Think a little bigger. If a really really big meteor hits the Earth, we're screwed. The likelyhood that 2 planet-killer meteors will devastate 2 planets that we have colonies within a relatively short amount of time (20 years) is extremely less likely.
Also, your examples of polution, population, and nuclear explosion don't make much sense either. Polution is far less likely on another planet, since fossil fuels are far less likely. We'd probably be using solar or nuclear power instead.
Population makes the least sense, since expanding to other planets is the single most effective way of dealing with this issue. You effectively double your space and eliminate population issues.
Nuclear explosion isn't really a factor either. If you're talking weapons, the likelyhood of them being taken to upstart colonies isn't too likely. Once the colony is established, if one location (Earth or the colony) wipes itself out with nukes, the other is going to think long and hard before using theirs. Having a front-row seat to devastation makes people do everything they can to avoid it happening again (see 9/11 attacks for proof). If you're talking about nuclear power plants, they're getting safer and safer, so I doubt it would be an issue. Besides, nuclear meltdown is a local issue, not a planetary issue.
Not only is this a downright stupid idea on any number of levels, the linked image looks oddly similar to the Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element, except with more exposed skin.
Now if they were getting Carrie Fisher to do it at age 50, or however old she is these days, that'd be sweet.:)
While spammers would argue that spam DOES count as free speech, I'd argue that it doesn't. While the content of the spam itself might be covered by free speech laws, the method of delivery is not. The problem with spam isn't that it's annoying, it's that it uses resources that someone else has to pay for. I don't know that it can be defined as theft, but in a legal sense it seems like it would be related to trespassing.
Try doing this... go to a school, stand out front, and start reading some xxx stories over a megaphone. See how long you stay out of trouble. While the constitution allows us to say anything we want, the law places restrictions on the circumstances of the delivery.
As for the $450,000... that's extremely cheap when you figure this guy is sending out 1 million spam per day. If you discount spam filters, bandwidth costs, and just look at an employee having to delete each of those messages it gets pretty expensive. You're looking at $2,737,500 if it takes a $6/hour employee 1/2 a second to delete each message.
Not entirely true. If your cable provider doesn't encrypt their HD channels, you can use most of the OTA cards. Otherwise the "cable card" solutions seem to work pretty well.
They do make component recorders, but they're extremely expensive. If someone made one for under $400, there would probably be a decent market for it.
That said, most TV shows available by bittorrent are in HD, so I just download them into my HTPC and watch them when I get a chance. Only cost is that of a cable modem, which I have anyway. I wrote a program to start BT for the shows I watch, and I run it nightly.
I put together a HTPC that took under $500 and about 20 hours of my time to put together. It's a DVR, game emulator, DVD player (quality better than any hardware DVD player for under $400), movie server (all my movies on-demand), and more. My wife is comfortable using it already and it's got the potential to do a lot more. I'm using Meedio, which is VERY customizable, but simple enough to get working in a very short amount of time. The problem with the off-the-shelf stuff is that you'll hit a point that you want it to do something that it can't. If mine reaches that point, I just install an extra card or a small software program.
Decent TV content: This is obviously subjective, but there's a number of shows out right now that have some potential. Lost, Deadwood, The 4400, Battlestar Galactica, Good Eats, Simpsons, Smallville, The Office (this show is excellent) have all either proven themselves worthy to be recorded or are showing progress. The Office is probably my favorite show in years. Good Eats is a must see for any nerd that likes cooking. Smallville has had some poor episodes and some good ones, so it's hard to say if it will get better or worse. Lost is intriguing enough that I'm completely hooked, but it has the potential to get cheesy if they don't stick with what's worked so far. Finally, The 4400 seems interesting after the first 5 episodes, so hopefully it will continue to be good once they start back up again.
Why not combine the two? We'll still have SOME reliance on oil even with a huge increase in alternative power sources like solar, wind, etc. Implementing this change would help become even more efficient in that situation too, so why not do it now? The fact remains, this is something that can be done now. It's not a huge savings compared to the total consumption, but it is still a savings.
Sure it'd be nice if we all drove hydrogen fueled cars, but that's an unrealistic goal right now. Baby steps....
I stand corrected. That first link is worded very poorly. I actually think where I went wrong is that certain areas that are definitely part of the city are referred to differently, which lead me to believe they were separated in census data as well. Oh well.:)
Read that first link again... that's Milwaukee County, which is MUCH bigger than the City of Milwaukee. I couldn't find the actual size of Milwaukee, so I estimated, which I feel qualified to do since I've lived here almost my whole life. I think I'm actually overestimating the size, given the fact that West Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and Shorewood cut into the city significantly.
So Denver would be $2/person. I actually think the population density of the states would be similar, given the fact that the upper half of Wisconsin is very midly populated (it's all forest) and the lower half just has a few bigger cities (Milwaukee, Madison) with the rest being farmland and glacial land.
I live in Milwaukee, which is approximately 16 square miles. Within that 16 square mile area, there are around 600,000 residents (talking City of Milwaukee, not the metro area). If the cost to provide wireless runs $600K/month, that comes to $1/citizen/month. Even if you guess that it would cost 10 times as much (given the way our local government works;), that's still only $10/month. Where is that $16/m figure coming from?
While it sucks for the CS people in the Pentagon, it just makes sense right now to divert money to things that will benefit the troops in Afganistan and Iraq. I'm sure that some of the CS projects help soliders on the ground, but as we know, 95% of IT projects aren't completed on time. So why not deliver better weapons, vehicles, body armor, and other technology that has the capability of saving lives right now.
Once we're completely out of Iraq and Afganistan, hopefully they'll put the money back into long term research.
Anyone know what the previous record was for the number of stories in a day. If they continue at the current pace (1 story every 4 minutes), they'll have 95 more by midnight (EST).
It's quite simple really... if you don't like the April 1st stuff, come back tomorrow. Granted, most of the stories this year weren't funny at all, but the 1 or 2 clever ones were still filled with posts of "enough already".
If you don't like the stories, ignore them and return tomorrow when it's back to normal. Or will you go into withdrawal if you can't read Slashdot for a day?
Because asbestos exposure eventually causes mesothelioma, and lawyers are all about suing in asbestos cases lately. There might be other reasons, but that's the first one I thought of.
While data is obviously stored on media, talking about the lifetime of data is not the same as talking about the lifetime of media. So, the original poster's "forever" comment is unrelated to the survey he links to.
If you have media that you know won't last over 30 years, just copy it onto new media at the 20-25 year point. In most cases, that's not that big of a deal. Besides, by the time that 20-25 year mark rolls around, it's very likely that you'd want to convert to a faster "online" media anyway, like holographic storage.
While most of the complaints about Google are warranted, Google works well enough even for those of us in the computer industry. If 99% of the time I find what I'm looking for in the first page of links, and the results are returned quickly enough, why would I go elsewhere?
Yahoo and Altavista worked ok for me before Google came along, but the clean interface and good results drew me in. So, the only thing that would convince me to switch to a different search engine would be if Google started cluttering up their pages (a la Yahoo) or the results became unusable.
If I'm looking for specific information that Google might not happen to have, I will check alltheweb.com, but that's a pretty rare occurance.
Finally, I don't see why people complain about Google's features being beta. They're still completely usable, and if you run across a shortcoming that really bothers you, there's plenty of alternatives for that service.
As much as the reviewer ripped the author for a poorly organized and non-insightful book, you have to credit the author for arranging that many interviews with some decent game creators. Granted, he doesn't interview the most famous game designers, but just name dropping the ones he did talk to is enough to impress anyone familiar with the gaming industry.
That said, it sounds like the author would have done much better by releasing a book of interview transcripts. You'd probably get more out of it as far as context and tone of the interviews, and the author would have saved quite a bit of time. Perhaps the transcripts along with comments included inline?
Yes. Like I said, I'm generally unfamiliar with how the Linux kernel works, but why not do this? If you have multiple users with their own X sessions going on, have the kernel give the active window (more than likely the one on top) on each user's session priority over all the windows that are hidden, minimized, or not being actively used. Wouldn't the net result be that each user would notice an increase in application response without sacrificing anything? In addition to I/O, CPU, and RAM priority, you can also prioritize the pagefiles so an active application is less likely to be swapped than an inactive one.
That makes complete sense. I was referring to losing focus in the window manager, but I didn't realize it would require kernel hooks that don't already exist. Seems like kernel hooks denoting window focus would be helpful in other ways, like giving I/O and CPU priority to processes in focus while nearly suspending those in the background. Obviously that's not always desirable, so perhaps a focus hook and an "allow lower priority" hook combined? Kind of an automatic nice.
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to kernel hacking, though, so that might not be anywhere close to useful or possible.:)
You can fix this situation by setting up a separate partition (say.. 2GB?) for your swapfile and setting the swapfile to a fixed size within the partition.
Granted, it would be really nice if MS would do that automatically, but it's still a cheaper solution than adding 750mb of laptop memory.:)
I'm not sure, but running defrag on the partition weekly might help as well. I'd really like to see MS do automatic drive defrag in the background when the computer isn't being used, or is being used minimally. That would solve a number of issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Think a little bigger. If a really really big meteor hits the Earth, we're screwed. The likelyhood that 2 planet-killer meteors will devastate 2 planets that we have colonies within a relatively short amount of time (20 years) is extremely less likely.
Also, your examples of polution, population, and nuclear explosion don't make much sense either. Polution is far less likely on another planet, since fossil fuels are far less likely. We'd probably be using solar or nuclear power instead.
Population makes the least sense, since expanding to other planets is the single most effective way of dealing with this issue. You effectively double your space and eliminate population issues.
Nuclear explosion isn't really a factor either. If you're talking weapons, the likelyhood of them being taken to upstart colonies isn't too likely. Once the colony is established, if one location (Earth or the colony) wipes itself out with nukes, the other is going to think long and hard before using theirs. Having a front-row seat to devastation makes people do everything they can to avoid it happening again (see 9/11 attacks for proof). If you're talking about nuclear power plants, they're getting safer and safer, so I doubt it would be an issue. Besides, nuclear meltdown is a local issue, not a planetary issue.
Not only is this a downright stupid idea on any number of levels, the linked image looks oddly similar to the Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element, except with more exposed skin.
:)
Now if they were getting Carrie Fisher to do it at age 50, or however old she is these days, that'd be sweet.
Did my math wrong (long week). It would be $1,140,625 over the course of 9 years.
While spammers would argue that spam DOES count as free speech, I'd argue that it doesn't. While the content of the spam itself might be covered by free speech laws, the method of delivery is not. The problem with spam isn't that it's annoying, it's that it uses resources that someone else has to pay for. I don't know that it can be defined as theft, but in a legal sense it seems like it would be related to trespassing.
Try doing this... go to a school, stand out front, and start reading some xxx stories over a megaphone. See how long you stay out of trouble. While the constitution allows us to say anything we want, the law places restrictions on the circumstances of the delivery.
As for the $450,000... that's extremely cheap when you figure this guy is sending out 1 million spam per day. If you discount spam filters, bandwidth costs, and just look at an employee having to delete each of those messages it gets pretty expensive. You're looking at $2,737,500 if it takes a $6/hour employee 1/2 a second to delete each message.
Not entirely true. If your cable provider doesn't encrypt their HD channels, you can use most of the OTA cards. Otherwise the "cable card" solutions seem to work pretty well.
They do make component recorders, but they're extremely expensive. If someone made one for under $400, there would probably be a decent market for it.
That said, most TV shows available by bittorrent are in HD, so I just download them into my HTPC and watch them when I get a chance. Only cost is that of a cable modem, which I have anyway. I wrote a program to start BT for the shows I watch, and I run it nightly.
I put together a HTPC that took under $500 and about 20 hours of my time to put together. It's a DVR, game emulator, DVD player (quality better than any hardware DVD player for under $400), movie server (all my movies on-demand), and more. My wife is comfortable using it already and it's got the potential to do a lot more. I'm using Meedio, which is VERY customizable, but simple enough to get working in a very short amount of time. The problem with the off-the-shelf stuff is that you'll hit a point that you want it to do something that it can't. If mine reaches that point, I just install an extra card or a small software program.
Decent movies:
netflix.com
Decent TV content:
This is obviously subjective, but there's a number of shows out right now that have some potential. Lost, Deadwood, The 4400, Battlestar Galactica, Good Eats, Simpsons, Smallville, The Office (this show is excellent) have all either proven themselves worthy to be recorded or are showing progress. The Office is probably my favorite show in years. Good Eats is a must see for any nerd that likes cooking. Smallville has had some poor episodes and some good ones, so it's hard to say if it will get better or worse. Lost is intriguing enough that I'm completely hooked, but it has the potential to get cheesy if they don't stick with what's worked so far. Finally, The 4400 seems interesting after the first 5 episodes, so hopefully it will continue to be good once they start back up again.
Why not combine the two? We'll still have SOME reliance on oil even with a huge increase in alternative power sources like solar, wind, etc. Implementing this change would help become even more efficient in that situation too, so why not do it now? The fact remains, this is something that can be done now. It's not a huge savings compared to the total consumption, but it is still a savings.
Sure it'd be nice if we all drove hydrogen fueled cars, but that's an unrealistic goal right now. Baby steps....
I stand corrected. That first link is worded very poorly. I actually think where I went wrong is that certain areas that are definitely part of the city are referred to differently, which lead me to believe they were separated in census data as well. Oh well. :)
Read that first link again... that's Milwaukee County, which is MUCH bigger than the City of Milwaukee. I couldn't find the actual size of Milwaukee, so I estimated, which I feel qualified to do since I've lived here almost my whole life. I think I'm actually overestimating the size, given the fact that West Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and Shorewood cut into the city significantly.
Twice the population density in Milwaukee vs Denver:
http://www.internest.com/city/milwaukeewi.asp
http://www.internest.com/city/denverco.asp
So Denver would be $2/person. I actually think the population density of the states would be similar, given the fact that the upper half of Wisconsin is very midly populated (it's all forest) and the lower half just has a few bigger cities (Milwaukee, Madison) with the rest being farmland and glacial land.
I live in Milwaukee, which is approximately 16 square miles. Within that 16 square mile area, there are around 600,000 residents (talking City of Milwaukee, not the metro area). If the cost to provide wireless runs $600K/month, that comes to $1/citizen/month. Even if you guess that it would cost 10 times as much (given the way our local government works ;), that's still only $10/month. Where is that $16/m figure coming from?
They just cover them with a big green tarp whenever a plane flys over. ;)
While it sucks for the CS people in the Pentagon, it just makes sense right now to divert money to things that will benefit the troops in Afganistan and Iraq. I'm sure that some of the CS projects help soliders on the ground, but as we know, 95% of IT projects aren't completed on time. So why not deliver better weapons, vehicles, body armor, and other technology that has the capability of saving lives right now.
Once we're completely out of Iraq and Afganistan, hopefully they'll put the money back into long term research.
Anyone know what the previous record was for the number of stories in a day. If they continue at the current pace (1 story every 4 minutes), they'll have 95 more by midnight (EST).
It's quite simple really... if you don't like the April 1st stuff, come back tomorrow. Granted, most of the stories this year weren't funny at all, but the 1 or 2 clever ones were still filled with posts of "enough already".
If you don't like the stories, ignore them and return tomorrow when it's back to normal. Or will you go into withdrawal if you can't read Slashdot for a day?
My $0.02... I have karma to burn.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
:)
I don't know which is funnier, that Google felt that people actually needed 2GB, or that Slashdot thought it was a April Fool's joke.
Because asbestos exposure eventually causes mesothelioma, and lawyers are all about suing in asbestos cases lately. There might be other reasons, but that's the first one I thought of.
While data is obviously stored on media, talking about the lifetime of data is not the same as talking about the lifetime of media. So, the original poster's "forever" comment is unrelated to the survey he links to.
If you have media that you know won't last over 30 years, just copy it onto new media at the 20-25 year point. In most cases, that's not that big of a deal. Besides, by the time that 20-25 year mark rolls around, it's very likely that you'd want to convert to a faster "online" media anyway, like holographic storage.
While most of the complaints about Google are warranted, Google works well enough even for those of us in the computer industry. If 99% of the time I find what I'm looking for in the first page of links, and the results are returned quickly enough, why would I go elsewhere?
Yahoo and Altavista worked ok for me before Google came along, but the clean interface and good results drew me in. So, the only thing that would convince me to switch to a different search engine would be if Google started cluttering up their pages (a la Yahoo) or the results became unusable.
If I'm looking for specific information that Google might not happen to have, I will check alltheweb.com, but that's a pretty rare occurance.
Finally, I don't see why people complain about Google's features being beta. They're still completely usable, and if you run across a shortcoming that really bothers you, there's plenty of alternatives for that service.
As much as the reviewer ripped the author for a poorly organized and non-insightful book, you have to credit the author for arranging that many interviews with some decent game creators. Granted, he doesn't interview the most famous game designers, but just name dropping the ones he did talk to is enough to impress anyone familiar with the gaming industry.
That said, it sounds like the author would have done much better by releasing a book of interview transcripts. You'd probably get more out of it as far as context and tone of the interviews, and the author would have saved quite a bit of time. Perhaps the transcripts along with comments included inline?
You meant:
;)
Dude, quit using Adobe(R) Photoshop as a verb.
You meant to say " I bet they've all been enhanced using Adobe(R) Photoshop software.
You are lucky I was here. Next time I might not be around!
Adobe and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
Yes. Like I said, I'm generally unfamiliar with how the Linux kernel works, but why not do this? If you have multiple users with their own X sessions going on, have the kernel give the active window (more than likely the one on top) on each user's session priority over all the windows that are hidden, minimized, or not being actively used. Wouldn't the net result be that each user would notice an increase in application response without sacrificing anything? In addition to I/O, CPU, and RAM priority, you can also prioritize the pagefiles so an active application is less likely to be swapped than an inactive one.
That makes complete sense. I was referring to losing focus in the window manager, but I didn't realize it would require kernel hooks that don't already exist. Seems like kernel hooks denoting window focus would be helpful in other ways, like giving I/O and CPU priority to processes in focus while nearly suspending those in the background. Obviously that's not always desirable, so perhaps a focus hook and an "allow lower priority" hook combined? Kind of an automatic nice.
:)
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to kernel hacking, though, so that might not be anywhere close to useful or possible.
You can fix this situation by setting up a separate partition (say.. 2GB?) for your swapfile and setting the swapfile to a fixed size within the partition.
:)
Granted, it would be really nice if MS would do that automatically, but it's still a cheaper solution than adding 750mb of laptop memory.
I'm not sure, but running defrag on the partition weekly might help as well. I'd really like to see MS do automatic drive defrag in the background when the computer isn't being used, or is being used minimally. That would solve a number of issues.