I can't tell you how many bytes of RAM I have installed either, or bits for that matter. My point was just that these things typically come in powers of two because that's what the hardware is actually like, and there's no real benefit to abstracting that from people when there's already a common understanding present.
It would be like trying to change broadband speed ratings from megabits per second to megabytes per second; all it makes for is pointless confusion for Joe Shmoe and a debatably more useful system of measurement for gigantic nerds such as ourselves. Most people have no real comprehension of what the terms even mean, but they can imagine the relative difference having experienced the use of a certain connection speed. The same applies with storage.
Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses
That's a funny way to phrase it. There are gaps in Earth's asteroid defences, yes, a bit like how there are gaps in the total surface area of the planet where there are no roads.
Exactly. Before this mebibyte crap came along I never got confused or wondered what anyone meant when they said "MB." I expected any device that used binary storage to report in binary prefixes, and even my non-technical family expected this.
You see, they don't give a crap about this kind of thing. It isn't worth trying to change. How many mebibytes of RAM have you got installed? This is just confusing rubbish that nobody needs.
You know, that sounds familiar doesn't it? A bit like ODF and OOXML.
Yeah, I noticed this too. I made my website using Nvu first, because I couldn't be arsed doing HTML myself. I browsed to my site on my PSP and it was just a complete clusterfuck.
I rewrote the site in (fairly) compliant HTML/CSS with Notepad2 and now it scales perfectly on anything I've tried; mobile phone, PSP, etc.
What's more, the site is easier to maintain and the HTML itself is a much smaller download.
That's not being complacent or apathetic, it's being realistic.
Self-fulfilling prophecies generally are.
If you adopt this mindset, your chance of success is zero. If you do bother to take action, your chances of success are greater than zero. If you really want change to be effected, the logical choice of action is quite clearly the latter one.
Vote with your dollar! Donate to lobbies that are fighting for your cause. Otherwise stop complaining.
How about they just keep complaining anyway? There's no need for a dichotomy there. Awareness of this is a good thing; I wouldn't even know about this situation were it not for the complaints.
The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? physically shatter?).
Believe you me, nobody will be shattering our planet with nuclear weapons any time soon. Or ever with any weapon. Remember what we're dealing with here: six septillion kilograms of rock and metal held together by the massive force of its own weight. A solid iron core thousands of kilometres in diameter surrounded by thousands more of molten material so dense that rocks float on it. And we're on those rocks. Shatter it? We can no more shatter the planet with nuclear weapons than a gnat can shatter a human skeleton.
The Earth is tough. Wiping the biosphere off it entirely is relatively easy.
If they really didn't believe it then I doubt they would bother with anything of the sort. You underestimate the power of fanatical belief; when someone believes something like that, they can justify anything. Some people are just fucking crazy, I wouldn't expect them to even evaluate their beliefs to begin with. For them it's just true by definition, as is the evil of their enemies.
Insofar as I can recall, what is being reported there is not a '350Ghz chip' as you would imagine in the sense of a processor, but the maximum switching rate of a small batch of transistors for use in radio communications. At speeds that high I imagine you would start running into very hard problems in an actual processor, like the speed of electricity not being high enough.
Although I agree with you in principle, the example is not a good one. Hopefully my example is, but I'll confess that I didn't do the maths.
the public simply ignoring the bullshit intellectual property lawyers invent in order to justify their existence
We already ignore it. The companies in question just continue about their business oblivious.
Terrorists have already conclusively proven that they don't need a dirty bomb to cause insane amounts of damage. In fact, they proved they don't need bombs at all.
2) Practical flying car
Feel free to design a practical flying car, but you'll also need a practical Anti-Retardation Agent inside the car so people can actually drive it without embedding themselves in a tall building...
Yeah. I don't think Vista is that bad, it's practically the same as XP after a little customisation. Thing is, I would never pay a few hundred euros for what amounts to nothing useful to me. I just don't care; DX10 turned out to be a slow piece of wet bark, I like the classic theme better than Aero.
I also dislike the dishonesty they seem to be pulling with games for it, for example Halo 2, which I completed entirely in XP but had technical problems in Vista with, and Crysis' very high settings which mysteriously also work in XP despite being disabled in the game...
Slashdot Mirror
Gee I don't know. Is that mebibytes or megabytes?
I can't tell you how many bytes of RAM I have installed either, or bits for that matter. My point was just that these things typically come in powers of two because that's what the hardware is actually like, and there's no real benefit to abstracting that from people when there's already a common understanding present.
It would be like trying to change broadband speed ratings from megabits per second to megabytes per second; all it makes for is pointless confusion for Joe Shmoe and a debatably more useful system of measurement for gigantic nerds such as ourselves. Most people have no real comprehension of what the terms even mean, but they can imagine the relative difference having experienced the use of a certain connection speed. The same applies with storage.
Wait... Paypal isn't regulated? What the hell? How can a company who deals with stuff like this not be accountable to anyone?
Reason? That doesn't apply to bullshit.
Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses
That's a funny way to phrase it. There are gaps in Earth's asteroid defences, yes, a bit like how there are gaps in the total surface area of the planet where there are no roads.
Exactly. Before this mebibyte crap came along I never got confused or wondered what anyone meant when they said "MB." I expected any device that used binary storage to report in binary prefixes, and even my non-technical family expected this.
You see, they don't give a crap about this kind of thing. It isn't worth trying to change. How many mebibytes of RAM have you got installed? This is just confusing rubbish that nobody needs.
You know, that sounds familiar doesn't it? A bit like ODF and OOXML.
...Aperture?
We didn't know it at the time but XP pre-SP2 sucked.
I used SP1 for the last five years with no issues at all. I've been using SP2 for the last six months.
The differences are so slight it's barely worth mentioning.
Apparently not easy or fast enough to encourage the use of your shift key.
Yeah, I noticed this too. I made my website using Nvu first, because I couldn't be arsed doing HTML myself. I browsed to my site on my PSP and it was just a complete clusterfuck.
I rewrote the site in (fairly) compliant HTML/CSS with Notepad2 and now it scales perfectly on anything I've tried; mobile phone, PSP, etc.
What's more, the site is easier to maintain and the HTML itself is a much smaller download.
lashgeo.org [slashgeo.org] - In+ersec+ion for Spatial People GIS, RS and everything geospatial.
There can only be one. >:(
That's not being complacent or apathetic, it's being realistic.
Self-fulfilling prophecies generally are.
If you adopt this mindset, your chance of success is zero. If you do bother to take action, your chances of success are greater than zero. If you really want change to be effected, the logical choice of action is quite clearly the latter one.
Vote with your dollar! Donate to lobbies that are fighting for your cause. Otherwise stop complaining.
How about they just keep complaining anyway? There's no need for a dichotomy there. Awareness of this is a good thing; I wouldn't even know about this situation were it not for the complaints.
The second one ( which I'm not sure about) is that, at the peak of the number of nukes between US and Russia, they could have "destroyed the earth 52 times" (killed everything on it? physically shatter?).
Believe you me, nobody will be shattering our planet with nuclear weapons any time soon. Or ever with any weapon. Remember what we're dealing with here: six septillion kilograms of rock and metal held together by the massive force of its own weight. A solid iron core thousands of kilometres in diameter surrounded by thousands more of molten material so dense that rocks float on it. And we're on those rocks. Shatter it? We can no more shatter the planet with nuclear weapons than a gnat can shatter a human skeleton.
The Earth is tough. Wiping the biosphere off it entirely is relatively easy.
If they really didn't believe it then I doubt they would bother with anything of the sort. You underestimate the power of fanatical belief; when someone believes something like that, they can justify anything. Some people are just fucking crazy, I wouldn't expect them to even evaluate their beliefs to begin with. For them it's just true by definition, as is the evil of their enemies.
Insofar as I can recall, what is being reported there is not a '350Ghz chip' as you would imagine in the sense of a processor, but the maximum switching rate of a small batch of transistors for use in radio communications. At speeds that high I imagine you would start running into very hard problems in an actual processor, like the speed of electricity not being high enough. Although I agree with you in principle, the example is not a good one. Hopefully my example is, but I'll confess that I didn't do the maths.
the public simply ignoring the bullshit intellectual property lawyers invent in order to justify their existence We already ignore it. The companies in question just continue about their business oblivious.
Terrorists have already conclusively proven that they don't need a dirty bomb to cause insane amounts of damage. In fact, they proved they don't need bombs at all.
Well you see, Google is run by Hank Scorpio.
> Virginia Tech Ah yes, weren't they recently dealing with a rogue particle accelerator?
2) Practical flying car Feel free to design a practical flying car, but you'll also need a practical Anti-Retardation Agent inside the car so people can actually drive it without embedding themselves in a tall building...
The clock speed doesn't matter unless you're comparing the same architectures, which they are not. The performance differential is not what you said.
Yeah. I don't think Vista is that bad, it's practically the same as XP after a little customisation. Thing is, I would never pay a few hundred euros for what amounts to nothing useful to me. I just don't care; DX10 turned out to be a slow piece of wet bark, I like the classic theme better than Aero. I also dislike the dishonesty they seem to be pulling with games for it, for example Halo 2, which I completed entirely in XP but had technical problems in Vista with, and Crysis' very high settings which mysteriously also work in XP despite being disabled in the game...
If Microsoft didn't base the 360's thermal design on the EZ-Bake Oven.
Ask Multivac. It always gets there in the end...
Dan from Dan's Data offers a possible explanation: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/02/08/more-perpetual-motion-with-video-this-time/