I thought the difference between cold fusion and hot fusion was that hot fusion is started by a nuclear fission reaction?
You're thinking of the H-bomb, whereby a nuclear fission bomb is the trigger for the fusion reaction (just like a conventional high explosive is used to implode the fissionable core to supercritical mass.)
ITER, for instance, and other torus reactors involve no fission whatsoever...there is no uranium or plutonium used. They operate by magnetic confinement of the plasma which is heated by radio waves I believe (maybe lasers too?)
It's not very funny. Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue were in The Sainthttp://imdb.com/title/tt0120053/plotsummary, where the lovely Elisabeth plays a physicist who develops a formula for cold fusion using something similar to what TFA is talking about (although TFA is talking about "hot" fusion, not Pons/Fleischmann cold fusion.)
Its a cheesy thriller movie, very little science, just 2 good looking actors getting it on. Worth a Friday night though.
Too bad they're both "half-season" shows. They're pretty good, although Nip/Tuck feels like a guilty-pleasure...its very soap opera-y and whatever controversial thing is being discussed ATM "at the water cooler" or whatever is on the show.
Another halfie I like is Touching Evil on USA (I think). That's a great show, why they didn't make it full season length is beyond me.
Like there's some sort of Mac-fanboi/Apple conspiracy?
WTF?
I'm not a fanboi, neither do I have any stake in Apple.
Crucial is where I've been going for RAM for years. I used that as a comparison because I know its Micron memory and its a source I trust. I have also seen Crucial/Micron at Newegg and other online stores as well. Would it make you happier if I posted those prices instead?
And like someone posted earlier in a different thread, ALL OEMs charge a heavy fee on extras like RAM (unless they have a special running.) So, if you want the box but don't want to pay the extra for the RAM, buy the box with the least amount they give you and then buy your 3rd party RAM. BFD.
Yes I also saw they they're probably making opening the box a warranty voiding risk, but so what? Its geared to mostly consumers who would just as soon stick a ham-sandwich in the computer as a RAM stick.
The fact that the clued-in also can use it for other tasks besides Introduction to Mac 101 is icing on the cake.
I believe I heard once that Apple uses Micron memory. Crucial.com is a Micron reseller I believe. 512 MB PC2700 Non-ECC is $80.99, $5.99 more than the $75 Apple wants for the upgrade to 512 MB (although I wonder why they just don't subtract the cost of the 256MB that it came with originally?)
And 1 GB stick is $299.99, which admittedly is a lot less than the $400 something Apple wants. But realistically, why would you need 1 GB in a low-end machine? Sure, you [i]could[/i] do Photoshop or Final Cut Pro or (insert professional app here), but the other (more expensive) Macs are better suited to those tasks.
These specs are very close to my Al Book '03, except mine has 512MB, Radeon 9600 64MB, and Superdrive. (Not to mention its a notebook with built-in screen, keyboard, trackpad and a battery.)
But still, this new box is 20% the price of the Powerbook, and has almost the same performance.
While my 'book ain't a gaming machine, it can hold its own with UT2003/4 as long as I make a few adjustments. I still prefer my x86 desktop, of course, for games though.
But if all you need is web, email, word proc, and a few other utilities/apps, then this is perfect. Heck, since I rarely use my 'book as a portable anyway, it may even make sense to sell it and get this. I had sort of thought about the iMac G5 when it came out, but decided not to later.
When my financial situation improves (currently unemployed), I may just consider picking this bad boy up.
AFAIK, they're called "organic" because they're based on organic molecules, i.e. organic chemistry, which is primarily concerned with carbon-based long chain molecules.
IANAChemist, but that's my take on it.
One thing that I wondered about is the article says OLEDs require more power than LCDs at the present time. I thought that one of the main benefits of OLED was that they'd use a lot less power and so would extend laptop battery life, amongst other things.
I was thinking that if the TV industry made their shows downloadable, including commercials, lots of people would download. If they in addition gave you the option to watch ads or not watch ads, that'd be even greater. Perhaps you could opt-out to not watch ads but had to pay a modest fee per show instead. Or they let you FF through ads, and they kept track of when/what/who did that, and what ads you did watch...then they'd have more marketing information to give their advertisers. XXX group of people like these ads, YYY group doesn't, but YYY group likes these other ads but not XXX, etc.
Wow, I'm looking at this thread with all you nerds reminiscing about all crap you had to put up with on PCs to get games to work.
At the time I was playing most of the same games on Amiga and then later Mac. I got the same games but with enhanced sound/graphics/interface and none of the technical support headaches.
I never even owned an x86 PC until 2000. I'd used them at work and school of course, but didn't have the money or inclination to get one until then.
Grousing. In the old Mac OS 9 days, there was a Dock analogue called the Launcher. It was ugly, and I rarely set it up for users, but it worked. Some people still use it for their Classic apps in OS X.
Workaround: Many, most third-party. Apple's interface, until OS X was icon-centric for launching apps, rather than menu-centric (in Windows Start menu). The Dock is no more perfect than the Start menu, but at least it provides a consistent launcher for common apps, instead of having the user search through folders for the right app icon to launch.
Better: Have installers ask user to add icon for applications to the Dock, which isn't done most of the time, forcing users to search about in the Applications folder.
I don't like the OS X dock at all. I keep it hidden and only use it as an analog of the Windows taskbar (active apps and windows).
For launching, I use http://dragthing.com/. Been using it since OS 7.x days I think. It's so much more powerful than the OS X dock, and super customizable.
I only wish the creator would port it to Windows and Linux as I use all 3 platforms.
With all the money and resources the military has, why risk getting attacked by worms, viruses, hackers that are all going after the known vulnerabilites in commercially available "civilian" OSes?
It seems to make sense to me to for them to create their own OS. Perhaps even their own hardware platform, and then keep all inside technical details top secret. Make it a crime for non-military personell to possess the machine and OS.
In this era of heightened security, it seems to make sense to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
Pricing should run between $12,000 for the cheapest model, and just over $20,000 for a convertible with all the available extras, Heidemann says. That's a markup of a few thousand dollars over the price in Europe, where Heidemann has been buying them from dealers.
12-20 Grand? Sounds like the same price for the low-to-mid range cars over here. My Sentra was $13500. And these things are literally half the car!
In my mind they should be half the price too.
PS a civ that doesnt end in 2040, and smoothly translates into an Alpha Centauri game wouldnt hurt. At that point it would be civs on planets rather than continents, where the cost of transportation would be very high
One thing that I've always been bothered by about the Civ games (and clones) is they still adhere to the "B.C." and "A.D." timelines of our civilization. Also especially annoying is the way they scale the number of years per turn from ancient to modern times. Why is that?
For instance, by about 2000 BC (or is it 1000?), the Egyptians already had a dynasty lasting thousands of years with empire building and pyramids, etc. But in Civ, they scale the B.C. times to such a degree that I've NEVER been able to build much of an empire in that time period. Maybe I'm just not a good player, but a LOT of things happened in ancient times.
The other thing is, the BC/AD convention is an artifact of the predominant religion of our civilization. The Civ games are supposed to be simulating what could happen given different cultures/religions/etc. Who's to say that there'd still be a Christ?
I'd want the game years to start at 1 or 0 and count up. Perhaps at turning points in your civilization (change of rulers/governments, new religion) then they'd give you the option of reseting the calendar.
One other thing I've wished for is the ability for cities to produce multiple units/buildings at a time. Perhaps you could use a slider or such to determine how many resource shields go to what.
And I'll second the idea of unit grouping. They sort of have that in Civ3 with armies, but those don't appear regularly (or at least until you have the military academy), and they're limited to 3 or 4 units.
Rally points are also in Civ3, but I'd like the option for individual cities and types of units to have multiple points. Also, how about way points for when you need to get new units at your home base on one location or continent to go to ships, which then transport them to a foreign country you want to invade? You could have all that with rally points and scripting.
I don't like the way that presidents are always campaigning, always looking to get re-elected. They say and do things that are nothing more than pandering for supporters at the next election.
On the other hand, I don't necessarily agree with the current 2 term limits we have now. if someone is a great president, then they should stay in office longer. I think one problem America has is that it keeps changing the driver every 4-8 years. Economic, social and foreign policies take longer than that to take effect and cultivate.
One idea I had was, perhaps, making the presidential term longer. Perhaps 8 years? But tie his hands so that he can't campaign until the last 8 or so months of the term. That would give would-be competitors a head start, but the president would have over 7 years of practical experience to show the nation what he's capable of.
If the president truly is a tyrant or does something illegal, we have the impeachment process already in the Constitution.
I was thinking that the lottery would work by social security number. Say, just a simple random number generator.
Then, when a number is picked, the computer would check the records for that ID to make sure 1) owner is alive 2) s/he's elligble to be President according to the Constitution.
The person would be contacted to see if they wanted to be President.
Then, and most importantly, the Congress would scrutinize and ratify the candidate the way they do presidential nominees for the Supreme Court and other positions.
If, passing all this, then the person would be made President. (or perhaps a popular election would take place, with 1 or more others also passing the above conditions.)
Just a thought. Probably would never work in reality though.
I don't know if you're serious or not, but it made me wonder: Do we really need political parties at all? I wonder how much (if any) better this country would be if candidates could run (and be elected) as Americans, and not "democrats" or "republicans" or (insert political party affiliation here).
I, for one, hate only being allowed essentially 2 choices for president, etc. Yes, there are other parties, but, let's face it, they'll never win the presidency. But if there weren't any political parties, and candidates had to stand on their own feet, maybe we could have more than 2 choices.
I've always loved the idea of generating your own power in your own house. We've had individual home heating/cooling systems forever, so why not power generation?
There are companies producing fuel cells now that could do that job. Hopefully they'll be cheap enough and reliable enough in the near future that people would use them.
My dream, though, would be to have a house that's completely self contained. It would recycle waste water and waste materials into clean drinkable water and fertilizer/fuel for power generation.
(My ultimate dream house, though, would be a Star Trek-style ship, thats not just self-contained, but is the ultimate mobile home. Don't like the 'burbs anymore? Just take off and go somewhere else! I hear Saturn's looking nice...)
Obviously not a pet owner. Cats are prolific breeders, and there's a lot more cats in this country than people to care for them. Hence humane societies catch and neuter them so the population can be controlled.
Damn. And I paid $65 for mine from the shelter, which included a vet check-up, all vaccines, and spaying.
I assume this company will be neutering/spaying before they give them to their customers. Otherwise, people would just breed their own, and then sell the kittens.
Sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to it as well. For a while I had a small gaming box built around an Asus Nforce 1 board, and I used SPDIF output to my Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500. First time I ever saw the Dolby Digital light come on. And it really did make a difference. Unfortunately I sold that box since there was only 2-channel sound support in Linux, and I found myself mostly using Linux on my other (faster) box.
Off topic, but did anyone else notice their cpu usage went to 90-100% on the FiringSquad.com page? I'm currently surfing with Firefox 1.0 PR on OS X 10.3.
Actually, http://gameznflix.com/ does just this, and its a few bucks cheaper than Netflix. Unfortunately they're very new and not well organised. I tried them out about 4 months ago. It took too long for anything to show up so I cancelled, and then the next day the movies showed up. I watched and sent back but never heard anything since.
Also their queueing system sucks (I don't know if its improved since.) But they do allow a combination of games and movies for the same price.
I still have Netflix and Gamefly for now. Netflix rocks, and I have Netflix Freak for OS X to help manage queue. Its a great solution. But if Gameznflix gets their act together, and gets a better interface, I'll try them again.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. No. I still need 2 more people to sign up. I don't really get the backlash its getting. Its not that bad and appears legit.
You're thinking of the H-bomb, whereby a nuclear fission bomb is the trigger for the fusion reaction (just like a conventional high explosive is used to implode the fissionable core to supercritical mass.)
ITER, for instance, and other torus reactors involve no fission whatsoever...there is no uranium or plutonium used. They operate by magnetic confinement of the plasma which is heated by radio waves I believe (maybe lasers too?)
It's not very funny. Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue were in The Saint http://imdb.com/title/tt0120053/plotsummary, where the lovely Elisabeth plays a physicist who develops a formula for cold fusion using something similar to what TFA is talking about (although TFA is talking about "hot" fusion, not Pons/Fleischmann cold fusion.)
Its a cheesy thriller movie, very little science, just 2 good looking actors getting it on. Worth a Friday night though.
FX also has The Shield and Nip/Tuck.
Too bad they're both "half-season" shows. They're pretty good, although Nip/Tuck feels like a guilty-pleasure...its very soap opera-y and whatever controversial thing is being discussed ATM "at the water cooler" or whatever is on the show.
Another halfie I like is Touching Evil on USA (I think). That's a great show, why they didn't make it full season length is beyond me.
"Acknowledge"?
Like there's some sort of Mac-fanboi/Apple conspiracy?
WTF?
I'm not a fanboi, neither do I have any stake in Apple.
Crucial is where I've been going for RAM for years. I used that as a comparison because I know its Micron memory and its a source I trust. I have also seen Crucial/Micron at Newegg and other online stores as well. Would it make you happier if I posted those prices instead?
And like someone posted earlier in a different thread, ALL OEMs charge a heavy fee on extras like RAM (unless they have a special running.) So, if you want the box but don't want to pay the extra for the RAM, buy the box with the least amount they give you and then buy your 3rd party RAM. BFD.
Yes I also saw they they're probably making opening the box a warranty voiding risk, but so what? Its geared to mostly consumers who would just as soon stick a ham-sandwich in the computer as a RAM stick.
The fact that the clued-in also can use it for other tasks besides Introduction to Mac 101 is icing on the cake.
I believe I heard once that Apple uses Micron memory. Crucial.com is a Micron reseller I believe. 512 MB PC2700 Non-ECC is $80.99, $5.99 more than the $75 Apple wants for the upgrade to 512 MB (although I wonder why they just don't subtract the cost of the 256MB that it came with originally?)
And 1 GB stick is $299.99, which admittedly is a lot less than the $400 something Apple wants. But realistically, why would you need 1 GB in a low-end machine? Sure, you [i]could[/i] do Photoshop or Final Cut Pro or (insert professional app here), but the other (more expensive) Macs are better suited to those tasks.
These specs are very close to my Al Book '03, except mine has 512MB, Radeon 9600 64MB, and Superdrive. (Not to mention its a notebook with built-in screen, keyboard, trackpad and a battery.)
But still, this new box is 20% the price of the Powerbook, and has almost the same performance.
While my 'book ain't a gaming machine, it can hold its own with UT2003/4 as long as I make a few adjustments. I still prefer my x86 desktop, of course, for games though.
But if all you need is web, email, word proc, and a few other utilities/apps, then this is perfect. Heck, since I rarely use my 'book as a portable anyway, it may even make sense to sell it and get this. I had sort of thought about the iMac G5 when it came out, but decided not to later.
When my financial situation improves (currently unemployed), I may just consider picking this bad boy up.
AFAIK, they're called "organic" because they're based on organic molecules, i.e. organic chemistry, which is primarily concerned with carbon-based long chain molecules.
IANAChemist, but that's my take on it.
One thing that I wondered about is the article says OLEDs require more power than LCDs at the present time. I thought that one of the main benefits of OLED was that they'd use a lot less power and so would extend laptop battery life, amongst other things.
Can anyone explain that?
I was thinking that if the TV industry made their shows downloadable, including commercials, lots of people would download. If they in addition gave you the option to watch ads or not watch ads, that'd be even greater. Perhaps you could opt-out to not watch ads but had to pay a modest fee per show instead. Or they let you FF through ads, and they kept track of when/what/who did that, and what ads you did watch...then they'd have more marketing information to give their advertisers. XXX group of people like these ads, YYY group doesn't, but YYY group likes these other ads but not XXX, etc.
Wow, I'm looking at this thread with all you nerds reminiscing about all crap you had to put up with on PCs to get games to work.
:)
At the time I was playing most of the same games on Amiga and then later Mac. I got the same games but with enhanced sound/graphics/interface and none of the technical support headaches.
I never even owned an x86 PC until 2000. I'd used them at work and school of course, but didn't have the money or inclination to get one until then.
Glad I bypassed all that crap.
I don't like the OS X dock at all. I keep it hidden and only use it as an analog of the Windows taskbar (active apps and windows).
For launching, I use http://dragthing.com/. Been using it since OS 7.x days I think. It's so much more powerful than the OS X dock, and super customizable.
I only wish the creator would port it to Windows and Linux as I use all 3 platforms.
With all the money and resources the military has, why risk getting attacked by worms, viruses, hackers that are all going after the known vulnerabilites in commercially available "civilian" OSes?
It seems to make sense to me to for them to create their own OS. Perhaps even their own hardware platform, and then keep all inside technical details top secret. Make it a crime for non-military personell to possess the machine and OS.
In this era of heightened security, it seems to make sense to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
One thing that I've always been bothered by about the Civ games (and clones) is they still adhere to the "B.C." and "A.D." timelines of our civilization. Also especially annoying is the way they scale the number of years per turn from ancient to modern times. Why is that?
For instance, by about 2000 BC (or is it 1000?), the Egyptians already had a dynasty lasting thousands of years with empire building and pyramids, etc. But in Civ, they scale the B.C. times to such a degree that I've NEVER been able to build much of an empire in that time period. Maybe I'm just not a good player, but a LOT of things happened in ancient times.
The other thing is, the BC/AD convention is an artifact of the predominant religion of our civilization. The Civ games are supposed to be simulating what could happen given different cultures/religions/etc. Who's to say that there'd still be a Christ?
I'd want the game years to start at 1 or 0 and count up. Perhaps at turning points in your civilization (change of rulers/governments, new religion) then they'd give you the option of reseting the calendar.
One other thing I've wished for is the ability for cities to produce multiple units/buildings at a time. Perhaps you could use a slider or such to determine how many resource shields go to what.
And I'll second the idea of unit grouping. They sort of have that in Civ3 with armies, but those don't appear regularly (or at least until you have the military academy), and they're limited to 3 or 4 units.
Rally points are also in Civ3, but I'd like the option for individual cities and types of units to have multiple points. Also, how about way points for when you need to get new units at your home base on one location or continent to go to ships, which then transport them to a foreign country you want to invade? You could have all that with rally points and scripting.
When has anything like that ever worked?
BTW, what was with the llama thing anyway?
I don't like the way that presidents are always campaigning, always looking to get re-elected. They say and do things that are nothing more than pandering for supporters at the next election.
On the other hand, I don't necessarily agree with the current 2 term limits we have now. if someone is a great president, then they should stay in office longer. I think one problem America has is that it keeps changing the driver every 4-8 years. Economic, social and foreign policies take longer than that to take effect and cultivate.
One idea I had was, perhaps, making the presidential term longer. Perhaps 8 years? But tie his hands so that he can't campaign until the last 8 or so months of the term. That would give would-be competitors a head start, but the president would have over 7 years of practical experience to show the nation what he's capable of.
If the president truly is a tyrant or does something illegal, we have the impeachment process already in the Constitution.
I was thinking that the lottery would work by social security number. Say, just a simple random number generator.
Then, when a number is picked, the computer would check the records for that ID to make sure 1) owner is alive 2) s/he's elligble to be President according to the Constitution.
The person would be contacted to see if they wanted to be President.
Then, and most importantly, the Congress would scrutinize and ratify the candidate the way they do presidential nominees for the Supreme Court and other positions.
If, passing all this, then the person would be made President. (or perhaps a popular election would take place, with 1 or more others also passing the above conditions.)
Just a thought. Probably would never work in reality though.
I don't know if you're serious or not, but it made me wonder: Do we really need political parties at all? I wonder how much (if any) better this country would be if candidates could run (and be elected) as Americans, and not "democrats" or "republicans" or (insert political party affiliation here).
I, for one, hate only being allowed essentially 2 choices for president, etc. Yes, there are other parties, but, let's face it, they'll never win the presidency. But if there weren't any political parties, and candidates had to stand on their own feet, maybe we could have more than 2 choices.
I've always loved the idea of generating your own power in your own house. We've had individual home heating/cooling systems forever, so why not power generation?
There are companies producing fuel cells now that could do that job. Hopefully they'll be cheap enough and reliable enough in the near future that people would use them.
My dream, though, would be to have a house that's completely self contained. It would recycle waste water and waste materials into clean drinkable water and fertilizer/fuel for power generation.
(My ultimate dream house, though, would be a Star Trek-style ship, thats not just self-contained, but is the ultimate mobile home. Don't like the 'burbs anymore? Just take off and go somewhere else! I hear Saturn's looking nice...)
Neutering. Duh.
Obviously not a pet owner. Cats are prolific breeders, and there's a lot more cats in this country than people to care for them. Hence humane societies catch and neuter them so the population can be controlled.
Wow, that'd be the ultimate mail-order bride. If its $3500 for a GE kitten, how much for a GE wife? And I wonder if there'll be loans available.
Damn. And I paid $65 for mine from the shelter, which included a vet check-up, all vaccines, and spaying.
I assume this company will be neutering/spaying before they give them to their customers. Otherwise, people would just breed their own, and then sell the kittens.
Sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to it as well. For a while I had a small gaming box built around an Asus Nforce 1 board, and I used SPDIF output to my Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500. First time I ever saw the Dolby Digital light come on. And it really did make a difference. Unfortunately I sold that box since there was only 2-channel sound support in Linux, and I found myself mostly using Linux on my other (faster) box.
Off topic, but did anyone else notice their cpu usage went to 90-100% on the FiringSquad.com page? I'm currently surfing with Firefox 1.0 PR on OS X 10.3.
Actually, http://gameznflix.com/ does just this, and its a few bucks cheaper than Netflix. Unfortunately they're very new and not well organised. I tried them out about 4 months ago. It took too long for anything to show up so I cancelled, and then the next day the movies showed up. I watched and sent back but never heard anything since.
Also their queueing system sucks (I don't know if its improved since.) But they do allow a combination of games and movies for the same price.
I still have Netflix and Gamefly for now. Netflix rocks, and I have Netflix Freak for OS X to help manage queue. Its a great solution. But if Gameznflix gets their act together, and gets a better interface, I'll try them again.
Hasn't anyone else noticed that the pre-order link brings up the widescreen theatrical release, and NOT the extended edition?
WTF?
And I tried looking on Newline's site but can't find it there either.
WTF?
Preciousssss I's needs the PRECIOUSSSSS WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!