I just got my dual gigahertz beast... This is the first Apple I've ever owned, and I've never been happier. The only problem I'm currently having is that I feel as though I'm underutilizing it!
It's a beautiful thing to be able to have an OS that is supported both by the open source community, and commercial developers alike. And the developers tools Apple includes are a dream come true.
It seems as though Google has realized that the majority of people using their search engine are home users, who want to find good pages with information they want. By telling people that the DMCA has resulted in the removal of said pages, it's informing the average user of what laws such as the DMCA actually mean to them!
I think its a fairly bold statement on Google's part, saying that the end user is more important than the corperate jackasses.
Does anyone recall the time when services like Prodigy, and most certainly AOL, charged a per hour fee for their use? If I remember correctly, AOL's rates for dial-up were in the range of $10/first five hours, and $3 for each hour over that. Actual speed of your modem didn't really matter, but the time you were tying up their hardware was where the cost was.
Today, it seems AOL/Time Warner wish to return to this, in a certain sense. The bottleneck isn't hardware for dialing into, as it once was, but an utter lack of bandwidth and the ability to handle the traffic. Theoretically, they could use the extra charges to upgrade their networking and allow for more traffic, but I'm not especially trusting of AOL to do the noble thing for the cable modem subscribers.
I'd love to avoid the whole situation and just have a T1 to my home, please.
Look at iD Software. They've released the sourcecode for all of their games aside from the most recent, as that's their "money maker." With the release of the source, it allows the coding community the ability to tweak code and fix bugs, and extend the life of the software far beyond what the company could have provided. There's something comforting about trying out three different, unofficial Quake ports on MacOS X, and having them all work extremely well. And if I find a bug, I can hunt for it myself! Yeeeee!!!!
If Microsoft implemented a similar strategy, I might consider slapping together a new pc to fool around with older Microsoft code. I'd personally love to see the guts of Windows98, or even 3.1 for that matter.
For my entire life, I've been an advocate of PCs. Aside from my first machine, a commodore64(if you can call that a computer), I've owned PCs exclusively.
Last summer, I got a job doing various media creation, and had to use Macs exclusively. "Oh no, the horror! I hate the Macs!" is essentially what ran through my mind. They were strange, alien little beasts that I've heard the masses whine about over the years.
Within a week, I wanted to throw my PC out the window. MacOS 9 is just MacOS, but it's simple, straightforward, and easy to maintain. MacOS X, on the other hand, made me weep in its beauty. Sure, the initial release was pretty slow, but having a terminal(!!!!) pop up when I logged in was a wonderful thing. It's the simplicity of a Mac and the power of a GOOD OS.
I spent the rest of the summer saving my nickles and pennies for a G4. The release of the dual gigahertz beast was the straw that broke the bank.
Macs are more expensive, true. They're a bit more proprietary than PCs, true. But, the fact that I have an original, functional Macintosh(a recent gift from someone who didn't want to move it!) gives me plenty of faith that my new Mac will last.
Oh yeah, and Final Cut Pro beats any other video editing software with the biggest beating stick ever.
If this is classified as chemical warfare, then things like tear gas, mace, pepperspray, and although it may be stretching it, even smoke is an implement of chemical warfare. It prevents you from seeing! Oh no!
Personally, if I was being a rowdy protester, I'd rather slip and fall than get gassed.
A few days back, I purchased The Avalanches' new album, and put in my dvd-rom only to discover that this disc "was unformatted. Would I like to initialize it?" I was stunned. I felt dirty. I had purchased a copy protected CD. And I couldn't even rip the damn thing so as to add it to the massive mp3 collection!
So, I brought the CD over to a friend's room, asked him to try it in his machine, and it worked just fine. In both his drives. Go figure.
Of course, the worst-case scenario is that I had to use analog ripping, and pump the output from a CD player into the line-in on my soundcard. It'd take all of 5 minutes to wire up, and would have to be done in real-time... To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to protect against this kind of copying. And if push comes to shove, I'm sure that mp3s will appear on the net which have been ripped via this method.
if i'm not mistaken, the pigeonhole principle states that "if you have n holes, and n+1 pigeons, one hole must have more than one pigeon." as it applies to data compression, if a sequence of bits appears multiple times, represent it as something smaller, and replace it with the original sequence when uncompressed.
your statement seems to state "given n unique objects, how many objects are there?" this is n, of course.
i have a great amount of respect for the man who created and/or modified these products. imitation is the greatest form of flattery, isn't it? and in the days of mass-production, and digital media, an imitation is unnecessary... we can just have a copy.
i think turning a speak and spell into an interesting noise instrument is rather interesting. but, i also enjoy noise as a genre of music.
and if you cant appriciate the electronic experimentation, they still look pretty cool... so, if the icon shouldn't be for music, then it should certainly go under art(is there one...?).
actually, the first biological attack recorded in history was using smallpox against american indians. blankets infested with smallpox were given to the indians as a sign of good faith by the united states. and then the indians got smallpox and died, clearing the way for the settlers.
the tokamak design was a drastic improvement over linear fusion devices built early on, which allowed huge losses of energy through either end of the device. as the tokamak is a torus shape, the plasma can theoretically be 'confined' and energy isnt lost out of ends, as there aren't any!
however, the issue with a tokamak is its extremely difficult to produce a uniform magnetic field over a donut-like shape. and if the magnetic field is weak at any point, the plasma can escape confinement. energy is lost to the surroundings, instead of being pushed back into the fusion.
"spherical tokamak" is a contradiction of terms... if it is a tokamak, it is a torus. and if it is a torus, their reactor is subject to the same issues as JET, princeton's experiments, mit's experiments, etc. i am unaware of extensive research with spherical confinement of a plasma, but research at the us's national ignition facility focuses on bombardment by lasers on a tiny sphere of deuterium and tritium in hopes to start and sustain a fusion reaction by this means. the results have been less than spectacular thus far.
ask any physicist how the sun works, and they will tell you their theory. sure, the sun works through fusion, but to make equations balance to explain this, you have to take into account theoretical subatomic particles... things we can't detect(maybe because they arent there), and if they do exist, what role do they actually play?
getting fusion to work before we actually understand it is like fiddling with genetics before we fully understand that. sure, we have a basic understanding, but we certainly don't know it all.
oh yeah, final note... fusion is "clean" in that the containment vessel only becomes slightly radiated. radioactive isotopes still form in the reactions, but replacing the containment vessel after many years of use is very different from having to dispose of 55 gallon drums of radioactive waste constantly. certainly an improvement, but nothing will ever be perfect.
-agent "learned e&m from the head of mit's plasma fusion center" oranje
online courses arent actual experience...
on
Open Courses at MIT
·
· Score: 1
as i have some experience with mit's classes on the web, i can assure you that having classes available on the web doesn't necessarily mean youll be receiving the same education... much of the material presented at mit isn't exactly intuitive, and the work doesn't do you any good unless you actually do it, and do it well.
i learned scheme via an online course at mit, and although i learned it fairly well, i think that the human touch adds a bit to the learning process. someone to answer questions in realtime is a very important part of the learning process...
e.coli bacteria genome (that is one nasty-arse bacteria)...
off-topicish, but id disagree. e.coli is used extensively for genetic research. inserting dna into e.coli's bacteria allows for much of the genetic research in vitro today. splicing vectors in and out allows you to research what genes in humans, and other animals, are responsible for production of certain proteins, etc.
being familiar with its genome would only serve to strengthen such research.
... to solve the world's food shortages?
on
Rice Genome Mapped
·
· Score: 1
im rather impressed by this, solely for the reason that eventually, this will greatly help the world's food supply issues. to genetically engineer grains and rice to say, for example, be resistant to disease, or yield greater supplies, will change the world.
I've always had an issue with Napster in that many of the times I download a file, the file is incomplete. There may be just a few seconds cut off the end of a song, or it might just be the first few seconds of the song. Either way, the song is incomplete and I end up deleting the file.
Would turing Napster into a pay-service change this aspect of Napster? Also, what about the quality of the MP3s themselves? I prefer encoding at 192kbps or variable 192-320kbps... but the average person thinks that 128kbps is just fine. I'm not willing to pay for any sort of service that doesn't provide me with the quality I want in my audio, and I don't think that turning Napster into a pay service will accomplish this.
but every game you just listed is already available for pcs, among other platforms. the reason i still own a console is so i can have unique games for it... not something different to play pc games on.
I know many, many people who abandoned their lives for a day to hopefully get a PS2, and then spend an entire day playing it. The limited supply set a buzz in the air, as those who actually did get their hands on this console were the lucky few... and if you didn't, there was always eBay... assuming you wanted to pay a grand for your gaming console.
But with all of the buzz, and the chaos that followed, few people have realized that ITS ONLY A TOY. Sure, video games are fun, but it's not like Jesus is back and ready for revenge.
Of the people I know who managed to get a PS2, most of them wish they hadn't opened the box so they could have sold it on eBay... pretty much for the reason that they realized that it's only a gaming console, they can get another in the not-too-distant future, and in the meantime, they could have made a bundle off of some poor sap.
I heard several months ago that Sega was to start producing software for other consoles, including Nintendo. I think this is a wise business move on their part. Sega and Nintendo both come to mind when I think of excellent game producers, but the fact that they also have to produce hardware to play the games on is a severe hinderance in my opinion.
I personally think Dreamcast is an excellent console, and Nintendo's Gamecube is the only console I plan to purchase from this round of consoles, but my purchasing decision is only based upon the game choices Nintendo will present me with. If Sega and Nintendo were to give console options for their games, instead of providing only for their own hardware, their software sales would skyrocket, but their hardware sales might plummet. It's kind of a catch-22.
If Sega and Nintendo want to join up, I say more power to them. It gives me more gaming options for the future.
I think the entire approach to DARE is a bit skewed, as drugs are a normal part of most people's lives. Without drugs, I honestly wouldn't be alive today.
If you've just had surgery, you get painkillers. And not weak pain killers. Hardcore painkillers. This is a good drug, as it prevents suffering. However, taken in the absence of pain, you become an addict, and must be prosecuted.
Having a beer with your friends after work is a-ok, as long as you arent inebriated for driving or operating heavy machinery. However, you must be of proper age for this, as children aren't responsible enough to poison themselves.
But then you look at something like pot, and many issues come up. I know plenty of people who smoke marijuana on a regular basis. These people have excellent jobs(which don't drug test), and live productive lives. They're taxpaying Americans. They are the future middle-aged Americans, many of whom still smoke marijuana as it is.
But marijuana is a drug and these people are criminals, although this may be hard to accept.
If DARE focused on exposing children to the TRUTH behind drugs, instead of the propaganda campaign of fear, then maybe DARE would be more effective.
its just an example of an extremely high demand product, which happened to have an extremely low supply. but, as long as someone deems a product worth an extremely high price, they will be sold.
we've seen it a thousand times, but i cant remember such an extreme case. or a case focused at retired 25 year-olds who have retired after their ipo.
nintendo's new console gamecube is coming out in the not-too-distant future(fall 2001 for americans), probably before x-box for that matter. sure, its a year away, but upto this point, nintendo has come through with one thing that few others have: quality games! and games are what people own consoles for, not their ability to imitate computers.
check out cube.ign.com for more information, and video clips of what this thing can do... its pretty damn impressive in my opinion.
-agent oranje
Slashdot Mirror
it is.
"provigil" is the trade name for modafinil.
I just got my dual gigahertz beast... This is the first Apple I've ever owned, and I've never been happier. The only problem I'm currently having is that I feel as though I'm underutilizing it!
It's a beautiful thing to be able to have an OS that is supported both by the open source community, and commercial developers alike. And the developers tools Apple includes are a dream come true.
It seems as though Google has realized that the majority of people using their search engine are home users, who want to find good pages with information they want. By telling people that the DMCA has resulted in the removal of said pages, it's informing the average user of what laws such as the DMCA actually mean to them!
I think its a fairly bold statement on Google's part, saying that the end user is more important than the corperate jackasses.
Does anyone recall the time when services like Prodigy, and most certainly AOL, charged a per hour fee for their use? If I remember correctly, AOL's rates for dial-up were in the range of $10/first five hours, and $3 for each hour over that. Actual speed of your modem didn't really matter, but the time you were tying up their hardware was where the cost was.
Today, it seems AOL/Time Warner wish to return to this, in a certain sense. The bottleneck isn't hardware for dialing into, as it once was, but an utter lack of bandwidth and the ability to handle the traffic. Theoretically, they could use the extra charges to upgrade their networking and allow for more traffic, but I'm not especially trusting of AOL to do the noble thing for the cable modem subscribers.
I'd love to avoid the whole situation and just have a T1 to my home, please.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Look at iD Software. They've released the sourcecode for all of their games aside from the most recent, as that's their "money maker." With the release of the source, it allows the coding community the ability to tweak code and fix bugs, and extend the life of the software far beyond what the company could have provided. There's something comforting about trying out three different, unofficial Quake ports on MacOS X, and having them all work extremely well. And if I find a bug, I can hunt for it myself! Yeeeee!!!!
If Microsoft implemented a similar strategy, I might consider slapping together a new pc to fool around with older Microsoft code. I'd personally love to see the guts of Windows98, or even 3.1 for that matter.
For my entire life, I've been an advocate of PCs. Aside from my first machine, a commodore64(if you can call that a computer), I've owned PCs exclusively.
Last summer, I got a job doing various media creation, and had to use Macs exclusively. "Oh no, the horror! I hate the Macs!" is essentially what ran through my mind. They were strange, alien little beasts that I've heard the masses whine about over the years.
Within a week, I wanted to throw my PC out the window. MacOS 9 is just MacOS, but it's simple, straightforward, and easy to maintain. MacOS X, on the other hand, made me weep in its beauty. Sure, the initial release was pretty slow, but having a terminal(!!!!) pop up when I logged in was a wonderful thing. It's the simplicity of a Mac and the power of a GOOD OS.
I spent the rest of the summer saving my nickles and pennies for a G4. The release of the dual gigahertz beast was the straw that broke the bank.
Macs are more expensive, true. They're a bit more proprietary than PCs, true. But, the fact that I have an original, functional Macintosh(a recent gift from someone who didn't want to move it!) gives me plenty of faith that my new Mac will last.
Oh yeah, and Final Cut Pro beats any other video editing software with the biggest beating stick ever.
If this is classified as chemical warfare, then things like tear gas, mace, pepperspray, and although it may be stretching it, even smoke is an implement of chemical warfare. It prevents you from seeing! Oh no!
Personally, if I was being a rowdy protester, I'd rather slip and fall than get gassed.
A few days back, I purchased The Avalanches' new album, and put in my dvd-rom only to discover that this disc "was unformatted. Would I like to initialize it?" I was stunned. I felt dirty. I had purchased a copy protected CD. And I couldn't even rip the damn thing so as to add it to the massive mp3 collection!
So, I brought the CD over to a friend's room, asked him to try it in his machine, and it worked just fine. In both his drives. Go figure.
Of course, the worst-case scenario is that I had to use analog ripping, and pump the output from a CD player into the line-in on my soundcard. It'd take all of 5 minutes to wire up, and would have to be done in real-time... To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to protect against this kind of copying. And if push comes to shove, I'm sure that mp3s will appear on the net which have been ripped via this method.
-Agent Oranje
if i'm not mistaken, the pigeonhole principle states that "if you have n holes, and n+1 pigeons, one hole must have more than one pigeon." as it applies to data compression, if a sequence of bits appears multiple times, represent it as something smaller, and replace it with the original sequence when uncompressed.
your statement seems to state "given n unique objects, how many objects are there?" this is n, of course.
i have a great amount of respect for the man who created and/or modified these products. imitation is the greatest form of flattery, isn't it? and in the days of mass-production, and digital media, an imitation is unnecessary... we can just have a copy.
i think turning a speak and spell into an interesting noise instrument is rather interesting. but, i also enjoy noise as a genre of music.
and if you cant appriciate the electronic experimentation, they still look pretty cool... so, if the icon shouldn't be for music, then it should certainly go under art(is there one...?).
off-topic, but...
actually, the first biological attack recorded in history was using smallpox against american indians. blankets infested with smallpox were given to the indians as a sign of good faith by the united states. and then the indians got smallpox and died, clearing the way for the settlers.
evil, ain't it?
the tokamak design was a drastic improvement over linear fusion devices built early on, which allowed huge losses of energy through either end of the device. as the tokamak is a torus shape, the plasma can theoretically be 'confined' and energy isnt lost out of ends, as there aren't any!
however, the issue with a tokamak is its extremely difficult to produce a uniform magnetic field over a donut-like shape. and if the magnetic field is weak at any point, the plasma can escape confinement. energy is lost to the surroundings, instead of being pushed back into the fusion.
"spherical tokamak" is a contradiction of terms... if it is a tokamak, it is a torus. and if it is a torus, their reactor is subject to the same issues as JET, princeton's experiments, mit's experiments, etc. i am unaware of extensive research with spherical confinement of a plasma, but research at the us's national ignition facility focuses on bombardment by lasers on a tiny sphere of deuterium and tritium in hopes to start and sustain a fusion reaction by this means. the results have been less than spectacular thus far.
ask any physicist how the sun works, and they will tell you their theory. sure, the sun works through fusion, but to make equations balance to explain this, you have to take into account theoretical subatomic particles... things we can't detect(maybe because they arent there), and if they do exist, what role do they actually play?
getting fusion to work before we actually understand it is like fiddling with genetics before we fully understand that. sure, we have a basic understanding, but we certainly don't know it all.
oh yeah, final note... fusion is "clean" in that the containment vessel only becomes slightly radiated. radioactive isotopes still form in the reactions, but replacing the containment vessel after many years of use is very different from having to dispose of 55 gallon drums of radioactive waste constantly. certainly an improvement, but nothing will ever be perfect.
-agent "learned e&m from the head of mit's plasma fusion center" oranje
as i have some experience with mit's classes on the web, i can assure you that having classes available on the web doesn't necessarily mean youll be receiving the same education... much of the material presented at mit isn't exactly intuitive, and the work doesn't do you any good unless you actually do it, and do it well.
i learned scheme via an online course at mit, and although i learned it fairly well, i think that the human touch adds a bit to the learning process. someone to answer questions in realtime is a very important part of the learning process...
-agent oranje
e.coli bacteria genome (that is one nasty-arse bacteria)...
off-topicish, but id disagree. e.coli is used extensively for genetic research. inserting dna into e.coli's bacteria allows for much of the genetic research in vitro today. splicing vectors in and out allows you to research what genes in humans, and other animals, are responsible for production of certain proteins, etc.
being familiar with its genome would only serve to strengthen such research.
im rather impressed by this, solely for the reason that eventually, this will greatly help the world's food supply issues. to genetically engineer grains and rice to say, for example, be resistant to disease, or yield greater supplies, will change the world.
or glow-in-the-dark rice. that would rule.
I've always had an issue with Napster in that many of the times I download a file, the file is incomplete. There may be just a few seconds cut off the end of a song, or it might just be the first few seconds of the song. Either way, the song is incomplete and I end up deleting the file.
Would turing Napster into a pay-service change this aspect of Napster? Also, what about the quality of the MP3s themselves? I prefer encoding at 192kbps or variable 192-320kbps... but the average person thinks that 128kbps is just fine. I'm not willing to pay for any sort of service that doesn't provide me with the quality I want in my audio, and I don't think that turning Napster into a pay service will accomplish this.
-agent oranje
but every game you just listed is already available for pcs, among other platforms. the reason i still own a console is so i can have unique games for it... not something different to play pc games on.
I know many, many people who abandoned their lives for a day to hopefully get a PS2, and then spend an entire day playing it. The limited supply set a buzz in the air, as those who actually did get their hands on this console were the lucky few... and if you didn't, there was always eBay... assuming you wanted to pay a grand for your gaming console.
But with all of the buzz, and the chaos that followed, few people have realized that ITS ONLY A TOY. Sure, video games are fun, but it's not like Jesus is back and ready for revenge.
Of the people I know who managed to get a PS2, most of them wish they hadn't opened the box so they could have sold it on eBay... pretty much for the reason that they realized that it's only a gaming console, they can get another in the not-too-distant future, and in the meantime, they could have made a bundle off of some poor sap.
-agent oranje
I heard several months ago that Sega was to start producing software for other consoles, including Nintendo. I think this is a wise business move on their part. Sega and Nintendo both come to mind when I think of excellent game producers, but the fact that they also have to produce hardware to play the games on is a severe hinderance in my opinion.
I personally think Dreamcast is an excellent console, and Nintendo's Gamecube is the only console I plan to purchase from this round of consoles, but my purchasing decision is only based upon the game choices Nintendo will present me with. If Sega and Nintendo were to give console options for their games, instead of providing only for their own hardware, their software sales would skyrocket, but their hardware sales might plummet. It's kind of a catch-22.
If Sega and Nintendo want to join up, I say more power to them. It gives me more gaming options for the future.
-agent oranje
I think the entire approach to DARE is a bit skewed, as drugs are a normal part of most people's lives. Without drugs, I honestly wouldn't be alive today.
If you've just had surgery, you get painkillers. And not weak pain killers. Hardcore painkillers. This is a good drug, as it prevents suffering. However, taken in the absence of pain, you become an addict, and must be prosecuted.
Having a beer with your friends after work is a-ok, as long as you arent inebriated for driving or operating heavy machinery. However, you must be of proper age for this, as children aren't responsible enough to poison themselves.
But then you look at something like pot, and many issues come up. I know plenty of people who smoke marijuana on a regular basis. These people have excellent jobs(which don't drug test), and live productive lives. They're taxpaying Americans. They are the future middle-aged Americans, many of whom still smoke marijuana as it is.
But marijuana is a drug and these people are criminals, although this may be hard to accept.
If DARE focused on exposing children to the TRUTH behind drugs, instead of the propaganda campaign of fear, then maybe DARE would be more effective.
-agent oranje
its just an example of an extremely high demand product, which happened to have an extremely low supply. but, as long as someone deems a product worth an extremely high price, they will be sold.
we've seen it a thousand times, but i cant remember such an extreme case. or a case focused at retired 25 year-olds who have retired after their ipo.
-agent oranje
nintendo's new console gamecube is coming out in the not-too-distant future(fall 2001 for americans), probably before x-box for that matter. sure, its a year away, but upto this point, nintendo has come through with one thing that few others have: quality games! and games are what people own consoles for, not their ability to imitate computers. check out cube.ign.com for more information, and video clips of what this thing can do... its pretty damn impressive in my opinion. -agent oranje