They did it using thousands of off-the-shelf mobile device lithium batteries.
Which cost a friggin' fortune and with lithium batteries just about everywhere now, you can't say they aren't being mass-produced. And you don't get all that many cycles out of them either - they would need to be replaced yearly in heavy use. And then there's the tendency to blow up too.
Sorry, we still need a revolution in electricity storage technology for feasible electric cars.
Simply put, Russia cannot afford to keep sending Soyuz up there time after time again.
I don't think that's a problem now that the shuttle is grounded and they have the only vehicle in the world capable of flying to ISS at all.
And by the way, some have claimed that the whole ISS is just a way of keeping the russian rocket scientists working on peaceful projects in Russia, not on ICBMs in "rogue nations"...
Maybe he meant fuel cells capable of using some sensible fuel (i.e. not hydrogen). They've been promising small-scale direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) for some time now, but I can't see any on the shelves yet.
Instead of which, the little Commissars of Brussels royally screwed up by allowing MS to levy a fee for their interface specs. Which guarantees that Open Source software won't be able to use them.
So, in the future the Open Source developers won't be able to get the specs they never had access to in the past? What's the difference? It sure would have been nice to get all the specs for free, but you think that this "kills" Samba?
Exactly what law would MS use to prosecute the Samba developers, if they don't license the specs from MS? There would need to be a specific law being broken. Patent law? I don't think that the APIs are patented. Copyright? Samba developers can do cleanroom development to avoid copyright violations. Contract law? They don't have to enter into a contract with MS. Something else? What?
Simple. Microsoft bundles stuff like a media player and a browser in Windows - which means that they force anyone that buys Windows to buy Microsoft's media player and browser as well. They leverage their monopoly on one field (desktop OSs) to gain monopoly on other fields as well. This is illegal.
Forcing Microsoft to sell the previously bundled products separately opens up the field for free competition, which results in cheaper and better products (or so the most common capitalist thinking goes).
And if Microsoft tries to use their OS monopoly to subsidize the media player development and force competitors out of business, that would be a classic case of dumping, also illegal.
Then there's no argument against having it in a unified EU copyright!
Yes there is: I don't think there's much chance of a unified EU copyright making things less restrictive in the current climate... The EU parliament isn't totally in the corporate pocket, but with the content producers in a state of panic, I wouldn't risk it right now.
Its a mess right now, with everyday acts (like ripping CDs to MP3s) being copyright infringements in some countries but not others.
Where is it illegal? UK? They don't want to be a part of Europe anyway.
In Finland you can legally make copies for your own use in any format even if you don't own the original. And crack any copy protection in the process if you need to.
(EUCD implementation is still in the works here, like in the most of the EU.)
In most cases this will be a parking lot after we are through.
With the people who actually were responsible still alive in a bunker under the said parking lot, and millions or tens of millions of people who had no say or even knowledge, dead. Nice. Not that anyone is surprised to hear that Americans see nothing wrong with this.
only army on the planet earth that can advance blitz style over huge tracts
It's still way too small for invading EU. If you look at the number of frontline troops - the real stuff you need to invade and occupy - and how much EU would have after a full mobilization, and consider that US forces would have to travel over an ocean and land on a beach, it's obvious that it's not doable on current resources. Probably less doable than invading Russia or China.
Add to that absolute air superiority
Against third-rate Soviet crap that is.
the most capale weapons systems in existence
Most of them at the same level as European tech. For example, the Abrams tank has a gun of German design (Rheinmetall) and British-invented armour (Chobham), manufactured in the US of course.
I give europe 4 months at the outside.
I want some of what you're smoking.
During the col war the US expected most of Europe to be overrun in a Soviet offensive, the plan to then steamroll back over the russians.
Uhh... I changed my mind, I don't want what you've been smoking.
Are you kidding? If they did that, they would effectively kick themselves out of a market that is GDP- and population-wise larger than US. MS products would be replaced with other alternatives(*) and they would lose their monopoly grip on the market, as the alternatives would show themselves to be viable elsewhere too.
(*) I'm not saying that the alternatives (which would probably be Linux- and BSD-based desktop environments and office applications) would be completely ready tomorrow, but the instantly opened 400M+ person market would give them a bit of boost...
I installed suitable potentiometers in series with
my CPU fan and three case fans, and then just adjusted each of them down until the fans were quiet enough. You don't actually have to back down that much from the maximum rpm to get the noise level way down.
The power supply is one of those extra quiet ones and the HD is in a an SilentDrive enclosure that fits into the 5.25" rack. Took a while, but now things are pretty quiet. Even my laptop's fan is noisier than the whole desktop computer. Until I boot to Windows for video editing and my RAID disks spin up, that is...
I don't doubt that. I built my own clone (high voltage rectified from neon transformers, couple of thousand ionization points, air circulation with a fan, big positive collection plate for dust near the points) and when I crank it low enough that it doesn't produce crazy amounts of ozone, it doesn't collect noticeable amount dust during a day either. It does do something - the air somehow feels a lot fresher after running it. It's funny to watch the microamp-meter showing electricity flowing into thin air, too.
If you look at the industrial electrostatic air cleaners, they use tens of kilovolts to be effective. You can't use that much at home, the ozone production would make you sick.
got a lot of great minds in the public at large to start thinking of ways to solve very complex technological difficulties
A lot of great minds have also spent a lot of time thinking of how to create algorithmic human-level intelligence, but that hasn't exactly gone anywhere either.
Also, how do menus degrade the quality of the movie?
I just want to see the movie, not run through a friggin' obstacle course first. It's so pleasant to remaster DVDs with Ifoedit's "Movie only" option. Stick the resulting DVD into a player and BAM! the movie starts playing right away. Subtitles and audio tracks are easily changed from the remote. I wish all DVDs were like this, and the menu could be accessed through the "menu"-button in the remote, in case you want to see those crappy Making of -commercials and trailers.
The synaptics touchpad driver for my HP xe4500 seems to be quite broken in 2.6.4. Looks like I'm still stuck using my 2.4.21-pre3-ac5-acpi... Shame, 2.6.4 seemed noticeably faster or maybe I'm just imagining things.
Too bad though, most EU civilians now are forbidden to own weapons.
Yeah - without a permit. Let's take Finland, a peaceful Nordic country, for an example. 5 million people and over 2 million licensed guns. High-powered hunting rifles, semi-auto AK clones, shotguns, semi-auto pistols, and over 2000 full-auto weapons.
So where does this "civilians in the EU have been disarmed" come from? Or is Finland really an oddity in the EU?
CIVILIANS (which is what those private raiding parties are over there) break into your home by force
There aren't going to be any civilians breaking anywhere. The BBC is writing nonsense. What the directive says is that the infringed party can present evidence of a crime to a court and that the court can order a raid to seize evidence. The directive doesn't actually say who would perform the raid, but it would have to be the authorities, since they're the only people who have the right to do anything like that. This is, I believe, pretty much the situation now in most countries, including the US. I'm pretty sure I've heard the police going in with a warrant and seizing stuff over there.
This would be great for waking you up in the dark winter months! I have a 400-watt HID lamp putting out 35klumens for that now, but a couple of kW of wallpaper would be even better. Nicer light and less UV.
I'm pretty sure the first HID (high-intensity discharge) lamps weren't exactly long-lived either, but they're all over the place (in selected applications) now. Besides, if they can make a machine to just spit out OLED lighting sheet by the yard, it'll be mucho cheap.
By the way, if the voltage is comparable to conventional LEDs, high-wattage OLED sheets are going to require completely silly power supplies. Or some sort of series-connected sheet assemblies.
That meant a change in the mission of the ISS from a "jumping off point to outer space" to an international scientific outpost.
Couple of degrees smaller inclination wouldn't have been all that much better as a stepping stone anyway, or would it? Florida isn't exactly near the equator either. And the ISS is at a pretty low orbit in any case.
Now that the shuttle fleet is grounded, it sure is nice to be able to resupply the ISS with russian rockets.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have ANY idea how much energy it takes to send humans to even the nearest stars in any reasonable time-frame?
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Which cost a friggin' fortune and with lithium batteries just about everywhere now, you can't say they aren't being mass-produced. And you don't get all that many cycles out of them either - they would need to be replaced yearly in heavy use. And then there's the tendency to blow up too. Sorry, we still need a revolution in electricity storage technology for feasible electric cars.
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I don't think that's a problem now that the shuttle is grounded and they have the only vehicle in the world capable of flying to ISS at all.
And by the way, some have claimed that the whole ISS is just a way of keeping the russian rocket scientists working on peaceful projects in Russia, not on ICBMs in "rogue nations"...
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What sort of strike were you thinking of?
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So, in the future the Open Source developers won't be able to get the specs they never had access to in the past? What's the difference? It sure would have been nice to get all the specs for free, but you think that this "kills" Samba?
Exactly what law would MS use to prosecute the Samba developers, if they don't license the specs from MS? There would need to be a specific law being broken. Patent law? I don't think that the APIs are patented. Copyright? Samba developers can do cleanroom development to avoid copyright violations. Contract law? They don't have to enter into a contract with MS. Something else? What?
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Simple. Microsoft bundles stuff like a media player and a browser in Windows - which means that they force anyone that buys Windows to buy Microsoft's media player and browser as well. They leverage their monopoly on one field (desktop OSs) to gain monopoly on other fields as well. This is illegal.
Forcing Microsoft to sell the previously bundled products separately opens up the field for free competition, which results in cheaper and better products (or so the most common capitalist thinking goes).
And if Microsoft tries to use their OS monopoly to subsidize the media player development and force competitors out of business, that would be a classic case of dumping, also illegal.
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Yes there is: I don't think there's much chance of a unified EU copyright making things less restrictive in the current climate... The EU parliament isn't totally in the corporate pocket, but with the content producers in a state of panic, I wouldn't risk it right now.
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Where is it illegal? UK? They don't want to be a part of Europe anyway.
In Finland you can legally make copies for your own use in any format even if you don't own the original. And crack any copy protection in the process if you need to. (EUCD implementation is still in the works here, like in the most of the EU.)
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With the people who actually were responsible still alive in a bunker under the said parking lot, and millions or tens of millions of people who had no say or even knowledge, dead. Nice. Not that anyone is surprised to hear that Americans see nothing wrong with this.
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It's still way too small for invading EU. If you look at the number of frontline troops - the real stuff you need to invade and occupy - and how much EU would have after a full mobilization, and consider that US forces would have to travel over an ocean and land on a beach, it's obvious that it's not doable on current resources. Probably less doable than invading Russia or China.
Add to that absolute air superiority
Against third-rate Soviet crap that is.
the most capale weapons systems in existence
Most of them at the same level as European tech. For example, the Abrams tank has a gun of German design (Rheinmetall) and British-invented armour (Chobham), manufactured in the US of course.
I give europe 4 months at the outside.
I want some of what you're smoking.
During the col war the US expected most of Europe to be overrun in a Soviet offensive, the plan to then steamroll back over the russians.
Uhh... I changed my mind, I don't want what you've been smoking.
--
Are you kidding? If they did that, they would effectively kick themselves out of a market that is GDP- and population-wise larger than US. MS products would be replaced with other alternatives(*) and they would lose their monopoly grip on the market, as the alternatives would show themselves to be viable elsewhere too.
(*) I'm not saying that the alternatives (which would probably be Linux- and BSD-based desktop environments and office applications) would be completely ready tomorrow, but the instantly opened 400M+ person market would give them a bit of boost...
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The power supply is one of those extra quiet ones and the HD is in a an SilentDrive enclosure that fits into the 5.25" rack. Took a while, but now things are pretty quiet. Even my laptop's fan is noisier than the whole desktop computer. Until I boot to Windows for video editing and my RAID disks spin up, that is...
--
I don't doubt that. I built my own clone (high voltage rectified from neon transformers, couple of thousand ionization points, air circulation with a fan, big positive collection plate for dust near the points) and when I crank it low enough that it doesn't produce crazy amounts of ozone, it doesn't collect noticeable amount dust during a day either. It does do something - the air somehow feels a lot fresher after running it. It's funny to watch the microamp-meter showing electricity flowing into thin air, too.
If you look at the industrial electrostatic air cleaners, they use tens of kilovolts to be effective. You can't use that much at home, the ozone production would make you sick.
--
A lot of great minds have also spent a lot of time thinking of how to create algorithmic human-level intelligence, but that hasn't exactly gone anywhere either.
--
I just want to see the movie, not run through a friggin' obstacle course first. It's so pleasant to remaster DVDs with Ifoedit's "Movie only" option. Stick the resulting DVD into a player and BAM! the movie starts playing right away. Subtitles and audio tracks are easily changed from the remote. I wish all DVDs were like this, and the menu could be accessed through the "menu"-button in the remote, in case you want to see those crappy Making of -commercials and trailers.
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How are these stricter than US legislation, exactly?
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Yeah - without a permit. Let's take Finland, a peaceful Nordic country, for an example. 5 million people and over 2 million licensed guns. High-powered hunting rifles, semi-auto AK clones, shotguns, semi-auto pistols, and over 2000 full-auto weapons.
So where does this "civilians in the EU have been disarmed" come from? Or is Finland really an oddity in the EU?
CIVILIANS (which is what those private raiding parties are over there) break into your home by force
There aren't going to be any civilians breaking anywhere. The BBC is writing nonsense. What the directive says is that the infringed party can present evidence of a crime to a court and that the court can order a raid to seize evidence. The directive doesn't actually say who would perform the raid, but it would have to be the authorities, since they're the only people who have the right to do anything like that. This is, I believe, pretty much the situation now in most countries, including the US. I'm pretty sure I've heard the police going in with a warrant and seizing stuff over there.
--
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I'm pretty sure the first HID (high-intensity discharge) lamps weren't exactly long-lived either, but they're all over the place (in selected applications) now. Besides, if they can make a machine to just spit out OLED lighting sheet by the yard, it'll be mucho cheap.
By the way, if the voltage is comparable to conventional LEDs, high-wattage OLED sheets are going to require completely silly power supplies. Or some sort of series-connected sheet assemblies.
--
Couple of degrees smaller inclination wouldn't have been all that much better as a stepping stone anyway, or would it? Florida isn't exactly near the equator either. And the ISS is at a pretty low orbit in any case.
Now that the shuttle fleet is grounded, it sure is nice to be able to resupply the ISS with russian rockets.
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Now, that's an easy problem to fix. Realtime GPRS image upload.
Odd, my new sig seems to fit the topic as well.
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How come they managed to make Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid then?