Unfortunately, the probability of you finding one of those just went from 1:50 billion to 1:100 billion.
That is assuming that a planet with Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, and Galactic Girls Gone Wild is unique. If it is the sort of planet that comes up once in every ten billion, his chances of finding such a planet just doubled.
Depends on your dictionary: 2. historical kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.
The clue was in the deci- part.
Interesting, I got the deci part off the bat, but didn't know the historical reference. I wonder if they used other similar words - hexitate for example, if they did more than decimate:)
Decimate: 1) Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of. 2) Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".
Decimalized: 1) Convert (a system of coinage or weights and measures) to a decimal system.
Amusingly, taking out every tenth word of the SOPA bill might just make it unusable to the point of acceptable. Not as good as wiping it off the face of the western world, but a good start.
Ya, everyone knows that Google and Facebook are only use by the technically knowledgeable./Sarcasm
That's exactly the point here. The technical masses know about SOPA and what a PITA it will be. However, technical people alone won't get the bill revoked. What we need is the mindless masses. In this case, the people that you appear to snubbing your nose at are the ones whose help we need.
This bill needs to be decimated, and the best way to do that is to take the circus and free bread away from the plebs.
It was NOT designed as a means of bypassing firewalls that are actively try to block Tor. That was never its purpose.
Totally agree that it was not the original purpose, but I would add to your comment and congratulate the folks behind Tor for taking a stand and trying to allow their software to get past the GFW. Sometimes when you realize that your software is being used for something more important (possibly something much more important than not letting your ISP know what you are doing) then it is a great opportunity to change your purpose somewhat. If the purpose itself isn't being changed, then it is still heart warming to see the effort being made anyhow.
Could the difference in what styles of prose one likes to read have something to do with the type of leisure activities you enjoy?
Well, to be honest, while I like nature, I don't really want to get out into it much - having said that, I live in Australia and I don't overly like the bush that we have here, and I like the heat even less. If I lived in northern Europe or Canada, I think that I would be outside a lot more.
if you're reading a novel, and you find yourself really seeing the words and aware that you're reading, you're not really immersed in the story. If you completely forget you're reading, and suddenly you find 2 hours have gone by - that's the mark of a good writer IMO.
Indeed, I find that if you are pjhysically aware that you are reading, you are just reading. A good novel isn't about reading, it is about experiencing it. While being able to immerse yourself into a book is a sign of a good writer, I think it also has a lot to do with the reading ability of the person. I think a lot of it simply comes with practise. I know that when I was younger and just starting to read fluently, there was no way that I was able to immerse properly into what I was reading as the reading itself was too much effort.
I also do find that it is exactly the same as speaking a different language. When you are first learning it, it is a real effort to say what you want to, but over time, you actually forget that you are speaking another language and just communicate.
Actually, I am from Australia, so Tyre is the correct spelling for the rubber part around the car wheel, however, as I know that/. is made up of mainly US readers, I changed boot to trunk to make it easier for them to read. I didn't even realize that tyre was spelt tire in the US. For us here, Tire means to get tired - as in he was starting to tire of having to spell things in so many ways but hey, IceGryphon is right, this is the interwebs:)
Well, for that time and place, 640K was enough. For me at the moment, 1.5 Gb is plenty. Unless the internet changes and getting my news or email changes from reading a few hundred Kb of text to only being available via a HD presentation, 1.5Gb will stay more than enough. I don't use voice commands much, so no large wav file uploads, if I download photos, it is via a USB to my laptop. To be honest, I prefer to have things in a text format anyhow. I don't need earphones or a speaker to listen to it, I can flick past things I don't care about, or I can re-read a sentance without having to input any commands to skip back in a video.
For me, 1.5Gb WILL be enough, and for a long time yet. If one of the sites that I frequent changes to a video format, chances are that I won't be visiting that site any longer.
Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
Actually, I found that it is an amazing read. I read it first when my father gave me a copy, when I was around ten or twelve. I do however think that it will likely more appeal to quick readers, or readers who are really able to immerse themselves in a book. If I am reading, I find that I get totally inside a book. I can sit down and start, then look up and a few hours have gone by.
If you find that you are not enjoying it as there is too much description of landscapes and it bores you, I can only suggest trying to let your mind wander into these things. Don't focus on the reading, focus on what you are reading.
I once had to sit and write pages from a book during detention at school, and I found myself copying text from a story that I was reading at the time. What was amazing, was that in that hour and a half, I probably only got through a small number of pages, but the feeling was amazing. As I was bored, I utterly immersed myself in what I was copying and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of "reading" that I ever had. If I had the time, I would happily get through a copy of LoTR or the like and write it out word for word, letting it wash over me and being utterly inside the story as it unfolds. Sometimes, slower is better, it frees up more of your mind to dream out the content rather than racing ahead and trying to get to the "next interesting bit"...
we in Australia are stuck on 1, 3, maybe 10gb plans at the most
I really don't get why carriers in the US don't use this sort of a model. I am on a 1.5 gb plan with optus, and it is more than enough for my phone, and for my laptop (I use my phone to wifi tether). There isn't ever really anything that I want to do using my phone that will use up more data than that.
If I want to update drivers or files, I generally do it at home, not on the move. The only thing I really use data for is email/browsing on my laptop, the phone is also email or the occasional map when driving. Aside from that, I do all my serious stuff at home. It isn't because of a low data plan, it is simply because if I am out and about, the last thing I am thinking of is torrent files, distro updates or any other data heavy application.
While the Giant Impact Theory has good standning, any impact between the two bodies would have entirely liquified both bodies. These sort of minerals would have been utterly obliterated. Basalts are indeed formed from lava, but if you heat them up enough (as a collision like this would have done) they will revert back to lava, so there would be no trace of them that we could find.
As they are made up of fairly common minerals (iron, oxygen, silicon, zirconium and titanium with smaller fractions of yttrium and calcium.), it is simply a case of having the right conditions here on earth, with the right mix of ingredients. It is also a factor that on earth, there is a lot of weathering taking place, constantly breaking down rock. If the conditions had been right for these rocks to form some time in the past, there is a good chance that they have been gobbled back into mantle through techtonics or been broken down by wind, water and ice.
It is possible that material is transferred from one body to another (and this is the basis of theories such as Panspermia, and the moon to earth transfer would be one of the easiest. When an asteroid, comet or some other body impacts the moon (or earth, or other planet) it is possible that debris from the impact is ejected from the impact site with enough force to break the gravitational pull generated by the moon. This material could then find itself captured by the gravity of the earth and fall back down. Larger bits could well survive re-entry, but in these cases, it is much more likely that the samples found on earth would be in VERY small areas and highly concentrated. By that I mean, someone would have to drill directly into the rock that came from the moon to find these materials. They would also be in high density - exactly the same as the moon rocks. In this case, while we have found them in Western Australia, the concentration is very very low, meaning that it is more likely that they were infact formed right here on earth.
such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda....and so the project is scrapped.
I actually don't see why they killed it. I would have paid an extra hundred bucks to have a phone with a longer battery life. My Galaxy S II barely gives me a day, if with a solar panel it would give me a day and a half, at least it would last without problems until I get home from work. Worth it in my books.
How is there no economic value? Isn't this essentially moon rock?
Moon rocks aren't valuable because they have some special property, they aren't valuable because of exceptional heat resistance or because they repell gravity. They are so valuable because of their scarcity here on earth. People who want to study them only have a very limited supply, short of going up to the moon again and getting more - which is of course inhibitively expensive.
The moon rocks (and the ones found in WA now) are just basalt, a rather un-exciting hard stone made from magma cooling rapidly. Now, the exact conditions that take place make the basic elements within them form into a number of interesting compounds. So, like silica is the main ingredient in sand, clay and quartz, they are all unique and formed through different conditions.
The moon rocks when first analyzed contained three previously unknown compounds. Armalcolite, pyroxferroite and tranquillityite. The first two have since then been discovered on earth, but the third remained elusive until now, when small deposits have been found. As I said before, there isn't anything super special about this compound, it's just that it hasn't ever been found naturally formed on earth till now.
... the only successful big products we've launched are Windows and Office. We have to force business users to adopt it...
They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable
Actually, you are both right. Support for XP has been more than generous and acceptable. However, MS is indeed in the business of developing a new OS and wanting to get everyone on their previous versions onto it. Now, given the utter debarcle that was Vista, I think they have at least learned that it must be an acceptable standard and will continue to try to get it decent. Having said that, their business model will always remain on getting customers who continue to buy new OS, rather than making an OS and making enough profit from the sales without needing to get extra sales.
There was a bit of a scandal with Gigabyte recently when a YouTube video showed one of its X79 boards going up in smoke.
I thought that this was totally part and parcel with overclocking. Although I was never into it too much, I was pretty sure that you started at normal speeds and slowly worked up higher and higher while keeping an eye on CPU and motherboard temperatures and bits?
I find that statement to be utterly true if the product is being developed to a tender. However, if someone is selling you their own product that happens to suit your needs, then the lowest bidder may be a good thing.
Why spend so much money on development within a badly managed and cash bleeding branch - when you can pay a company a fraction, and get them to do all the management. While I find it sad that the shuttles have stopped, I certainly know that what costs a government a million dollars, a private company can do for a few hundred thousand at most.
Perhaps this is actually better for the US space program to be able to have private rockets that can fly up and down rather than having to maintain its own fleet.
If you want to get from home to the station, it's cheaper to catch a bus rather than having to own the bus company.
I am not sure that it is possible to make a vehicle look like a hollow box made out of green, red and blue Pool Noodles. Also, the octagonal wheels found in most graphics from the 80's would give the vehicles terrible handling.
The Unreal (not tournament) series had a great unfolding story about life on alien worlds. Doom had a simple, yet interesting plot that you got into. This was nicely followed with each title in the series. Gear of War? While I haven't played that, the story telling is supposed to be great? And even going back to days when FPS was still in infancy, what about titles like Heretic? Dead Space? Deus Ex? You can't play a few games online without touching the single player mode of a game and say it has no plot or that no-one plays for the plots.
Hollywood is just out of ideas. How about doing like in the old days, base your scripts on worthy novels.
Hey, at least they are SORT of doing that sometimes. Well kind of. The Swedes made a great trilogy of films based on the Millennium Series which were fantastic. Luckily Hollywood has now decided to do an English version of the films. Hollywood is out of ideas. How about this classic: Niels Arden Oplev, the director of the 2009 Swedish film adaptation, has been quoted as saying, "Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?"
Or some such thing. My schools motto was that. What you sow, So shall you reap. One of those wonderful things that I recall as a kid I didn't think too much of. These days, can't be closer to home. GoDaddy, you fucked up. You got caught with your fingers in the cookie jar. All the advertisements on Australian TV won't help you enough. You have angered the internet. To you, we are anonymous. But we are not. We have domain names. We have money that you need. We have integrity. We have choices. You chose SOPA.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the probability of you finding one of those just went from 1:50 billion to 1:100 billion.
That is assuming that a planet with Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, and Galactic Girls Gone Wild is unique. If it is the sort of planet that comes up once in every ten billion, his chances of finding such a planet just doubled.
Hmmmm, very high userID, massive first post with many links and presenting a rather one sided argument, fresh smell of grass clippings in the air.
I think I smell some astroturfing coming from a shill.
Depends on your dictionary:
2. historical kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.
The clue was in the deci- part.
Interesting, I got the deci part off the bat, but didn't know the historical reference. I wonder if they used other similar words - hexitate for example, if they did more than decimate :)
Decimate:
1) Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of.
2) Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".
Decimalized:
1) Convert (a system of coinage or weights and measures) to a decimal system.
Amusingly, taking out every tenth word of the SOPA bill might just make it unusable to the point of acceptable. Not as good as wiping it off the face of the western world, but a good start.
Ya, everyone knows that Google and Facebook are only use by the technically knowledgeable. /Sarcasm
That's exactly the point here. The technical masses know about SOPA and what a PITA it will be. However, technical people alone won't get the bill revoked. What we need is the mindless masses. In this case, the people that you appear to snubbing your nose at are the ones whose help we need.
This bill needs to be decimated, and the best way to do that is to take the circus and free bread away from the plebs.
It was NOT designed as a means of bypassing firewalls that are actively try to block Tor. That was never its purpose.
Totally agree that it was not the original purpose, but I would add to your comment and congratulate the folks behind Tor for taking a stand and trying to allow their software to get past the GFW. Sometimes when you realize that your software is being used for something more important (possibly something much more important than not letting your ISP know what you are doing) then it is a great opportunity to change your purpose somewhat. If the purpose itself isn't being changed, then it is still heart warming to see the effort being made anyhow.
Could the difference in what styles of prose one likes to read have something to do with the type of leisure activities you enjoy?
Well, to be honest, while I like nature, I don't really want to get out into it much - having said that, I live in Australia and I don't overly like the bush that we have here, and I like the heat even less. If I lived in northern Europe or Canada, I think that I would be outside a lot more.
if you're reading a novel, and you find yourself really seeing the words and aware that you're reading, you're not really immersed in the story. If you completely forget you're reading, and suddenly you find 2 hours have gone by - that's the mark of a good writer IMO.
Indeed, I find that if you are pjhysically aware that you are reading, you are just reading. A good novel isn't about reading, it is about experiencing it. While being able to immerse yourself into a book is a sign of a good writer, I think it also has a lot to do with the reading ability of the person. I think a lot of it simply comes with practise. I know that when I was younger and just starting to read fluently, there was no way that I was able to immerse properly into what I was reading as the reading itself was too much effort.
I also do find that it is exactly the same as speaking a different language. When you are first learning it, it is a real effort to say what you want to, but over time, you actually forget that you are speaking another language and just communicate.
Actually, I am from Australia, so Tyre is the correct spelling for the rubber part around the car wheel, however, as I know that /. is made up of mainly US readers, I changed boot to trunk to make it easier for them to read. I didn't even realize that tyre was spelt tire in the US. For us here, Tire means to get tired - as in he was starting to tire of having to spell things in so many ways but hey, IceGryphon is right, this is the interwebs :)
...and 640K ought to be enough for anyone.
Well, for that time and place, 640K was enough. For me at the moment, 1.5 Gb is plenty. Unless the internet changes and getting my news or email changes from reading a few hundred Kb of text to only being available via a HD presentation, 1.5Gb will stay more than enough. I don't use voice commands much, so no large wav file uploads, if I download photos, it is via a USB to my laptop. To be honest, I prefer to have things in a text format anyhow. I don't need earphones or a speaker to listen to it, I can flick past things I don't care about, or I can re-read a sentance without having to input any commands to skip back in a video.
For me, 1.5Gb WILL be enough, and for a long time yet. If one of the sites that I frequent changes to a video format, chances are that I won't be visiting that site any longer.
Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
Actually, I found that it is an amazing read. I read it first when my father gave me a copy, when I was around ten or twelve. I do however think that it will likely more appeal to quick readers, or readers who are really able to immerse themselves in a book. If I am reading, I find that I get totally inside a book. I can sit down and start, then look up and a few hours have gone by.
If you find that you are not enjoying it as there is too much description of landscapes and it bores you, I can only suggest trying to let your mind wander into these things. Don't focus on the reading, focus on what you are reading.
I once had to sit and write pages from a book during detention at school, and I found myself copying text from a story that I was reading at the time. What was amazing, was that in that hour and a half, I probably only got through a small number of pages, but the feeling was amazing. As I was bored, I utterly immersed myself in what I was copying and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of "reading" that I ever had. If I had the time, I would happily get through a copy of LoTR or the like and write it out word for word, letting it wash over me and being utterly inside the story as it unfolds. Sometimes, slower is better, it frees up more of your mind to dream out the content rather than racing ahead and trying to get to the "next interesting bit"...
we in Australia are stuck on 1, 3, maybe 10gb plans at the most
I really don't get why carriers in the US don't use this sort of a model. I am on a 1.5 gb plan with optus, and it is more than enough for my phone, and for my laptop (I use my phone to wifi tether). There isn't ever really anything that I want to do using my phone that will use up more data than that.
If I want to update drivers or files, I generally do it at home, not on the move. The only thing I really use data for is email/browsing on my laptop, the phone is also email or the occasional map when driving. Aside from that, I do all my serious stuff at home. It isn't because of a low data plan, it is simply because if I am out and about, the last thing I am thinking of is torrent files, distro updates or any other data heavy application.
Yeah, let me check my trunk, I keep a whole bunch in there, next to the spare tyre in case of an emergency.
Actually, not likely.
While the Giant Impact Theory has good standning, any impact between the two bodies would have entirely liquified both bodies. These sort of minerals would have been utterly obliterated. Basalts are indeed formed from lava, but if you heat them up enough (as a collision like this would have done) they will revert back to lava, so there would be no trace of them that we could find.
As they are made up of fairly common minerals (iron, oxygen, silicon, zirconium and titanium with smaller fractions of yttrium and calcium.), it is simply a case of having the right conditions here on earth, with the right mix of ingredients. It is also a factor that on earth, there is a lot of weathering taking place, constantly breaking down rock. If the conditions had been right for these rocks to form some time in the past, there is a good chance that they have been gobbled back into mantle through techtonics or been broken down by wind, water and ice.
It is possible that material is transferred from one body to another (and this is the basis of theories such as Panspermia, and the moon to earth transfer would be one of the easiest. When an asteroid, comet or some other body impacts the moon (or earth, or other planet) it is possible that debris from the impact is ejected from the impact site with enough force to break the gravitational pull generated by the moon. This material could then find itself captured by the gravity of the earth and fall back down. Larger bits could well survive re-entry, but in these cases, it is much more likely that the samples found on earth would be in VERY small areas and highly concentrated. By that I mean, someone would have to drill directly into the rock that came from the moon to find these materials. They would also be in high density - exactly the same as the moon rocks. In this case, while we have found them in Western Australia, the concentration is very very low, meaning that it is more likely that they were infact formed right here on earth.
such a charger couldn't be used to sell expensive phones under the pretext of Nokia being environmentally-friendly and all the associated fraudulent propaganda. ...and so the project is scrapped.
I actually don't see why they killed it. I would have paid an extra hundred bucks to have a phone with a longer battery life. My Galaxy S II barely gives me a day, if with a solar panel it would give me a day and a half, at least it would last without problems until I get home from work. Worth it in my books.
How is there no economic value? Isn't this essentially moon rock?
Moon rocks aren't valuable because they have some special property, they aren't valuable because of exceptional heat resistance or because they repell gravity. They are so valuable because of their scarcity here on earth. People who want to study them only have a very limited supply, short of going up to the moon again and getting more - which is of course inhibitively expensive.
The moon rocks (and the ones found in WA now) are just basalt, a rather un-exciting hard stone made from magma cooling rapidly. Now, the exact conditions that take place make the basic elements within them form into a number of interesting compounds. So, like silica is the main ingredient in sand, clay and quartz, they are all unique and formed through different conditions.
The moon rocks when first analyzed contained three previously unknown compounds. Armalcolite, pyroxferroite and tranquillityite. The first two have since then been discovered on earth, but the third remained elusive until now, when small deposits have been found. As I said before, there isn't anything super special about this compound, it's just that it hasn't ever been found naturally formed on earth till now.
... the only successful big products we've launched are Windows and Office. We have to force business users to adopt it ...
They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable
Actually, you are both right. Support for XP has been more than generous and acceptable. However, MS is indeed in the business of developing a new OS and wanting to get everyone on their previous versions onto it. Now, given the utter debarcle that was Vista, I think they have at least learned that it must be an acceptable standard and will continue to try to get it decent. Having said that, their business model will always remain on getting customers who continue to buy new OS, rather than making an OS and making enough profit from the sales without needing to get extra sales.
It's not your money nor your hardware.
Exactly my thoughts to the OP.
However, from the summary:
There was a bit of a scandal with Gigabyte recently when a YouTube video showed one of its X79 boards going up in smoke.
I thought that this was totally part and parcel with overclocking. Although I was never into it too much, I was pretty sure that you started at normal speeds and slowly worked up higher and higher while keeping an eye on CPU and motherboard temperatures and bits?
For some reason, every bank we deal with (for large business types) is internet explorer only. I guess you'll have to start there.
Do they at least stop you looking at other peoples accounts if you change the account in the address bar? If not, you haven't dealt with Citibank.
Famous last words: "built by the lowest bidder"
I find that statement to be utterly true if the product is being developed to a tender. However, if someone is selling you their own product that happens to suit your needs, then the lowest bidder may be a good thing.
Why spend so much money on development within a badly managed and cash bleeding branch - when you can pay a company a fraction, and get them to do all the management. While I find it sad that the shuttles have stopped, I certainly know that what costs a government a million dollars, a private company can do for a few hundred thousand at most.
Perhaps this is actually better for the US space program to be able to have private rockets that can fly up and down rather than having to maintain its own fleet.
If you want to get from home to the station, it's cheaper to catch a bus rather than having to own the bus company.
I am not sure that it is possible to make a vehicle look like a hollow box made out of green, red and blue Pool Noodles. Also, the octagonal wheels found in most graphics from the 80's would give the vehicles terrible handling.
There are many FPS games with amazing plots.
The Unreal (not tournament) series had a great unfolding story about life on alien worlds.
Doom had a simple, yet interesting plot that you got into. This was nicely followed with each title in the series.
Gear of War? While I haven't played that, the story telling is supposed to be great?
And even going back to days when FPS was still in infancy, what about titles like Heretic?
Dead Space? Deus Ex? You can't play a few games online without touching the single player mode of a game and say it has no plot or that no-one plays for the plots.
Hollywood is just out of ideas. How about doing like in the old days, base your scripts on worthy novels.
Hey, at least they are SORT of doing that sometimes. Well kind of. The Swedes made a great trilogy of films based on the Millennium Series which were fantastic. Luckily Hollywood has now decided to do an English version of the films. Hollywood is out of ideas. How about this classic: Niels Arden Oplev, the director of the 2009 Swedish film adaptation, has been quoted as saying, "Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?"
The significant drop in salary could well be worth it. Being able to talk to the man every day, see how he works. What an interesting job indeed!
Que seneveratis metes.
Or some such thing. My schools motto was that. What you sow, So shall you reap. One of those wonderful things that I recall as a kid I didn't think too much of. These days, can't be closer to home. GoDaddy, you fucked up. You got caught with your fingers in the cookie jar. All the advertisements on Australian TV won't help you enough. You have angered the internet. To you, we are anonymous. But we are not. We have domain names. We have money that you need. We have integrity. We have choices. You chose SOPA.
We choose someone else.