"In developing nations, one chassis might be the common base for vehicles as diverse as luxury limousines or farm vehicles."
I find this amusing, how many farmers in developing nations will be able to afford this cutting edge technology to use as 'farm vehicles'?
"The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
Oh, another good one. Here they are admitting that todays vehicles are not intended to last for years.
"The nerve center of AUTOnomy's electrical system is a universal "docking port," or connection, at the center of the "skateboard" chassis."
How much you want to bet they use a huge mass of wires with a custom connector of some sort instead of a nice, simple ethernet connection?
"With its robust 42-volt electrical system, the car is configured to run any number of devices in the passenger compartment, from homes to entire farms."
This is different from, for example, taking part in a conversation, which the brain will treat as a less interuptable activity. This is why talking on a cell phone while driving is considerably more dangerous than listening to music while driving - your brain will continue to concentrate on the conversation even when something else
While some people do become worse drivers when holding a conversation, I think that history supports the opinion that its not the conversation that is destracting, its the fact that cell phone users are listening with only one ear, forcing them to concentrate much harder to understand what is being said. Try wearing one earplug and talking to someone and notice how much more difficult it is.
Headphones for phones should be dual-speaker (mono-stereo, whatever) if they are intended to solve the problem of driver distraction. That or regular speakerphone.
Density of the receptors in the eye varies, but at the fovea, which is around 0.3mm across, density of cone receptors can be up to about 10,000dpi. Density drops off very steeply with angular seperation from the fovea, while rod density increases (which is why you can see dim stars so much better if you look off to the side just a bit, rods are much more light sensitive than cones).
Has anyone else ever noticed that a major part of the distraction of phones will driving is that it takes a lot more attention to listen to something coming in just one ear, particularly in a noisy environment?
It seems to me that hands free sets are not a good solution, unless they are speaker phones. Most people I know drive with one hand anyway (its required with a stick), hanging on to a phone really doesn't take any attention at all. Hearing whats said does. I can carry on a conversation with someone in the passenger seat with no problem, its not distracting. I can hold a phone up with no problem. Listening with one ear is a problem.
If you don't believe that you miss lots of info listening with one ear, try these experiments. Put in one earplug and try going around work that way. See how many times you have people repeat themselves, or how carefully you have to listen. Next, get a phone, crack open the handset and wire a standard pair of headphones into it so that *both* speakers work. Call someone and be amazed at what you can hear in the background. Someone talking across the room? You'll hear every word clearly.
Anyway, the point is, I don't think that any locality which requires handsfree sets in the car is doing anyone any favors, I believe that the problem has not been fully researched by these areas. Speakerphones or two-speaker headsets are the correct solution.
If you're hosting your brother's birthday party, your sister is vegetarian and you're barbequeing burgers then what do you cook for her that doesn't take any more time the burgers?
Mmmm, grilled portabella seasoned with a good steak rub. Might want to make extra, they are at least as good as the burgers:)
Apparently, in the original concept for TNG the computer was to handle all the navigation and such, via voice command. But that didn't make for very interesting crew interaction, particularly since the bridge looked like a hotel lounge with big cushie chairs and such.
So, be glad, Voy could have been JUST Janeway telling the computer what to do.
Nacelles don't generate power, they create create and manipulate warp fields. The power is produced by matter/antimatter reactions. The only reason for a third nacelle would be to provide additional control or strength to the warp field.
-- Arguing on slashdot is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, your're still retarded.
"There appears to be no evidence that Haeckel was ever tried for fraud in the Jena university court, much less that he was convicted of it."
His contemporaries did call him on the inaccuracies in his drawings, and no doubt he was accused of fraud, but he was never 'tried and convicted' of it.
If you are going to espouse accuracy in textbooks, perhaps you should check the accuracy of your posts.
It is good to see that at least some textbook makers are replacing these widely used drawings.
I don't recall the story name, but didn't they go look at some antimater system/galaxy or something? The GP hull was destroyed in a series of mater/antimater collisions with free particles in the area. The contents of the hull, drive system, controls & etc, hung together long enough for them to get home.
Re:This "speaker" Doesn't "sound" differnt either.
on
Voices in Your Head
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· Score: 2
qsound is mostly just varying amounts of inversion on one side of a stereo channel. If you happen to be in the sweet spot it sounds kinda like its coming from inside your head. There were some qsound demos that came with the SB AWE32 years ago. The kind of stuff you play with for a minute or two and think 'I can't believe they are trying to sell this crap.'
Hmm, do you keep your linux boxes secure by not giving them names?
Keeping the protocol secret won't do much for the spam issue. Even if it were totally locked down spammers would just go back to controlling AIM (through application generated mouse clicks and such) to send spam.
Just passing a transport exposes the passengers of a car to a dose of radiation equivalent to gettting and X-ray
While I don't have specs, the rabid anti-nuclear activist that was on NPR last week said that sitting next to the transport truck for half an our would be equivalent to a chest x-ray. I tend to believe her figures more than yours.
Vivid was my first ray tracer too, I spent a couple weeks writing a front end for it so I could make polygons and lathed patch models and such. Always wished the author (Stephen Coy) would release the source for it, but apparently he was trying to make money selling a book or something in which he taught the reader how to develop a tracer with a subset of Vivids capabilities.
> However I'm surprised that the "Powers That Be" haven't killed this story since it has step by step directions on how to make... When this story came out a few years ago, I worried a bit about this too, but I remember some stuff from the few physics classes I took, and after dusting off my old texts, concluded that it's impossible to use this process to make enough of the substance to constitute a proliferation risk.
While its not a risk in the sense of atomic bomb building, it could still be a problem. Imagine the results from taking his little pile of radioactive waste (the stuff his mom and the cops threw out, not the junk left lying around the shed) mixing it with a box of drywall screws and wraping it around a nice jar of the nitroglycerine he made. Drop it near an elementary school and blast nasty mixture of shrapnel and very significant amount of radioactive debris into a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Its not so much the damage done, but the public relations nightmare it initates. You'd have a bomb going off around the kiddies, which is bad enough, it shatters the 'it can't happen here' attitude most people have, plus its a 'dirty' nuclear bomb which has been discussed in connection with the 9/11 attack, further raising peoples fears, PLUS, you'd have legions of governemnt people running around in 'moon suits' not telling anyone what really happened, desperately trying to contain the radioactive mess, which, while not all that severe, you can't just leave lying around. Make a few other similar bombs with trace amounts of radioactive materials to go off a few days or weeks later and the problem is compounded even more.
Just curious, but is it possible to adjust the image alignment (for lack of a better term) such that the 3D effect is most pronounced in the center areas of the screen, and fades off at the edges, so that the clipping does not occur? Of course things would get flat at the edges, but it would eliminate the clipping. I haven't the slightest clue how that could be accomplished, but it seems that some clever digital editing could do the trick.
there is considerable genetic difference between the various type of horse, so much so that some types of horse can considered seperate species because they cannot interbreed successfully
Facinating, I hadn't heard that before. I wonder if there are any examples of deliberate experimental speciation through selective breeding?
True about Humans and recessive 'bad' genes. Its intersting to me that people in general value highly even exceptionally poor (genetically speaking) specimins of humanity (and allow them to breed). In the long term I expect that genetic therapies and technological implants will eliminate the 'disadvantaged' though. In normal societies there just isn't any other option, unless people start to realize that reproductive freedom has an impact on the rest of society.
Whilst I don't make huge amounts of money, that is not the entire point
What? What's your damage boy? Isn't the whole point of life to amass the largest collection of resources, both financial and material, in one place, so others cannot use them?
Perhaps you are bothered by the 'starting your engine is the worst thing you can do to it' stuff put out by the oil companies? If so, consider that starting is a problem because you generally start the engine after it has been sitting all night, allowing most of the oil to drain away from where its needed. If you are going to start it 50 times in 8 hours, the wear caused by poorly lubed parts isn't going to occur, because the parts will still be lubed.
You should say 'wuy siblings ought not reproduce', since it is clear that they can, and indeed, occasionally do.
The genetic risks associated with interbreeding are, according to some studies, overblown. Interbreeding of closely related individuals also has benefits of bringing out other traits, which actually increases genetic diversity.
In short, the situation is more complicated than 'incest=bad'. Animal breeders regularly interbreed their stock, usually with no problems at all.
At this point it's not really necessary to damage large or symbolic structures (although it would be interesting to see what happens when a fully loaded, hijacked (pirated??) oil tanker would do to the golden gate bridge footings at full speed). Thats been done, now they could progress to a campaign to destroy the 'it can't happen here' attitude across the country. Not only is it logistically easier, its guarenteed to generate large amounts of panic.
All one would need is a couple people (a team of 5-10 drivers would simplify things), some commercial explosives (easily available to regular joes in many states) some 10 day timers (trivial), and gas money. Load up your drivers each with about 30 or 40 small packages of explosive set to go off at the same time, and start off on cross-country drives. At each security-lax small or medium sized town, make a pit stop at a gas station, fast-food joint or overpass and leave a bomb somewhere unobtrusive. A week later when bombs go off simultaniously in 300 Anytown USA's, any remaining sense of security will be shattered.
This kind of stuff would be very easy to pull off, and while I hesitate to post it publicly with our current law enforcment attitude toward security, its so obvious that any serious terrorist would undoubtedly concoct something even more henious. Heck, the majority of slashdot users could probably single-handidly design and execute an even more sophisticated attack (perhaps in conjunction with physical and cyber attacks on major internet trunks).
Security is largely an illusion. An attacker would do well to attack the roots of the illusion.
Slashdot Mirror
"In developing nations, one chassis might be the common base for vehicles as diverse as luxury limousines or farm vehicles."
I find this amusing, how many farmers in developing nations will be able to afford this cutting edge technology to use as 'farm vehicles'?
"The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
Oh, another good one. Here they are admitting that todays vehicles are not intended to last for years.
"The nerve center of AUTOnomy's electrical system is a universal "docking port," or connection, at the center of the "skateboard" chassis."
How much you want to bet they use a huge mass of wires with a custom connector of some sort instead of a nice, simple ethernet connection?
"With its robust 42-volt electrical system, the car is configured to run any number of devices in the passenger compartment, from homes to entire farms."
Thats one hell of a passenger compartment.
This is different from, for example, taking part in a conversation, which the brain will treat as a less interuptable activity. This is why talking on a cell phone while driving is considerably more dangerous than listening to music while driving - your brain will continue to concentrate on the conversation even when something else
While some people do become worse drivers when holding a conversation, I think that history supports the opinion that its not the conversation that is destracting, its the fact that cell phone users are listening with only one ear, forcing them to concentrate much harder to understand what is being said. Try wearing one earplug and talking to someone and notice how much more difficult it is.
Headphones for phones should be dual-speaker (mono-stereo, whatever) if they are intended to solve the problem of driver distraction. That or regular speakerphone.
Does this mean I can get rid of all my video switches and just connect the keyboard and mouse to the monitor and connect to whichever CPU I want?
That would kick ass.
Density of the receptors in the eye varies, but at the fovea, which is around 0.3mm across, density of cone receptors can be up to about 10,000dpi. Density drops off very steeply with angular seperation from the fovea, while rod density increases (which is why you can see dim stars so much better if you look off to the side just a bit, rods are much more light sensitive than cones).
Has anyone else ever noticed that a major part of the distraction of phones will driving is that it takes a lot more attention to listen to something coming in just one ear, particularly in a noisy environment?
It seems to me that hands free sets are not a good solution, unless they are speaker phones. Most people I know drive with one hand anyway (its required with a stick), hanging on to a phone really doesn't take any attention at all. Hearing whats said does. I can carry on a conversation with someone in the passenger seat with no problem, its not distracting. I can hold a phone up with no problem. Listening with one ear is a problem.
If you don't believe that you miss lots of info listening with one ear, try these experiments. Put in one earplug and try going around work that way. See how many times you have people repeat themselves, or how carefully you have to listen. Next, get a phone, crack open the handset and wire a standard pair of headphones into it so that *both* speakers work. Call someone and be amazed at what you can hear in the background. Someone talking across the room? You'll hear every word clearly.
Anyway, the point is, I don't think that any locality which requires handsfree sets in the car is doing anyone any favors, I believe that the problem has not been fully researched by these areas. Speakerphones or two-speaker headsets are the correct solution.
Mmmm, grilled portabella seasoned with a good steak rub. Might want to make extra, they are at least as good as the burgers :)
AAMOF, it did reach there via some kind of weird anomalie, one which almost trapped Paris.
As I recall they also found those two Feringi that were left behind when the wormhole they (and LaForge, in a seperate shuttle) were checking out.
Apparently, in the original concept for TNG the computer was to handle all the navigation and such, via voice command. But that didn't make for very interesting crew interaction, particularly since the bridge looked like a hotel lounge with big cushie chairs and such.
So, be glad, Voy could have been JUST Janeway telling the computer what to do.
Nacelles don't generate power, they create create and manipulate warp fields. The power is produced by matter/antimatter reactions. The only reason for a third nacelle would be to provide additional control or strength to the warp field.
--
Arguing on slashdot is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, your're still retarded.
http://inia.cls.org/~ae/Haeckels_embryos.htm
"There appears to be no evidence that Haeckel was ever tried for fraud in the Jena university court, much less that he was convicted of it."
His contemporaries did call him on the inaccuracies in his drawings, and no doubt he was accused of fraud, but he was never 'tried and convicted' of it.
If you are going to espouse accuracy in textbooks, perhaps you should check the accuracy of your posts.
It is good to see that at least some textbook makers are replacing these widely used drawings.
I don't recall the story name, but didn't they go look at some antimater system/galaxy or something? The GP hull was destroyed in a series of mater/antimater collisions with free particles in the area. The contents of the hull, drive system, controls & etc, hung together long enough for them to get home.
qsound is mostly just varying amounts of inversion on one side of a stereo channel. If you happen to be in the sweet spot it sounds kinda like its coming from inside your head. There were some qsound demos that came with the SB AWE32 years ago. The kind of stuff you play with for a minute or two and think 'I can't believe they are trying to sell this crap.'
Hmm, do you keep your linux boxes secure by not giving them names?
Keeping the protocol secret won't do much for the spam issue. Even if it were totally locked down spammers would just go back to controlling AIM (through application generated mouse clicks and such) to send spam.
This is precisely how the jabber guys handled it. Also lets anyone with a domain handle their own server. Kind of like.. email. Imagine that.
What, steel?
Just passing a transport exposes the passengers of a car to a dose of radiation equivalent to gettting and X-ray
While I don't have specs, the rabid anti-nuclear activist that was on NPR last week said that sitting next to the transport truck for half an our would be equivalent to a chest x-ray. I tend to believe her figures more than yours.
Vivid was my first ray tracer too, I spent a couple weeks writing a front end for it so I could make polygons and lathed patch models and such. Always wished the author (Stephen Coy) would release the source for it, but apparently he was trying to make money selling a book or something in which he taught the reader how to develop a tracer with a subset of Vivids capabilities.
mm, galaxy express: 999, I saw that after regaining conciousness after a heavy acid trip. Talk about the day after, damn.
> However I'm surprised that the "Powers That Be" haven't killed this story since it has step by step directions on how to make ...
When this story came out a few years ago, I worried a bit about this too, but I remember some stuff from the few physics classes I took, and after dusting off my old texts, concluded that it's impossible to use this process to make enough of the substance to constitute a proliferation risk.
While its not a risk in the sense of atomic bomb building, it could still be a problem. Imagine the results from taking his little pile of radioactive waste (the stuff his mom and the cops threw out, not the junk left lying around the shed) mixing it with a box of drywall screws and wraping it around a nice jar of the nitroglycerine he made. Drop it near an elementary school and blast nasty mixture of shrapnel and very significant amount of radioactive debris into a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Its not so much the damage done, but the public relations nightmare it initates. You'd have a bomb going off around the kiddies, which is bad enough, it shatters the 'it can't happen here' attitude most people have, plus its a 'dirty' nuclear bomb which has been discussed in connection with the 9/11 attack, further raising peoples fears, PLUS, you'd have legions of governemnt people running around in 'moon suits' not telling anyone what really happened, desperately trying to contain the radioactive mess, which, while not all that severe, you can't just leave lying around. Make a few other similar bombs with trace amounts of radioactive materials to go off a few days or weeks later and the problem is compounded even more.
Just curious, but is it possible to adjust the image alignment (for lack of a better term) such that the 3D effect is most pronounced in the center areas of the screen, and fades off at the edges, so that the clipping does not occur? Of course things would get flat at the edges, but it would eliminate the clipping. I haven't the slightest clue how that could be accomplished, but it seems that some clever digital editing could do the trick.
there is considerable genetic difference between the various type of horse, so much so that some types of horse can considered seperate species because they cannot interbreed successfully
Facinating, I hadn't heard that before. I wonder if there are any examples of deliberate experimental speciation through selective breeding?
True about Humans and recessive 'bad' genes. Its intersting to me that people in general value highly even exceptionally poor (genetically speaking) specimins of humanity (and allow them to breed). In the long term I expect that genetic therapies and technological implants will eliminate the 'disadvantaged' though. In normal societies there just isn't any other option, unless people start to realize that reproductive freedom has an impact on the rest of society.
Whilst I don't make huge amounts of money, that is not the entire point
What? What's your damage boy? Isn't the whole point of life to amass the largest collection of resources, both financial and material, in one place, so others cannot use them?
Perhaps you are bothered by the 'starting your engine is the worst thing you can do to it' stuff put out by the oil companies? If so, consider that starting is a problem because you generally start the engine after it has been sitting all night, allowing most of the oil to drain away from where its needed. If you are going to start it 50 times in 8 hours, the wear caused by poorly lubed parts isn't going to occur, because the parts will still be lubed.
You should say 'wuy siblings ought not reproduce', since it is clear that they can, and indeed, occasionally do.
The genetic risks associated with interbreeding are, according to some studies, overblown. Interbreeding of closely related individuals also has benefits of bringing out other traits, which actually increases genetic diversity.
In short, the situation is more complicated than 'incest=bad'. Animal breeders regularly interbreed their stock, usually with no problems at all.
At this point it's not really necessary to damage large or symbolic structures (although it would be interesting to see what happens when a fully loaded, hijacked (pirated??) oil tanker would do to the golden gate bridge footings at full speed). Thats been done, now they could progress to a campaign to destroy the 'it can't happen here' attitude across the country. Not only is it logistically easier, its guarenteed to generate large amounts of panic.
All one would need is a couple people (a team of 5-10 drivers would simplify things), some commercial explosives (easily available to regular joes in many states) some 10 day timers (trivial), and gas money. Load up your drivers each with about 30 or 40 small packages of explosive set to go off at the same time, and start off on cross-country drives. At each security-lax small or medium sized town, make a pit stop at a gas station, fast-food joint or overpass and leave a bomb somewhere unobtrusive. A week later when bombs go off simultaniously in 300 Anytown USA's, any remaining sense of security will be shattered.
This kind of stuff would be very easy to pull off, and while I hesitate to post it publicly with our current law enforcment attitude toward security, its so obvious that any serious terrorist would undoubtedly concoct something even more henious. Heck, the majority of slashdot users could probably single-handidly design and execute an even more sophisticated attack (perhaps in conjunction with physical and cyber attacks on major internet trunks).
Security is largely an illusion. An attacker would do well to attack the roots of the illusion.