily shoved in there the usual "wireless devices" drivel...
I imagine this would work great with SRAM =)
What would be really great is a water cooling system *bus* which connects water cooling from several PCs all to a line that runs outdoors or somewhere where my A/C isn't going to run all the time due to all of the computers. Has anyone heard of a complex system like this?