A meter is DEFINED as the amount of time that light moves in 1/299792458 seconds
No, actually, a meter was DEFINED as one 10-millionth of the line between Paris and the Equator. Since 'Paris' isn't too exact a point, the new definition of a meter, the one you've given, is vintage 1988 and meant to be a little more precise. If anything, it should be considered a refinement of the Paris to the equator size.
To answer the original question, why is light's speed in miles per second what it is, well, light moved along at its speed, however you want to measure it, long before the miles system was invented. And guess what; the inventor of the mile almost certainly had no idea light was something with measureable speed so it should be no suprise the answer comes out to an oddball number.
there are always people trying to play games on intel integrated graphics
But... but... the sticker on the front of the case says 'Intel Extreme Graphics! How can anything beat 'Extreme'? But don't worry, by the time Longhorn hits the market, I bet we'll have 'Intel Excessive Graphics' and be all set!
Now that I've thought about it, robots DO have to eat in the sense that they need to take in fuel. This is in the form of plugging in to a wall socket or accepting fresh batteries, but it *is* a form of eating if interpreted generously. And they 'excrete' in the form of heat energy.
But robots in factories already do these things. Shouldn't this discussion really be about androids instead of just robots?
Well, second generation Terminators sweat and have bad breath. Personally, no thanks; but there's probably at least a small niche fetish market for them.
There you go: evidence that capitalism isn't meeting the needs of people, and the state is stepping in.
Not at all; This is a case of government being run as a business. Granted, it's a business where some of the customers pay more than others and some of the customers probably didn't want to be customers. Rather than a failure of capitalism, it shows that a state sanctioned near-monopoly (ie: the Telco) in other words, communism, can't supply what competition can.
Ironically, the company in this case is the one behaving as a ponderous Soviet state run "enterprise" while the government is playing the role of innovative competitor responding to market demand. That's typical of what happens when companies become monopolies and is a failure of human nature (of the people running and owning the company that becomes a monopoly) be it a state run enterprise under the guise of communism or a monopoly in an otherwise capitalistic system. Thankfully, there is a competitive, capitalistic system in place that the very idea exists that another entity could provide a service the existing entity would not. Without a competitive/capitalistic mindset of the populace, they would passively wait forever for the telco monopoly to take action.
Gamers... balancing their enjoyment of interactive entertainment with many other activities important to a well-rounded lifestyle.
As opposed to chatters, I assume. My roommate discovered ICQ and hasn't been seen in public for about 9 months now. He eats while standing in the kitchen because presumably going to the dining room to sit down would take too much time from in front of his computer. After coming home from work, it's straight to the computer and when getting up he's usually a hurry to get to work on time because morning chats run to the last possible second.
Materials costs usually represent the smallest part of the cost of making an item, especially in anything as small as a card
You're mistaking small costs for immaterial costs; Recall Rambus memory. It's big appeal to manufacturers was lower pin count. Saving even just one dollar on materials when the automated assembly line churns out a million units at a time adds up to a million dollars in savings. Since the new card format is not only smaller but also has less pins, there will be several dollars per unit on the line in materials savings. Smaller form factors do not increase production costs as a blanket statement, although they usually require a new machine to produce. But that more than pays for itself in being a more efficient machine using less material to make a smaller widget more quickly. The up front cost of a new machine, which you've mistaken as being more costly to produce, recoups itself quickly.
If they really cared about new form factors for the sake of making consumers buy upgrades, my Athlon XP motherboard wouldn't have a parallel port on it.
Is the goal of everything to eventually become a choking hazzard?
What you call a 'choking hazard' the manufacturer calls 'uses less materials and is therefore cheaper to produce and thus less expensive for the consumer'.
2 USB slots, which I use both of almost always (swapping is quite a hassle)
Rejoice, for I bring good tidings; There is a device called a 'USB Hub' that allows branching off of a single port. Since you're already dragging around multiple USB devices that you need to swap back and forth, another one won't be that big of a deal especially given the tiny sizes some of the hubs come in. Oh, and the PCMCIA slot you wish was replaced by '1 or 2' extra USB ports? You can get 2 or even 4 port USB PCCards if you don't want an external hub off the laptop's built in port. Check eBay; prices for those are under $20 including shipping.
I got one so my slightly older laptop could take advantage of USB 2.0. There's a good reason for having some kind of generic port on the side of the laptop. It was a LOT cheaper to get a card than a new laptop to use my USB 2.0 CD-RW drive. A year or so after these new slots are installed in laptops with FW800 and USB 2.0, there's going to be FW1600 and USB 3.0. For those who can't afford a whole new machine it sure is nice to just get a little card to take advantage of whatever new tech comes along.
While funny on the surface, this is actually a good idea. Look at the one example in the article where the IT business professional helps the cops catch the hacker. This should be like the cops calling the SPCA to catch a loose dog or child welfare services for an abused kid. The cops should call GeeksOnCall or the local equivalent when they have a case involving computer related crimes.
On to my beleif without proof: I beleive that the big bang never happened
Umm, as an opinion, disbelief is proven simply by stating "I don't believe!" It's only statements of fact that need to be proven or disproven. If your statement was instead simply "The Big Bang never happened" then you'd need to argue with someone who states that it did happen. Since you preface with "I beleive" then it's an opinion and those don't need proofs.
You either cut spending or you raise or maintain taxes to pay for the spending
A common misconception. Lowering excessively high tax rates INCREASES tax revenue because people are encouraged to earn more. The Laffer Curve theory says a tax rate around 28% gets you the most tax revenue in the USA. Since Clinton had raised the tax rate to a high of 46%, people were discouraged from earning more and encouraged to either cheat on taxes or just plain invest less and earn less. After Bush's cuts, tax revenue adjusted for economic activity (the economy had a mild recession and the stock market crashed) is higher than under the last Clinton tax rate. 35% is still high according to Laffer, although not too bad. Alas, way too many low income people have been removed from the tax roll completely. The politicians (both parties but more the Dems) have discovered that promising an ever increasing segment of the electorate free goodies from the state coffer will get them elected. Guess how long that lasts.
Stop being a sore winner... unprecedented tax cuts for which the 10% most wealthy americans are getting 80% of the dollars!
Stop being a sore liberal; the top bracket is 35% and the lowest bracket is 0%. The wealthy pay MUCH MORE per dollar earned in taxes. Why is this fair to make some people pay more??? Penalize success and you get less of it. Subsidize laziness and you get more of it.
total Federal Dept. of Education's budget is about twice the total defence budget (I remember numbers of $B800 vs. $B400
Actually, the *Federal* government spends very little on education despite GWB increasing it by 67%. Why? Because guess what: education is considered a local issue. *State* governments combined spend upwards of 800B/year. So when you see some liberal whining that "the goverment" only spends a small fraction of the defense budget on education, keep in mind that's Federal. Total spending on education in the USA dwarfs defense spending, it just isn't spend by the Feds.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend away non-discretionary federal spending. 3/4 of federal spending is in Welfare, Medicare, Medicade, Social Security and similar socialist programs. To ignore those and make a graph that appears to show more than half of federal spending is military in nature is outright fraudulent. Sorry but Congress CAN effect non-discretionary spending: by repealing or reforming those programs, duh! Meanwhile, count that spending as spending.
Argh! Enough, you retards! After chuckling at length at the original comment about the level 50 corner of the MUD it was completely ruined by the dozen postings by you literalist, humorless, socially retarded jerks and the 'by a sniffer' comments. Get over yourselves and your technical prowess!
Four cells is low as it is, especially if it's not a lithium-ion battery
With which the thing runs "more than 1.5 hours". What the heck... If you're going to use a chip with low power requirements like the C3 isn't it pretty absurd to lash it to a minuscule battery? With a normal battery this thing would run all day and actually be worth it.
The US... deny giving Diego Garcia back to its native inhabitants.
You misspelled 'The United Kingdom". It seems in your exhausting research about Diego Garcia you overlooked the minor fact that it is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Slashdot Mirror
A meter is DEFINED as the amount of time that light moves in 1/299792458 seconds
No, actually, a meter was DEFINED as one 10-millionth of the line between Paris and the Equator. Since 'Paris' isn't too exact a point, the new definition of a meter, the one you've given, is vintage 1988 and meant to be a little more precise. If anything, it should be considered a refinement of the Paris to the equator size.
To answer the original question, why is light's speed in miles per second what it is, well, light moved along at its speed, however you want to measure it, long before the miles system was invented. And guess what; the inventor of the mile almost certainly had no idea light was something with measureable speed so it should be no suprise the answer comes out to an oddball number.
the difference between a commercial airline pilot and a bus driver.
Bus drivers have to operate their vehicles.
there are always people trying to play games on intel integrated graphics
But... but... the sticker on the front of the case says 'Intel Extreme Graphics! How can anything beat 'Extreme'?
But don't worry, by the time Longhorn hits the market, I bet we'll have 'Intel Excessive Graphics' and be all set!
Now that I've thought about it, robots DO have to eat in the sense that they need to take in fuel. This is in the form of plugging in to a wall socket or accepting fresh batteries, but it *is* a form of eating if interpreted generously. And they 'excrete' in the form of heat energy.
But robots in factories already do these things. Shouldn't this discussion really be about androids instead of just robots?
Excrete what?
Well, second generation Terminators sweat and have bad breath. Personally, no thanks; but there's probably at least a small niche fetish market for them.
Should robots eat? Should they excrete? ... 'Ethics for the Robot Age.
Sorry but these are questions of social mannerisms, not ethics. And I hope the second one is NOT used socially.
There you go: evidence that capitalism isn't meeting the needs of people, and the state is stepping in.
Not at all; This is a case of government being run as a business. Granted, it's a business where some of the customers pay more than others and some of the customers probably didn't want to be customers. Rather than a failure of capitalism, it shows that a state sanctioned near-monopoly (ie: the Telco) in other words, communism, can't supply what competition can.
Ironically, the company in this case is the one behaving as a ponderous Soviet state run "enterprise" while the government is playing the role of innovative competitor responding to market demand. That's typical of what happens when companies become monopolies and is a failure of human nature (of the people running and owning the company that becomes a monopoly) be it a state run enterprise under the guise of communism or a monopoly in an otherwise capitalistic system. Thankfully, there is a competitive, capitalistic system in place that the very idea exists that another entity could provide a service the existing entity would not. Without a competitive/capitalistic mindset of the populace, they would passively wait forever for the telco monopoly to take action.
Gamers ... balancing their enjoyment of interactive entertainment with many other activities important to a well-rounded lifestyle.
As opposed to chatters, I assume. My roommate discovered ICQ and hasn't been seen in public for about 9 months now. He eats while standing in the kitchen because presumably going to the dining room to sit down would take too much time from in front of his computer. After coming home from work, it's straight to the computer and when getting up he's usually a hurry to get to work on time because morning chats run to the last possible second.
Materials costs usually represent the smallest part of the cost of making an item, especially in anything as small as a card
You're mistaking small costs for immaterial costs; Recall Rambus memory. It's big appeal to manufacturers was lower pin count. Saving even just one dollar on materials when the automated assembly line churns out a million units at a time adds up to a million dollars in savings. Since the new card format is not only smaller but also has less pins, there will be several dollars per unit on the line in materials savings. Smaller form factors do not increase production costs as a blanket statement, although they usually require a new machine to produce. But that more than pays for itself in being a more efficient machine using less material to make a smaller widget more quickly. The up front cost of a new machine, which you've mistaken as being more costly to produce, recoups itself quickly.
If they really cared about new form factors for the sake of making consumers buy upgrades, my Athlon XP motherboard wouldn't have a parallel port on it.
Is the goal of everything to eventually become a choking hazzard?
What you call a 'choking hazard' the manufacturer calls 'uses less materials and is therefore cheaper to produce and thus less expensive for the consumer'.
2 USB slots, which I use both of almost always (swapping is quite a hassle)
Rejoice, for I bring good tidings; There is a device called a 'USB Hub' that allows branching off of a single port. Since you're already dragging around multiple USB devices that you need to swap back and forth, another one won't be that big of a deal especially given the tiny sizes some of the hubs come in. Oh, and the PCMCIA slot you wish was replaced by '1 or 2' extra USB ports? You can get 2 or even 4 port USB PCCards if you don't want an external hub off the laptop's built in port. Check eBay; prices for those are under $20 including shipping.
I got one so my slightly older laptop could take advantage of USB 2.0. There's a good reason for having some kind of generic port on the side of the laptop. It was a LOT cheaper to get a card than a new laptop to use my USB 2.0 CD-RW drive. A year or so after these new slots are installed in laptops with FW800 and USB 2.0, there's going to be FW1600 and USB 3.0. For those who can't afford a whole new machine it sure is nice to just get a little card to take advantage of whatever new tech comes along.
and a laser tracking system
Cool, now maybe I'll stop losing the things all over the place.
Maybe the cops should outsource?
While funny on the surface, this is actually a good idea. Look at the one example in the article where the IT business professional helps the cops catch the hacker. This should be like the cops calling the SPCA to catch a loose dog or child welfare services for an abused kid. The cops should call GeeksOnCall or the local equivalent when they have a case involving computer related crimes.
he would have given us the ability to fly around and shoot lazers out of our eys, and stuff.
I can't even begin to imagine how hard core the super heros in such a world's comic books would be like...
On to my beleif without proof: I beleive that the big bang never happened
Umm, as an opinion, disbelief is proven simply by stating "I don't believe!" It's only statements of fact that need to be proven or disproven. If your statement was instead simply "The Big Bang never happened" then you'd need to argue with someone who states that it did happen. Since you preface with "I beleive" then it's an opinion and those don't need proofs.
You either cut spending or you raise or maintain taxes to pay for the spending
A common misconception. Lowering excessively high tax rates INCREASES tax revenue because people are encouraged to earn more. The Laffer Curve theory says a tax rate around 28% gets you the most tax revenue in the USA. Since Clinton had raised the tax rate to a high of 46%, people were discouraged from earning more and encouraged to either cheat on taxes or just plain invest less and earn less. After Bush's cuts, tax revenue adjusted for economic activity (the economy had a mild recession and the stock market crashed) is higher than under the last Clinton tax rate. 35% is still high according to Laffer, although not too bad. Alas, way too many low income people have been removed from the tax roll completely. The politicians (both parties but more the Dems) have discovered that promising an ever increasing segment of the electorate free goodies from the state coffer will get them elected. Guess how long that lasts.
apparently dead communist rats couldn't be trusted with the secrets of the free world
No, it's because American dead rats have higher magic content.
Stop being a sore winner ... unprecedented tax cuts for which the 10% most wealthy americans are getting 80% of the dollars!
Stop being a sore liberal; the top bracket is 35% and the lowest bracket is 0%. The wealthy pay MUCH MORE per dollar earned in taxes. Why is this fair to make some people pay more??? Penalize success and you get less of it. Subsidize laziness and you get more of it.
total Federal Dept. of Education's budget is about twice the total defence budget (I remember numbers of $B800 vs. $B400
Actually, the *Federal* government spends very little on education despite GWB increasing it by 67%. Why? Because guess what: education is considered a local issue. *State* governments combined spend upwards of 800B/year. So when you see some liberal whining that "the goverment" only spends a small fraction of the defense budget on education, keep in mind that's Federal. Total spending on education in the USA dwarfs defense spending, it just isn't spend by the Feds.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend away non-discretionary federal spending. 3/4 of federal spending is in Welfare, Medicare, Medicade, Social Security and similar socialist programs. To ignore those and make a graph that appears to show more than half of federal spending is military in nature is outright fraudulent. Sorry but Congress CAN effect non-discretionary spending: by repealing or reforming those programs, duh! Meanwhile, count that spending as spending.
You retarded?
Argh! Enough, you retards! After chuckling at length at the original comment about the level 50 corner of the MUD it was completely ruined by the dozen postings by you literalist, humorless, socially retarded jerks and the 'by a sniffer' comments. Get over yourselves and your technical prowess!
most of them just get a bunch of untrue gossip and sensasionalist trivia
As opposed how to the big three news media outlets today? See: last election cycle.
I like to take fire
I prefer to take matches. Dragging around the reed basket with the embers is a pain; especially when fording deep rivers.
Four cells is low as it is, especially if it's not a lithium-ion battery
With which the thing runs "more than 1.5 hours". What the heck... If you're going to use a chip with low power requirements like the C3 isn't it pretty absurd to lash it to a minuscule battery? With a normal battery this thing would run all day and actually be worth it.
The US ... deny giving Diego Garcia back to its native inhabitants.
You misspelled 'The United Kingdom". It seems in your exhausting research about Diego Garcia you overlooked the minor fact that it is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.