Why are people clinging so strongly to incandescent light bulbs? GE et al have been fooling you for *years* by making you believe that you were buying *light* bulbs. They're actually *heat* bulbs that happen to produce light as a waste product. Now, while this was a slight improvement over candles back in 1887 (inasmuch as they started fewer fires), it's not exactly something you want in the summertime when it's 35 C, is it? But hey, I guess that's what air conditioning is for. You just use more power to take away the heat from the things that use power in your house.
It doesn't need to be very big. Even ground-based amateur astronomers are able to detect transiting exoplanets using consumer-grade imaging equipment. You basically need a CMOS camera that's sensitive enough, and know when and where to look. If you record the star's brightness over the expected period of time, you can see the difference in your own measurements.
The drawback of using Hubble to do this is that astronomers the world over are competing for time on it, so it's booked solid. The University of British Columbia has a satellite of its own, with a 150mm telescope (much smaller than Hubble's 2m) in orbit specifically to look for transiting extrasolar planets. They basically observe one star for months at a time, hoping to catch the dip in the star's brightness that would mean a planet is transiting. The telescope on this probe is probably about the same size, and since it's not going to be doing anything for the next year or so, why not point it at some candidate stars for that period? You might just get lucky. The fact that there's no atmospheric interference is really what makes the difference between discovering a jupiter-sized planet and an earth-sized planet with this method.
This is one of those things where just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *should*. And putting it on TV with a CYA boilerplate of "don't try this at home kids", is an astoundingly stupid idea.
It actually kind of reminds me of a segment in Weird Al's movie "UHF".... "Today boys and girls, we're going to learn to make PLOO-TOE-NEE-UM. Out of common, household items."
So, basically what happened is that the moment they saw kdawson post this article to Slashdot, they foresaw the inevitable slashdotting and cancelled the beta test.
How many billboards do you see discouraging youths from shooting each other?
And there have been plenty of laws in the US against having sex before marriage, after marriage with someone else, or involving organs other than the vagina. Many of those laws have only very recently been repealed. Oh yeah, and then just today I read this little tidbit, which covers having sex with *yourself*.
I swear, if it didn't mean the end of humanity, sex *would* be illegal in at least 23 states. Since basically all non-procreative sex has indeed been illegal in those states.
Or, for that matter, what about Yahoo Fantasy Stock Market? Objective: get as rich as you can. Faster than everyone else. Kinda like, uh... the stock market. The same thing happens in WoW because the game lets you. And there are many avenues by which to make that happen.
Really, his complaint is "My idea for a game was dumb, and I'm looking for something to blame for all that money getting wasted."
It's been my experience that every ancient monopoly with horrid customer service, horrid technical service, and outdated technology typically stays around forever. If their market starts to shrink, they'll just flog the ever-dwindling market harder and harder. It's as if they exist to extract some kind of penance from the populace for sins committed in past lives or something.
I would imagine that firing someone for not breaking the law would not be illegal in itself,
Seig Heil mein Kapitan! I will release the gas into the chamber on your orders, and neither of us will be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, because you say so!
Casually? More like keeping cool while someone pointed a gun at him and told him he was going to die. Self-defence is often defined as "do unto others what they would do unto you, but do it first". He knew that if he made any fast moves, he would die. So he shot Greedo. Slowly.
As for being scum, well, smugglers aren't exactly pure of heart, now are they? Even if Greedo pulled the trigger first, the intent was always there.
Not that I defend Greedo shooting first. That was just pure lameness. How could he possibly miss, when Han could do the same thing from the hip, from under the table? You would have to be *blind* to miss a shot like that at 1 foot.
Otherwise, good analysis of the first movie.:) It's probably the reason why it was such a big worldwide hit.
Because there's vapourware, and then there's vapourware. And a few sketches on the back of a napkin and a promise that they'll be first to market is vapourware!!
Geez, this is Slashdot. The one place where people remember the dot-com bubble in vivid, living colour, right down to the smell of the latte.
Well, in the colder parts of Canada (read: everywhere but Vancouver), there are few parking spaces *without* plugs. Not on the street mind you, but in every apartment parking lot for sure. And while Li-Ion batteries do still suffer from cold weather, they suffer much less than lead-acid batteries. And you can easily counteract that with a low-voltage battery heater.
Now, about your idling in traffic? Well, electric motors are great for idling in traffic. Because they don't need to idle like gas engines do. Electrics have all their torque available at zero RPM, so there's no such thing as stalling. Oh, and they also make kick-ass drag racers for that same reason.
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Oh, that's easily explained. You see, Prince is very wealthy and completely insane. So, if Prince throws $60,000 your way and says "follow these people", you stfu and do what he says. It doesn't matter if anything comes of it. It doesn't matter if it's worthwhile. It doesn't matter if there's no point. And there isn't. Any information they collect will likely sit in storage somewhere until all of his copyrights expire (which, thanks to Disney, will never happen).
I don't suppose it's occurred to you that perhaps you have to prove the very basic theories before you can prove the larger theories?
I know for an absolute fact that there is a mathematical proof out there (I seem to recall that it was done in the 1600's or thereabouts, but I honestly wouldn't be able to look it up) to prove the process of addition and multiplication. Someone took the time and effort to work it out. Isaac Newton went through the trouble of proving that things fall.
Now, Psychology as a science (or pseudoscience) is only a little over 100 years old. So of course we have to find answers to the simple questions. Because we just don't know the answers for sure. And you and I know full well that a lot of the things that people thought were obvious in the 1600s, were total bullshit. That's why it's important for science to question everything that we know.
Actually, I think that the most prolific and annoying trolls - especially on Usenet - are in fact stark raving mad.
My favourite Usenet troll (Daniel J Min, winner of several Usenet Kook of the Month awards) is constantly proselytizing the evils of Liberals and Atheists and how they should be slaughtered and burned. While at the same time trumpeting the Grand Ol' Party and its glorious war against everything unamerican. And he cross-posts to (among other groups) sci.astro.amateur, apparently for no other reason than because it has "sci" at the beginning. His long, nonsensical rants are indicative of advanced schizophrenia in so very many ways. You could write a thesis on the man.
Google is your friend. If you put in the right combination of keywords, the answers to your questions will be answered.
In particular, the pollution caused by making your car is less than 1/4 the pollution generated by the car over its lifetime (with both gasoline usage and car creation combined). There was a famous study that said a Hummer is gentler on the environment than a Prius, and it has been debunked several times over. Searching for "prius +hummer" in Google will yield the results you seek.
Also, recycle your old TV. Lead is highly recyclable and makes up about 2/3 of the weight of your 19" TV. The recycled lead would probably be enough to build 1000 LCD TVs, and it's much more efficient to recycle lead than it is to smelt it from ore. You could also just as easily integrate your TV into your computer with a TV capture card, eliminating the need for a separate TV in the first place. Your monitor is likely larger than your 19" TV already.
No kidding. Noone says you have to buy the biggest detached house you can afford in the suburbs, thus saddling yourself with a mortgage *and* car payments. Plenty (although by no means the majority) of Americans choose to work high-paying jobs for a couple of years, and through cheap living take the next couple of years off and live out of a haversack strapped to the back of their motorcycle.
Personally, what I did was I said "Cars are evil"[1], moved to a place where I could get a job in the tech industry and which had a very good public transit system, and then after a few years I bought a townhouse near a commuter train station. Even better is that it's only 4 blocks from where I work. I am saddled only with a mortgage. In a few months, we'll add daycare to that list too, but my point is that your lifestyle doesn't choose you. You choose your lifestyle. Just because you have no imagination and do what everyone else around you does, doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it.
[1] A setiment shared by my dad while I was growing up. Who, like most everyone else in the modern era lives where he cannot possibly live without one, and unlike most everyone else, does all his own maintenance. He's an excellent shade-tree mechanic and yet he still thinks they're too expensive to own. Besides the expense, there's the fact that cars are the cause of probably about a third of society's ills - obesity, pollution, war, death (the number one way to die accidentally is in your car!), high taxes and paving over the world's best arable land to make mini malls.
It's funny how Corporations think that they can control their customers with an iron fist weilding a +20 vicious mace of slaughter, and then when someone goes and slightly modifies their product to do what consumers actually *want* (oh, like say, drag racers, or the MP3 format), they get all pissy about it.
We're terribly sorry for doing something better than you. We really are.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are people clinging so strongly to incandescent light bulbs? GE et al have been fooling you for *years* by making you believe that you were buying *light* bulbs. They're actually *heat* bulbs that happen to produce light as a waste product. Now, while this was a slight improvement over candles back in 1887 (inasmuch as they started fewer fires), it's not exactly something you want in the summertime when it's 35 C, is it? But hey, I guess that's what air conditioning is for. You just use more power to take away the heat from the things that use power in your house.
Burst my bubble? This is slashdot. If nothing else, it's good for useless pedantry.
It doesn't need to be very big. Even ground-based amateur astronomers are able to detect transiting exoplanets using consumer-grade imaging equipment. You basically need a CMOS camera that's sensitive enough, and know when and where to look. If you record the star's brightness over the expected period of time, you can see the difference in your own measurements.
The drawback of using Hubble to do this is that astronomers the world over are competing for time on it, so it's booked solid. The University of British Columbia has a satellite of its own, with a 150mm telescope (much smaller than Hubble's 2m) in orbit specifically to look for transiting extrasolar planets. They basically observe one star for months at a time, hoping to catch the dip in the star's brightness that would mean a planet is transiting. The telescope on this probe is probably about the same size, and since it's not going to be doing anything for the next year or so, why not point it at some candidate stars for that period? You might just get lucky. The fact that there's no atmospheric interference is really what makes the difference between discovering a jupiter-sized planet and an earth-sized planet with this method.
I think what they *meant* to say was "Hail to the king, baby!"
This is one of those things where just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *should*. And putting it on TV with a CYA boilerplate of "don't try this at home kids", is an astoundingly stupid idea.
It actually kind of reminds me of a segment in Weird Al's movie "UHF".... "Today boys and girls, we're going to learn to make PLOO-TOE-NEE-UM. Out of common, household items."
So, basically what happened is that the moment they saw kdawson post this article to Slashdot, they foresaw the inevitable slashdotting and cancelled the beta test.
Descent 2's soundtrack was in part created by Ogre from skinny puppy. And I really think it could be part of this list.
Relative seriousness?
I dunno man...
How many billboards do you see discouraging youths from shooting each other?
And there have been plenty of laws in the US against having sex before marriage, after marriage with someone else, or involving organs other than the vagina. Many of those laws have only very recently been repealed. Oh yeah, and then just today I read this little tidbit, which covers having sex with *yourself*.
I swear, if it didn't mean the end of humanity, sex *would* be illegal in at least 23 states. Since basically all non-procreative sex has indeed been illegal in those states.
Or, for that matter, what about Yahoo Fantasy Stock Market? Objective: get as rich as you can. Faster than everyone else. Kinda like, uh... the stock market. The same thing happens in WoW because the game lets you. And there are many avenues by which to make that happen.
Really, his complaint is "My idea for a game was dumb, and I'm looking for something to blame for all that money getting wasted."
It's been my experience that every ancient monopoly with horrid customer service, horrid technical service, and outdated technology typically stays around forever. If their market starts to shrink, they'll just flog the ever-dwindling market harder and harder. It's as if they exist to extract some kind of penance from the populace for sins committed in past lives or something.
I would imagine that firing someone for not breaking the law would not be illegal in itself,
Seig Heil mein Kapitan! I will release the gas into the chamber on your orders, and neither of us will be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, because you say so!
Somehow, I think you're wrong.
casually shooting Greedo
:) It's probably the reason why it was such a big worldwide hit.
Casually? More like keeping cool while someone pointed a gun at him and told him he was going to die. Self-defence is often defined as "do unto others what they would do unto you, but do it first". He knew that if he made any fast moves, he would die. So he shot Greedo. Slowly.
As for being scum, well, smugglers aren't exactly pure of heart, now are they? Even if Greedo pulled the trigger first, the intent was always there.
Not that I defend Greedo shooting first. That was just pure lameness. How could he possibly miss, when Han could do the same thing from the hip, from under the table? You would have to be *blind* to miss a shot like that at 1 foot.
Otherwise, good analysis of the first movie.
Obviously, the point where they jumped the shark was when Greedo shot first. :P
Because there's vapourware, and then there's vapourware. And a few sketches on the back of a napkin and a promise that they'll be first to market is vapourware!!
Geez, this is Slashdot. The one place where people remember the dot-com bubble in vivid, living colour, right down to the smell of the latte.
Well, in the colder parts of Canada (read: everywhere but Vancouver), there are few parking spaces *without* plugs. Not on the street mind you, but in every apartment parking lot for sure. And while Li-Ion batteries do still suffer from cold weather, they suffer much less than lead-acid batteries. And you can easily counteract that with a low-voltage battery heater.
Now, about your idling in traffic? Well, electric motors are great for idling in traffic. Because they don't need to idle like gas engines do. Electrics have all their torque available at zero RPM, so there's no such thing as stalling. Oh, and they also make kick-ass drag racers for that same reason.
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Oh, that's easily explained. You see, Prince is very wealthy and completely insane. So, if Prince throws $60,000 your way and says "follow these people", you stfu and do what he says. It doesn't matter if anything comes of it. It doesn't matter if it's worthwhile. It doesn't matter if there's no point. And there isn't. Any information they collect will likely sit in storage somewhere until all of his copyrights expire (which, thanks to Disney, will never happen).
I don't suppose it's occurred to you that perhaps you have to prove the very basic theories before you can prove the larger theories?
I know for an absolute fact that there is a mathematical proof out there (I seem to recall that it was done in the 1600's or thereabouts, but I honestly wouldn't be able to look it up) to prove the process of addition and multiplication. Someone took the time and effort to work it out. Isaac Newton went through the trouble of proving that things fall.
Now, Psychology as a science (or pseudoscience) is only a little over 100 years old. So of course we have to find answers to the simple questions. Because we just don't know the answers for sure. And you and I know full well that a lot of the things that people thought were obvious in the 1600s, were total bullshit. That's why it's important for science to question everything that we know.
Actually, I think that the most prolific and annoying trolls - especially on Usenet - are in fact stark raving mad.
My favourite Usenet troll (Daniel J Min, winner of several Usenet Kook of the Month awards) is constantly proselytizing the evils of Liberals and Atheists and how they should be slaughtered and burned. While at the same time trumpeting the Grand Ol' Party and its glorious war against everything unamerican. And he cross-posts to (among other groups) sci.astro.amateur, apparently for no other reason than because it has "sci" at the beginning. His long, nonsensical rants are indicative of advanced schizophrenia in so very many ways. You could write a thesis on the man.
A world where there are immediate and real consequences for rude behaviour, creates a world that is civil and polite.
And yet, in a civil and polite world, there are no immediate and real consequences for rude behaviour.
Google is your friend. If you put in the right combination of keywords, the answers to your questions will be answered.
In particular, the pollution caused by making your car is less than 1/4 the pollution generated by the car over its lifetime (with both gasoline usage and car creation combined). There was a famous study that said a Hummer is gentler on the environment than a Prius, and it has been debunked several times over. Searching for "prius +hummer" in Google will yield the results you seek.
Also, recycle your old TV. Lead is highly recyclable and makes up about 2/3 of the weight of your 19" TV. The recycled lead would probably be enough to build 1000 LCD TVs, and it's much more efficient to recycle lead than it is to smelt it from ore. You could also just as easily integrate your TV into your computer with a TV capture card, eliminating the need for a separate TV in the first place. Your monitor is likely larger than your 19" TV already.
No kidding. Noone says you have to buy the biggest detached house you can afford in the suburbs, thus saddling yourself with a mortgage *and* car payments. Plenty (although by no means the majority) of Americans choose to work high-paying jobs for a couple of years, and through cheap living take the next couple of years off and live out of a haversack strapped to the back of their motorcycle.
Personally, what I did was I said "Cars are evil"[1], moved to a place where I could get a job in the tech industry and which had a very good public transit system, and then after a few years I bought a townhouse near a commuter train station. Even better is that it's only 4 blocks from where I work. I am saddled only with a mortgage. In a few months, we'll add daycare to that list too, but my point is that your lifestyle doesn't choose you. You choose your lifestyle. Just because you have no imagination and do what everyone else around you does, doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it.
[1] A setiment shared by my dad while I was growing up. Who, like most everyone else in the modern era lives where he cannot possibly live without one, and unlike most everyone else, does all his own maintenance. He's an excellent shade-tree mechanic and yet he still thinks they're too expensive to own. Besides the expense, there's the fact that cars are the cause of probably about a third of society's ills - obesity, pollution, war, death (the number one way to die accidentally is in your car!), high taxes and paving over the world's best arable land to make mini malls.
Seriously though doom was at least as good as movies like pitch black or the first 2 resident evils.
My guess is that this is sarcasm. It sounds like you're saying "Well, $SHITTYMOVIE was just as good as $SHITTYMOVIE1 and $SHITTYMOVIE2."
it could be used to make a quick and dirty surveillance system
Emphasis on "dirty". People take those things into their homes and leave them on their bedroom end-tables you know.
And more importantly, pervasive surveillance. Just you wait until they make public displays of affection illegal.
It's funny how Corporations think that they can control their customers with an iron fist weilding a +20 vicious mace of slaughter, and then when someone goes and slightly modifies their product to do what consumers actually *want* (oh, like say, drag racers, or the MP3 format), they get all pissy about it.
We're terribly sorry for doing something better than you. We really are.