Buying a CD is still the easiest way to get high quality, consistant MP3s onto my iPod.
You wish. There's this neat thing called "copy protection" that record studios are all hot and bothered about. So buying a legit CD is no longer a painless way to obtain quality MP3s.
It can still be done with exact audio copy and other quality software but not with e-z ripper for dummies.
They would have the technology for sure. Miniature satellite nuclear plants and whatnot. Ditto for getting stuff into orbit. But for building a spaceship capable of sustaining a crew for however long it's going to take to get that reactor to Mars, set up a polar ice to water-oxygen plant plus a few other sundries..
On the other hand, they've got enormous pile of nukes and bomb-grade material so maybe they're going to build a nuclear impulse ship..
French != Europe, unless you're french. Moreveover, even after severe physical damage to their grid, the blackout did not cascade beyond physically cut off locations. Instead the grid worked as it is supposed to and isolated the disturbance to as small area as possible.. Not letting it propagate to Germany and Belgium..
For what it's worth, up here in Finland we have severe weather all the time and it's considered a scoop if, 20000 people are without electricity for 12 hours after a blizzard. We also have competitive power infrastructure with separate entities owning power plants, distribution grid and consumer sales. Nothing like E.on which would keel over immediately without corporate welfare.
The radioactive waste is not even worth mentioning, a coal plant produces more radioactive particles when you factor in just how much coal dust they put up into the atmosphere. Besides which, the little bit of waste produced is buried into bedrock, not spread over your backyard. (disclaimer: Your goverment may not have a waste disposal facility)
What about this (search for blackout)? A couple days of snow and winds and France loses power to 10 million citizens and 22,000 pylons fall over. Great engineering. The NE US faces weather like that every year.
Oh yes, famous annual French blizzards.. French have not abolished monopoly on power. All their electricity is produced by a monolithic monopoly corp which is answerable to nobody. We all know how well that sort of thing correlates with quality.
No more feasablility studies (which I think at last count have cost a few BILLION dollars), we're just going to build the thing and Greenpeace can sue us for the next 17 years.
They're insane anyways. Not insane as in schizophernic, insane as in split personality. The only major clean sources of energy we have right now are hydro and nuclear. Please, no more polluting the hell out of our home and pretending it's a-okay since it's not nuclear. It's time to shut down coal and oil plants for good and replace them with nuclear power.
That's it for the political rant. I'm an engineer. An European engineer. We never-ever have that magnitude grid failure. Sure, we have cities going dark, but the grid can cut off parts of itself to protect distribution down the line. So there's no cascading.
The catch being that 1 micron MRI scanning would take far too long and subject the sample to way too much radiation.
Something like this was addressed in SF by Alastair Reynolds.. The scan would have to be faster than the speed the synaptic signals travel. That way you'd get "healthy happy" brain scan which was not aware of being fried by radiation yet. Of course there were some issues, such as..
It can learn about ethernet later.:)
Not to mention without hormones you probably wouldn't have that much interest in sex anyhow. Sounds boring, doesn't it..? Small wonder self-aware AIs are always going psycho/catatonic.
In liberated Europe, we have mandatory CD-R tax. The only way to get "data" CDRs is to buy them for a registered company and sign a statement you're going to use them for backups or whatever.
You want to replace the charger as well! NiMh charger is NOT necessarily compatible with NiCad. It's not that the charge current is dissimilar as such, it's that the batteries behave differently when they top up and the charge monitor can become confused.
Of course if you use a "dumb" charger that just pours on the current for X hours, there should not be a problem. But be vary of "smart" chargers which allow you to keep the battery pack connected 24/7.
The second point is silly. The whole reason a new crew vehicle is being developed is so that the shuttle can be dropped like the white elephant it turned out to be. Cargo can much more cheaply be sent up by unmanned expendable boosters. The only change needed will be to either redesign new/proposed station structural components to fit in a 10-20T payload range, or to design a heavier ELV that can carry a payload comparable to the shuttle's in one shot.
For what it's worth, I read in a paper ESA is working on exactly that. Automated cargo lifter module that can be docked to the ISS for hauling cargo. And for the (one-way-burn-up) return trip it works as a trash can of all things.. Plus it's pressurized after docked.
Article was in written for joe public so it was shy of nitty gritty technical details and timetables. Nothing there that wouldn't be relatively easily achievable, at least combined to reusable vehicle.
There is absolutely no reason for you to donate. Nobody is forcing you to do so. On the other hand, if everybody applies the same philosophy, most OSS projects will depend solely on the goodwill and the mutable live conditions of their developers Or on companies looking for a cheaper/better software development process).
You pretty much summed up the "er, you know.." caveat I've had about the whole OSS ideology. That is, people want and deserve to be paid for their work. Giving software (=work) away for free is somewhat..
Erh, I got a few Mozilla converts on nice-to-use merits alone. I show 'em tabbed browsing, I show 'em how popup blocking works (with convenient per site exceptions), I show the nice Email client and I show to install the bad boy.
Gosh, I didn't know 1.4 still ships with original netscape look as default. That's waaaay ugly:)
Still not convinced corrupting the audio stream in a CD qualifies. Seeing how it plays in regular CD player. In any case, it's up to the member states to actually pass laws to implement the directive. Finnish parliament took a time out since the directive is controversial (oh really?) wrt consumer rights. So the national laws are more or less reasonable than the directive text depending on the bone layer thickness quotient.
You sure you're not confusing Ion and Hall engines? There was an experimental probe with an ion engine a while ago. Only the engine shut down almost immediately. I'm too lazy to dig up the article but it was within last 12 months for sure.
Say, don't remember this one? Like the experimental engine working for all of a second before going belly-up? Ok, maybe they've had more satellites since then but they kept pretty low profile about it.
Logical flaw: if the price (actual or perceived) of P2P goes over about $1/song then it becomes cheaper to buy the music through legal channels. No matter how much a dealer charges, you can't go down to Sam Druggy or DrugLand and get a better deal.
Exactly. Do you see the obvious solution to whole drug abuser problem screaming at you? You cannot get rid of drug use, but you can minimize the harm for users.. And the harm the users do to you.
Strategic weapons are essentially possessed only by France, Britain, Russia, China, US (and a lesser extent, India, Pakistan).
I always wondered why people are so eager to overlook Israel in the nuclear club tally.
They go on to say many countries in Europe, particularly less developed ones, need the US to move forward at a reasonable pace. Germany and France can afford to play politics. For others, it's about their next meal.
Hmm, hate to break it to you, but intra-EU trade is far more significant for "minor" eu nations than transatlantic trade. For example, in 2001 Finnish foreign trade partners in order of importance:
Germany 14,5% Sweden 10,2% Russia 9,6% USA 6,9% United Kingdom 6,4%
Slashdot Mirror
..Called DMCA. They can jail your butt for modding your PC to circumvent the DRM.
Buying a CD is still the easiest way to get high quality, consistant MP3s onto my iPod.
You wish. There's this neat thing called "copy protection" that record studios are all hot and bothered about. So buying a legit CD is no longer a painless way to obtain quality MP3s.
It can still be done with exact audio copy and other quality software but not with e-z ripper for dummies.
They would have the technology for sure. Miniature satellite nuclear plants and whatnot. Ditto for getting stuff into orbit. But for building a spaceship capable of sustaining a crew for however long it's going to take to get that reactor to Mars, set up a polar ice to water-oxygen plant plus a few other sundries..
On the other hand, they've got enormous pile of nukes and bomb-grade material so maybe they're going to build a nuclear impulse ship..
A few more observations if you don't mind..
French != Europe, unless you're french. Moreveover, even after severe physical damage to their grid, the blackout did not cascade beyond physically cut off locations. Instead the grid worked as it is supposed to and isolated the disturbance to as small area as possible.. Not letting it propagate to Germany and Belgium..
For what it's worth, up here in Finland we have severe weather all the time and it's considered a scoop if, 20000 people are without electricity for 12 hours after a blizzard. We also have competitive power infrastructure with separate entities owning power plants, distribution grid and consumer sales. Nothing like E.on which would keel over immediately without corporate welfare.
However, "Clean" it is not.
True, there's some water vapour generated..
The radioactive waste is not even worth mentioning, a coal plant produces more radioactive particles when you factor in just how much coal dust they put up into the atmosphere. Besides which, the little bit of waste produced is buried into bedrock, not spread over your backyard. (disclaimer: Your goverment may not have a waste disposal facility)
What about this (search for blackout)? A couple days of snow and winds and France loses power to 10 million citizens and 22,000 pylons fall over. Great engineering. The NE US faces weather like that every year.
Oh yes, famous annual French blizzards.. French have not abolished monopoly on power. All their electricity is produced by a monolithic monopoly corp which is answerable to nobody. We all know how well that sort of thing correlates with quality.
No more feasablility studies (which I think at last count have cost a few BILLION dollars), we're just going to build the thing and Greenpeace can sue us for the next 17 years.
They're insane anyways. Not insane as in schizophernic, insane as in split personality. The only major clean sources of energy we have right now are hydro and nuclear. Please, no more polluting the hell out of our home and pretending it's a-okay since it's not nuclear. It's time to shut down coal and oil plants for good and replace them with nuclear power.
That's it for the political rant. I'm an engineer. An European engineer. We never-ever have that magnitude grid failure. Sure, we have cities going dark, but the grid can cut off parts of itself to protect distribution down the line. So there's no cascading.
The catch being that 1 micron MRI scanning would take far too long and subject the sample to way too much radiation.
:)
Something like this was addressed in SF by Alastair Reynolds.. The scan would have to be faster than the speed the synaptic signals travel. That way you'd get "healthy happy" brain scan which was not aware of being fried by radiation yet. Of course there were some issues, such as..
It can learn about ethernet later.
Not to mention without hormones you probably wouldn't have that much interest in sex anyhow. Sounds boring, doesn't it..? Small wonder self-aware AIs are always going psycho/catatonic.
Actually, if it was a real neural net, it wouldn't be self-aware. There would be no stimulus to develop the neural connections.
And natural biological I/O? Who cares if you can download pr0n directly to your mind..
In liberated Europe, we have mandatory CD-R tax. The only way to get "data" CDRs is to buy them for a registered company and sign a statement you're going to use them for backups or whatever.
You want to replace the charger as well! NiMh charger is NOT necessarily compatible with NiCad. It's not that the charge current is dissimilar as such, it's that the batteries behave differently when they top up and the charge monitor can become confused.
Of course if you use a "dumb" charger that just pours on the current for X hours, there should not be a problem. But be vary of "smart" chargers which allow you to keep the battery pack connected 24/7.
To the Mozilla decelopers and Netscape/AOL, thank you!
If you feel that way, there's a paypal button in the mozilla.org main page..
Uff, compared to a reusable vehicle that is.
The second point is silly. The whole reason a new crew vehicle is being developed is so that the shuttle can be dropped like the white elephant it turned out to be. Cargo can much more cheaply be sent up by unmanned expendable boosters. The only change needed will be to either redesign new/proposed station structural components to fit in a 10-20T payload range, or to design a heavier ELV that can carry a payload comparable to the shuttle's in one shot.
For what it's worth, I read in a paper ESA is working on exactly that. Automated cargo lifter module that can be docked to the ISS for hauling cargo. And for the (one-way-burn-up) return trip it works as a trash can of all things.. Plus it's pressurized after docked.
Article was in written for joe public so it was shy of nitty gritty technical details and timetables. Nothing there that wouldn't be relatively easily achievable, at least combined to reusable vehicle.
There is absolutely no reason for you to donate. Nobody is forcing you to do so. On the other hand, if everybody applies the same philosophy, most OSS projects will depend solely on the goodwill and the mutable live conditions of their developers Or on companies looking for a cheaper/better software development process).
You pretty much summed up the "er, you know.." caveat I've had about the whole OSS ideology. That is, people want and deserve to be paid for their work. Giving software (=work) away for free is somewhat..
Yeah, by default you get the notes-like UI. Multiple windows inside application frame. Yecch.
Erh, I got a few Mozilla converts on nice-to-use merits alone. I show 'em tabbed browsing, I show 'em how popup blocking works (with convenient per site exceptions), I show the nice Email client and I show to install the bad boy.
:)
Gosh, I didn't know 1.4 still ships with original netscape look as default. That's waaaay ugly
Still not convinced corrupting the audio stream in a CD qualifies. Seeing how it plays in regular CD player. In any case, it's up to the member states to actually pass laws to implement the directive. Finnish parliament took a time out since the directive is controversial (oh really?) wrt consumer rights. So the national laws are more or less reasonable than the directive text depending on the bone layer thickness quotient.
It makes it illegal to circumvent an effective protection measure. I don't think cd-like products qualify.
The directive simply has no such clause. You didn't even say which memeber state has that gem in their legislation.. Germany?
You sure you're not confusing Ion and Hall engines? There was an experimental probe with an ion engine a while ago. Only the engine shut down almost immediately. I'm too lazy to dig up the article but it was within last 12 months for sure.
Say, don't remember this one? Like the experimental engine working for all of a second before going belly-up? Ok, maybe they've had more satellites since then but they kept pretty low profile about it.
Logical flaw: if the price (actual or perceived) of P2P goes over about $1/song then it becomes cheaper to buy the music through legal channels. No matter how much a dealer charges, you can't go down to Sam Druggy or DrugLand and get a better deal.
Exactly. Do you see the obvious solution to whole drug abuser problem screaming at you? You cannot get rid of drug use, but you can minimize the harm for users.. And the harm the users do to you.
I always wondered why people are so eager to overlook Israel in the nuclear club tally.
Hmm, hate to break it to you, but intra-EU trade is far more significant for "minor" eu nations than transatlantic trade. For example, in 2001 Finnish foreign trade partners in order of importance:
Germany 14,5%
Sweden 10,2%
Russia 9,6%
USA 6,9%
United Kingdom 6,4%
A car costs considerably more than a few hundred dollars to manufacture. And the design costs are quite a bit more than it takes to record a CD.
A sieve does not hold water.