Actually, they have come down in price recently. Now they're only US$14.95 (for 1 year).
Personally, I don't encrypt my email because I don't send anything sensitive. If I did though, the $14.95 wouldn't kill me (especially since my OS, browser, and all my apps are free).
It may be that plastic is easier to make than some ceramic materials, but plastic is made from fossil fuels, which are a limited resource. Ceramics on the other hand, are made up of materials which make up 20% of the earth's crust...
Actually, for sites like slashdot, that could add up to tens of thousands of dollars a day.
But realistically, US$.1 (ten cents if you're stupid) is too much for a micropayment. Sure,/. may make $100,000 dollars in a day (1 million pageviews), but I don't want to pay $6 of that every day!
If 10 cent micropayments became the standard, people would stop using the internet because it'd be to frickin expensive...
I can see how a 'quiet zone' feature on cell phones could be a good thing, but brute-force jamming them is probably not a good idea.
Let me relate what that would be like for radio waves: you don't want cars driving through your front yard so you encase your yard in a solid block of cement. It's just a bad idea. (Now sprinkling nails in the grass is different...)
Many of the comments here suggest that if your kid can walk over to your computer and start up half life it's your fault, but that's entirely incorrect. What these people need to realize is that you can't supervise your kid 100% of the time.
In a way though, they are correct. Let's say you have two kids, one who's 14 and one who's 9. It would probably be ok with you if the 14 yr. old played Half Life, but you wouldn't want the 9 year old to. What happens then when one is and the other one's in the same room? V-chips don't help this, so in that regard they're useless.
You're entirely correct, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that we can only come up with probabilities for the positions of sub-atomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons etc.). AFAIK, there is nothing to suggest that atoms do not have fixed positions.
At most, your table might rearrange itself enough to let a couple protons through, although even that is highly unlikely.
The company has achecived full FireWire/1394 speeds of 400 Mpbs up to 12 meters away with line of site connectivity, and 100 Mbs through 7 meters of interior walls.
Q. Can you find the two spelling mistakes (answers below)
Actually, Apple's new G4 powerbook must have a pretty small setup already... the motherboard is only about 11"x7", complete with a modem/ethernet/2xUSB/FireWire/Audio/VGA/S-video/PC MCIA and your standard stuff (processor, memory sockets etc...)
The company has achecived full FireWire/1394 speeds of 400 Mpbs up to 12 meters away with line of site connectivity, and 100 Mbs through 7 meters of interior walls.
For those of you who are metric-deficient, 12 meters is about 40', and 7 is about 23', neither of which are great distances.
We won't really be able to tell how useful this is until we get a better idea of the size... if you could fit it in a palm pilot that'd be cool but if it takes a full PCI card that's less useful.
The article, to me, isn't very clear on what they're doing. It says they're "developing operating system technologies". Does this mean they're working on security modifications to Linux/BSD, or coming up with an entirely new OS?
Personally, I think it would be rediculous for them to write their own OS, since Linux/BSD, while they have their flaws, are already pretty well suited to what they're trying to do... the only reason I can see them writing they're own is if they don't want anyone to have the code.
At a glance, it appears that they are really just protecting they're trademark from dilusion.
As it turns out however, Blizzard trademarked it specifically in the context of a movie, so they really do have a legit case. If they intended to make a movie with that name (shown by the trademark), and someone else tries to, Blizzard should win.
Actually, fog and stuff shouldn't interfere with lasers too much, the only thing that would really mess you up is lots of lightning or if your laser gets physically knocked off its mounting...
The streaming server market is definetly not saturated... not yet anyway.
By your defs there are already 5 streaming servers, so 6 is one too many. In 1991 though there were many more than 5 OS's (Windows, MacOS, NeXT, 10's of UNIX flavors, DOS, and many others I'm forgetting), but there was still room for Linux... unless of course you're a windows whore...
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't encrypt my email because I don't send anything sensitive. If I did though, the $14.95 wouldn't kill me (especially since my OS, browser, and all my apps are free).
It may be that plastic is easier to make than some ceramic materials, but plastic is made from fossil fuels, which are a limited resource. Ceramics on the other hand, are made up of materials which make up 20% of the earth's crust...
But realistically, US$.1 (ten cents if you're stupid) is too much for a micropayment. Sure, /. may make $100,000 dollars in a day (1 million pageviews), but I don't want to pay $6 of that every day!
If 10 cent micropayments became the standard, people would stop using the internet because it'd be to frickin expensive...
Let me relate what that would be like for radio waves: you don't want cars driving through your front yard so you encase your yard in a solid block of cement. It's just a bad idea. (Now sprinkling nails in the grass is different...)
In a way though, they are correct. Let's say you have two kids, one who's 14 and one who's 9. It would probably be ok with you if the 14 yr. old played Half Life, but you wouldn't want the 9 year old to. What happens then when one is and the other one's in the same room? V-chips don't help this, so in that regard they're useless.
Sorry about the incoherency... it's late.
>More controversially, the same can be said of, among many other things, uranium, which is quite common in ocean water.
Uranium, in its natural state, is rather harmless (not completely though). This is not true of all elements though.
A few elements that are quite lethal in their natural states:
Good comments/theads pertaining to this were...
Why do we always have to see stories in groups of 3 (that means there's one more DB story coming tomorrow)?
At most, your table might rearrange itself enough to let a couple protons through, although even that is highly unlikely.
I agree that MySQL isn't ready for primetime yet, but it isn't the only open-source free RDBMS.
The company has achecived full FireWire/1394 speeds of 400 Mpbs up to 12 meters away with line of site connectivity, and 100 Mbs through 7 meters of interior walls.
Q. Can you find the two spelling mistakes (answers below)
A. Achecived and 'line of site'
"sex and drugs" as a combination, is a singular thing. "Sex and Linux", as a combination, is also singular.
Therefore, '"sex and drugs" is ok' is correct, if you're referring to taking drugs while having sex.
'"sex and Linux" is ok' is also correct, if you're referring to having sex while typing at your console (just put the laptop on her back...)
Sex and Linux is ok (although I imagine RMS doesn't get much these days)
Drugs and Linux get risky... might want to disable your r00t account for a while...
The company has achecived full FireWire/1394 speeds of 400 Mpbs up to 12 meters away with line of site connectivity, and 100 Mbs through 7 meters of interior walls.
For those of you who are metric-deficient, 12 meters is about 40', and 7 is about 23', neither of which are great distances.
We won't really be able to tell how useful this is until we get a better idea of the size... if you could fit it in a palm pilot that'd be cool but if it takes a full PCI card that's less useful.
Personally, I think it would be rediculous for them to write their own OS, since Linux/BSD, while they have their flaws, are already pretty well suited to what they're trying to do... the only reason I can see them writing they're own is if they don't want anyone to have the code.
As it turns out however, Blizzard trademarked it specifically in the context of a movie, so they really do have a legit case. If they intended to make a movie with that name (shown by the trademark), and someone else tries to, Blizzard should win.
Actually, fog and stuff shouldn't interfere with lasers too much, the only thing that would really mess you up is lots of lightning or if your laser gets physically knocked off its mounting...
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By your defs there are already 5 streaming servers, so 6 is one too many. In 1991 though there were many more than 5 OS's (Windows, MacOS, NeXT, 10's of UNIX flavors, DOS, and many others I'm forgetting), but there was still room for Linux... unless of course you're a windows whore...