Here is a link to the IMDB info page on Mr. Scott. I think it is safe to say that he will be greatly missed. It's just too bad that in recent years he has mostly been in TV guest appearances.
To quote his character from Dr. Strangelove... "Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines." Well, now you don't need one.:-(
Intel R440LX, a pair of Pentium II/333s, two 128MB DIMMs, two Mylex AcceleRAID 250 cards. And two external HD towers with (total) four 5-drive RAID 5 arrays. I set up the arrays using the enclosed CD, then stuck my NT Server 4.0 CD in, and let it do it's job. I never had to specify a single setting different from the default. Never touched a jumper, never set an IRQ.
Yes, this motherboard (and pair of CPUs) are getting up in age, but it was cheaper than the (almost identical, just 100Mhz bus) N440BX.
Yes, but what if I bought a nice, shiny new G3, and decided that now I want the 300Mhz processor instead of the 233?
With my home PC (~2 years old) I just yanked out the processor, and stuck in a brand new Celeron 500Mhz. A processor more than two times as fast as the one I bought the PC with!
I don't dislike the Macintosh platform, I dislike Apple, the company.
What if your entire disk takes up 50MB of space, and your OS uses only 50MB of RAM? Why not set up a 50MB RAM Disk, and still have 28MB of RAM to spare? That way everything is always in RAM, and you never have to worry about it? Heck, throw in another old, cheap 32MB DIMM, and you'll go up to a spare 60MB of RAM!
I think I could fit a minimal linux-based Web server running in 50MB... That is, if all you want is a web server, and don't care about anything else. Which is what it sounds like is required.
"Obviously, you've been in the PC world too long."
Well, I've been using "PC"s (as in: compatible with the original IBM Personal Computer) for 15 years. I've been using Macintoshes for 10 years.
"You can still upgrade 'one piece at a time' with the Apple boxes..."
Yes, one piece at a time, but only selected pieces. I'd like to see you upgrade the processor. What if I want a better case? I will give apple credit, they have in recent years (minus the iMac) moved toward standardization a la AGP, etc, but they still have a way to go. Especially with the $#*! they pulled with the G3, making it non-upgradeable!
"...I did not have to mess with *ONE* friggin' IRQ number when I added the 2nd SCSI card..."
Neither did I. I took a motherboard out of the box, put it in my chassis, plugged in two RAID cards (in addition to the onboard SCSI,) plugged in my pair of CPUs, my industry-standard DIMMs (that I didn't pay double price for just because they were "Apple certified"...) etc. Didn't ever flip any jumpers, didn't mess with any IRQs, let my OS autodetect everything.
Maybe you've been in the Mac world too long... I didn't even have to copy a driver over.
I must say, most of the rhetoric in here is about "Well, it's not my fault that all blacks are poor..." I have to say, that your more level-headed and rational argument is the best one I have seen in this thread so far. I only wish I could express my views (which are remarkably similar) with such eloquence.
In short, you are the first comment I have seen that actually cuts through all racial stereotypes and pregidousness, to get to the real point of the situation. I wish more people would realize that "People of all colors are equal, it's not my fault that blacks are too lazy to work for what they want" is a worse, more destructive, and more racist, view than just disliking minorities. At least KKK members acknowledge that they are racists.
Except, as useful as the Demoronizer is, the question marks have nothing to do with any Microsoft product. Instead, they come from the king of incompatibility, a Macintosh.
Like I'm one to complain, of the ten computers I use on a regular basis, three are Macs, four are WinNTServ (work), one is W2KAdvServ (with the unix goodies,) one is W95a (my stable windows system,) and one is Debian 2.1. Plus the Palm V, and the Solaris I use once in a while.
So, all these people like The Blair Witch Project because of the hype, eh?
I beg to differ. When I saw it, I had heard nothing about the movie. The only thing I knew about it was that it was a horror movie, and that it was not real. I had heard that some people thought it was real. That was the extent of my knowledge of the background story.
I had never been to the website
I had never read a review
Noone had told me anything about it.
I think it is the best "scary" movie made in decades. (I use scary because it isn't really horror, it isn't really thriller, it just scares the bejesus out of you.)
In summary, hype isn't responsible for everything.
What was tied up in the bundle of sticks? A piece of Josh? Could we tell what bit? If it was a piece of Josh, did she tell Mike? I didn't think she did. If she did, why would they still be hoping to find him in the house?
It looked to me like (at least) an eye, and some other "bits". Maybe a finger. Very few pieces, anyway, no more than four, all smaller than a hand. Did she tell Mike? Hmmm, that was difficult to tell. I assumed that she didn't. Until the "confession". That made me think that Mike knew. (Of course, watching the confession, I thought that Mike had disappeared, and she was all alone, but that's another discussion.)
That was Mike standing in the corner? How did he get there so fast? And why was he just standing there? I didn't understand that bit about the legend. If somebody tells me to stand in a corner while he kills my friend, I would think I'd be trying to get away? Maybe it was Josh standing there (if it wasn't a piece of him that she found). But then where did Mike go? She was right behind him coming down the steps.
It looked like Mike to me. I haven't read anything about the movie, so I know none of the fake "folklore" surrounding it. But it looked to me like he ran down the stairs, dropped the camcorder, then froze in place; too stunned by what he saw to move. (What he saw, we may never know.) And Heather was a good (very tense) 30 seconds behind Mike. Normally movies don't scare me, but my blood was pumping good as she ran down the stairs....
What were all the stick figures in the trees? Did they have any connection to anything else we saw in the movie? I would gather that the piles of stones represented the dead -- 7 original disappeared, 7 piles. 3 of them, 3 piles. But all the stick figures were never really explained.
Well, to outdoorsmen, piles of 3 are signals from other hikers that there is danger ahead, but I don't know of any (common backpacker knowledge) reasons for the stick figures or other piles of stones. Oh well, just another unanswered question.
All in all, the best horror movie I have ever seen. (This from a huge Hitchcock fan!)
Well, plenty of video cards are capable of that resolutions (I'm running a Matrox G200 at 1920x1080 right now on a 21" monitor.) Unfortunately, I don't know of any that support the DTV signal (which is directly digital, and very high bandwidth.)
I saw a review of a (not yet released) video card that will have DTV out at HDTV resolutions, but I don't remember where. Try searching on/.
Yup. In the Creative Labs documents (I've only seen it on paper) it says that the S/PDIF output on the AWE series is only for MIDI, not for waveform data. I suppose you could hack something together that streams a wave to a SoundFont; and plays a MIDI that uses that soundfont, but I don't know how.
Does anyone know how to do this? (It would also allow a Sound Blaster Live to hardware accelerate 2048 voice streams, instead of the current limit of 32.)
Uh... I'm a contract worker. I make $45,000 before taxes. I get time and a half for all hours over 8 in one day, or over 40 in one week...
Either my employer (Intel) is very nice to contract workers (direct employees are salaried; no OT even if they never leave the office for a week,) or there is a law somewhere that helps me out.
I guess it's an Oregon law. Oregon does have lots of very worker-friendly laws (such as a $7.00/hr minimum wage,) so it wouldn't surprise me.
According to all the info I've seen, the new Matrox G400 series has two VGA out ports, but it can output the secondary one to a TV, so it must come with some kind of adapter. You may want to either:
Send Matrox an email and ask them how they did it. Or...
Buy one, see how the box works, then return the card. (Unless you like the card.)
Either way, I'm planning on getting a G400 in a week or so; I'll see how it works and post the results in here. (Assuming I can find one in the next week.)
Well, I was an early Wired reader. My first issue I bought was 1.5, a friend had 1.2, which was the first one I read. Those were the good days. Back when the 'net was new to most people, the Web was in it's infancy, and technology was just for "geeks". Over the years, Wired stayed current with the trends, and manged to let us know what was happening before it happened. Those are the times that Jon was referring to. Back when Wired was the source of information for the information industry underground. Before Slashdot, before the web, even.
The writing was excellent, if idealistic. The content was varied and informative, always letting you know little snippits of things to be. Those were the good times.
In recent years, however, Wired has succumbed to the death-spiral of commercialism. The last good issue that I bought was the one with HAL on the cover. While it had been declining for a few issues, that one was, to me, the crowning moment. Soon after that, Wired fell off my radar.
Actually, there is one movie that has recieved an NC-17 for language. Martin Lawrence's You So Crazy (1994) got it. It's just him doing a stand up routine.
It slows down because on the IDE interface, once a command is sent out, NOTHING else can happen until that command is acted upon. That means that by having two drives, when a command is sent to one drive, the other one can't do anything until the original drive responds to it's request. Admitedly, it's very slight, as it's only milliseconds, but that is your answer. That is why SCSI is better (at least as far as multiple drives are concerned,) because SCSI can bunch up the commands, so all of the drives can take care of their responses whenever they get them, and send them back whenever they feel like it, without slowing down the rest of the system.
And you're helping whichever OS you use... Of course, you're an "Anonymous Coward", so you are probably just one of the 'nets great trolls... Jeez, if you REALLY want a troll, how 'bout this one?
linux sucks, Linus sucks, ESR sucks, Windows rules forever!!!! Hmmm, I wonder if I can set the record for lowest score on/.? This should EASILY get moderated down to a -2 or -3.
[rant on] But seriously, the Linux community is in danger of falling in to the same trap that is fighting against the Macintosh. Fans of the system are becoming so rabid in their fanaticism that they take offense at any slight against it, even if it's true. Take the [ominous music here] infamous Mindcraft survey; other, independent sources (Ziff Davis, maybe not the greatest of sources, but still independent) have confirmed that under the testing conditions supplied, Linux really is slower than Windows NT Server. But, do most Linux users sit down and say "Hmmm, well, that's a surprise. Now how do we go about fixing Linux so it is faster?" No, the vast majority of the posts on Slashdot were ones to the effect of "Mindcraft is evil, they must be burned at the stake for heresy!"
Remember, in your religious pursuit, don't go so far as to refuse to accept facts, just because they go against your beliefs. Personally, I think that the worst at this is none other than good 'ol Eric S. Raymond. Yup. He is the Rev. Falwell of the Open Source movement. Fine, fine, he did plenty of good things, but he should stick to coding, as he does not make a good spokesperson.
[rant off] Remember, we should not only be open source, but open minded.
Well, jeez... I REALLY, REALLY want one of these to replace my aging P-II 333. I wonder if my boss would buy me one? [Tongue heavily in cheek, as I work for Intel.] On a [slightly] more serious note: What does this say for Intel that the K7... er... Athlon, is supposedly (can't wait for real world benchmarks) faster than an equal megahertz Pentium 3, that it's available in higher megahertz, and it's cheaper (at higher megahertz) than the Pentium 3? Hmmm... Maybe I should change employers to AMD?
Of course, Microsoft DOES own a part of Apple, so it would at least be wise for them to make SOME effort in keeping it alive. (Especially since it's the only reason MS hasn't been dismantled by the FTC.)
Well, the only one I know of (that's not a professional card) is the SB Live, full edition. With it's digital I/O card and the extra optical digital card, you can input digital, process the signal digitally, and output digital. It can even mix digital audio, internal digital CD, digital MIDI, one analog source, digital SP/DIF, and optical digital all at the same time. I use my computer as a piece of my stereo system, with the internal digital CD, two digital in's (MiniDisc and an external digital out CD player,) and MP3; all being processed for better sound (if you're running [god forbid] Windows, try using the "Concert Hall" environment for classical music.)
And, of course, it's 48Khz digital SP/DIF out is great for recording to MD or DAT. (Or going to a high-end reciever)
Yup. The media is too powerful, and the use of "hacker" to mean "someone who does bad things with computers" is far too well entrenched in the main stream media. Unless the cracker community (yes, there really is one) decides to call themselves something else, the media will continue to refer to them as hackers.
Personally, I say we (the real hackers) try to convince the cracker community to accept a term that sounds better than cracker. I personally think "Cyber-jacker" sounds both "kewl" and trendy enough for the media to pick it up when referring to security breaches. Unfortunately, most crackers refer to themselves as hackers. Especially in the media.
Whenever Emmanuel Goldstein (founder of 2600 magazine) does an interview, he calls both the cracker community, and himself, hackers. There was an article on CNN (sorry, I'm not going to dig up the URL) that was a dual interview with EG and IBM's head of security. Both of them should know better than to refer to crackers, script kiddies, etc, as hackers, but throughout the interview, that was the only term either used. IBM's head of security even said that all hackers engage in illegal activity and should be arrested and prosecuted. (Don't have the precise quote, but it was to that effect.)
That shows that even someone who is a hacker (in the true sense) has been "corrupted" by the media.
"Are there any cases where a robot has accomplished bi-pedal motion?"
Yes, there are at least two:
Honda made a pair of bipedal robots, the P2 and P3, that ar capable of walking, including up and down stairs, and pushing a cart around. The Robot page is in Japanese, so I can't tell too much more about it. (Sorry, my Japanese is REALLY bad.) Watching it walk is kind of eerie, it looks just like a human walking, just slightly hunched over. They both can walk 2 km/h (about 1.25 mph.)
The P2 is 1820mm tall (5'11.6") and weighs 210 kg (463 lbs), and the P3 is 1600mm tall (5'3") and weighs 130 kg (286.5 lbs.)
The P2 has a large, boxy head and a huge, boxy "backpack", whereas the P3 has a round head and a much smaller "backpack".
There is a page with a bunch of video clips (2 RealVideo, 5 embedded QuickTimes.) Warning, it's a BIG page for modem users. (Hooray for ADSL!)
Also see this page for information on it from a researcher at Cal Tech.
Oops... After writing all that, I noticed an English version of the robot info page... Sorry, I'm too lazy to go back and edit all those URLS.
Actually, almost all spacecraft launched by the US since 1980 have used solar panels for power.
That's why the mission to Saturn raised such a stink. It was the first nuclear-powered mission since 1979. Pretty much any missions that are staying inside the orbit of Jupiter will be solar powered.
See this link and look toward the bottom for "...surface mounted solar cells..."
Or this one for more info on the vehicle. Or, finally, the FAQ, which says:
What powers Prospector?
Lunar Prospector is run by rechargeable, solar-powered nickel-hydrogen batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a link to the IMDB info page on Mr. Scott. I think it is safe to say that he will be greatly missed. It's just too bad that in recent years he has mostly been in TV guest appearances.
To quote his character from Dr. Strangelove... "Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines." Well, now you don't need one. :-(
Intel R440LX, a pair of Pentium II/333s, two 128MB DIMMs, two Mylex AcceleRAID 250 cards. And two external HD towers with (total) four 5-drive RAID 5 arrays. I set up the arrays using the enclosed CD, then stuck my NT Server 4.0 CD in, and let it do it's job. I never had to specify a single setting different from the default. Never touched a jumper, never set an IRQ.
Yes, this motherboard (and pair of CPUs) are getting up in age, but it was cheaper than the (almost identical, just 100Mhz bus) N440BX.
Yes, but what if I bought a nice, shiny new G3, and decided that now I want the 300Mhz processor instead of the 233?
With my home PC (~2 years old) I just yanked out the processor, and stuck in a brand new Celeron 500Mhz. A processor more than two times as fast as the one I bought the PC with!
I don't dislike the Macintosh platform, I dislike Apple, the company.
What if your entire disk takes up 50MB of space, and your OS uses only 50MB of RAM? Why not set up a 50MB RAM Disk, and still have 28MB of RAM to spare? That way everything is always in RAM, and you never have to worry about it? Heck, throw in another old, cheap 32MB DIMM, and you'll go up to a spare 60MB of RAM!
I think I could fit a minimal linux-based Web server running in 50MB... That is, if all you want is a web server, and don't care about anything else. Which is what it sounds like is required.
"Obviously, you've been in the PC world too long."
Well, I've been using "PC"s (as in: compatible with the original IBM Personal Computer) for 15 years. I've been using Macintoshes for 10 years.
"You can still upgrade 'one piece at a time' with the Apple boxes..."
Yes, one piece at a time, but only selected pieces. I'd like to see you upgrade the processor. What if I want a better case? I will give apple credit, they have in recent years (minus the iMac) moved toward standardization a la AGP, etc, but they still have a way to go. Especially with the $#*! they pulled with the G3, making it non-upgradeable!
"...I did not have to mess with *ONE* friggin' IRQ number when I added the 2nd SCSI card..."
Neither did I. I took a motherboard out of the box, put it in my chassis, plugged in two RAID cards (in addition to the onboard SCSI,) plugged in my pair of CPUs, my industry-standard DIMMs (that I didn't pay double price for just because they were "Apple certified"...) etc. Didn't ever flip any jumpers, didn't mess with any IRQs, let my OS autodetect everything.
Maybe you've been in the Mac world too long... I didn't even have to copy a driver over.
Damn it, damn it all to hell...
I should have logged in BEFORE I posted my comment. "...if only I had a moderator point..."
I freakin' did, I just hadn't logged in yet!!! Anyone know how to revoke a comment so I can moderate in a discussion that I have already commented in?
Oh, if only I had a moderator point...
I must say, most of the rhetoric in here is about "Well, it's not my fault that all blacks are poor..." I have to say, that your more level-headed and rational argument is the best one I have seen in this thread so far. I only wish I could express my views (which are remarkably similar) with such eloquence.
In short, you are the first comment I have seen that actually cuts through all racial stereotypes and pregidousness, to get to the real point of the situation. I wish more people would realize that "People of all colors are equal, it's not my fault that blacks are too lazy to work for what they want" is a worse, more destructive, and more racist, view than just disliking minorities. At least KKK members acknowledge that they are racists.
Except, as useful as the Demoronizer is, the question marks have nothing to do with any Microsoft product. Instead, they come from the king of incompatibility, a Macintosh.
Like I'm one to complain, of the ten computers I use on a regular basis, three are Macs, four are WinNTServ (work), one is W2KAdvServ (with the unix goodies,) one is W95a (my stable windows system,) and one is Debian 2.1. Plus the Palm V, and the Solaris I use once in a while.
So, all these people like The Blair Witch Project because of the hype, eh?
I beg to differ. When I saw it, I had heard nothing about the movie. The only thing I knew about it was that it was a horror movie, and that it was not real. I had heard that some people thought it was real. That was the extent of my knowledge of the background story.
I had never been to the website
I had never read a review
Noone had told me anything about it.
I think it is the best "scary" movie made in decades. (I use scary because it isn't really horror, it isn't really thriller, it just scares the bejesus out of you.)
In summary, hype isn't responsible for everything.
It looked to me like (at least) an eye, and some other "bits". Maybe a finger. Very few pieces, anyway, no more than four, all smaller than a hand. Did she tell Mike? Hmmm, that was difficult to tell. I assumed that she didn't. Until the "confession". That made me think that Mike knew. (Of course, watching the confession, I thought that Mike had disappeared, and she was all alone, but that's another discussion.)
It looked like Mike to me. I haven't read anything about the movie, so I know none of the fake "folklore" surrounding it. But it looked to me like he ran down the stairs, dropped the camcorder, then froze in place; too stunned by what he saw to move. (What he saw, we may never know.) And Heather was a good (very tense) 30 seconds behind Mike. Normally movies don't scare me, but my blood was pumping good as she ran down the stairs....
Well, to outdoorsmen, piles of 3 are signals from other hikers that there is danger ahead, but I don't know of any (common backpacker knowledge) reasons for the stick figures or other piles of stones. Oh well, just another unanswered question.
All in all, the best horror movie I have ever seen. (This from a huge Hitchcock fan!)
Surprise, surprise, surprise... The QuickTime link has been slashdotted... (At least, the video has, not the page itself.)
Well, plenty of video cards are capable of that resolutions (I'm running a Matrox G200 at 1920x1080 right now on a 21" monitor.) Unfortunately, I don't know of any that support the DTV signal (which is directly digital, and very high bandwidth.)
I saw a review of a (not yet released) video card that will have DTV out at HDTV resolutions, but I don't remember where. Try searching on /.
Yup. In the Creative Labs documents (I've only seen it on paper) it says that the S/PDIF output on the AWE series is only for MIDI, not for waveform data. I suppose you could hack something together that streams a wave to a SoundFont; and plays a MIDI that uses that soundfont, but I don't know how.
Does anyone know how to do this? (It would also allow a Sound Blaster Live to hardware accelerate 2048 voice streams, instead of the current limit of 32.)
Uh... I'm a contract worker. I make $45,000 before taxes. I get time and a half for all hours over 8 in one day, or over 40 in one week...
Either my employer (Intel) is very nice to contract workers (direct employees are salaried; no OT even if they never leave the office for a week,) or there is a law somewhere that helps me out.
I guess it's an Oregon law. Oregon does have lots of very worker-friendly laws (such as a $7.00/hr minimum wage,) so it wouldn't surprise me.
According to all the info I've seen, the new Matrox G400 series has two VGA out ports, but it can output the secondary one to a TV, so it must come with some kind of adapter. You may want to either:
Either way, I'm planning on getting a G400 in a week or so; I'll see how it works and post the results in here. (Assuming I can find one in the next week.)
Well, I was an early Wired reader. My first issue I bought was 1.5, a friend had 1.2, which was the first one I read. Those were the good days. Back when the 'net was new to most people, the Web was in it's infancy, and technology was just for "geeks". Over the years, Wired stayed current with the trends, and manged to let us know what was happening before it happened. Those are the times that Jon was referring to. Back when Wired was the source of information for the information industry underground. Before Slashdot, before the web, even.
The writing was excellent, if idealistic. The content was varied and informative, always letting you know little snippits of things to be. Those were the good times.
In recent years, however, Wired has succumbed to the death-spiral of commercialism. The last good issue that I bought was the one with HAL on the cover. While it had been declining for a few issues, that one was, to me, the crowning moment. Soon after that, Wired fell off my radar.
I have every issue before the HAL issue.
I only have four from after it.
Actually, there is one movie that has recieved an NC-17 for language. Martin Lawrence's You So Crazy (1994) got it. It's just him doing a stand up routine.
That is why SCSI is better (at least as far as multiple drives are concerned,) because SCSI can bunch up the commands, so all of the drives can take care of their responses whenever they get them, and send them back whenever they feel like it, without slowing down the rest of the system.
Check out Thresh's FiringSquad's IDE vs. SCSI review for the complete info. (It goes very in depth.
And you're helping whichever OS you use... Of course, you're an "Anonymous Coward", so you are probably just one of the 'nets great trolls... Jeez, if you REALLY want a troll, how 'bout this one?
linux sucks, Linus sucks, ESR sucks, Windows rules forever!!!!
Hmmm, I wonder if I can set the record for lowest score on
[rant on] But seriously, the Linux community is in danger of falling in to the same trap that is fighting against the Macintosh. Fans of the system are becoming so rabid in their fanaticism that they take offense at any slight against it, even if it's true. Take the [ominous music here] infamous Mindcraft survey; other, independent sources (Ziff Davis, maybe not the greatest of sources, but still independent) have confirmed that under the testing conditions supplied, Linux really is slower than Windows NT Server. But, do most Linux users sit down and say "Hmmm, well, that's a surprise. Now how do we go about fixing Linux so it is faster?" No, the vast majority of the posts on Slashdot were ones to the effect of "Mindcraft is evil, they must be burned at the stake for heresy!"
Remember, in your religious pursuit, don't go so far as to refuse to accept facts, just because they go against your beliefs. Personally, I think that the worst at this is none other than good 'ol Eric S. Raymond. Yup. He is the Rev. Falwell of the Open Source movement. Fine, fine, he did plenty of good things, but he should stick to coding, as he does not make a good spokesperson.
[rant off] Remember, we should not only be open source, but open minded.
Well, jeez... I REALLY, REALLY want one of these to replace my aging P-II 333. I wonder if my boss would buy me one? [Tongue heavily in cheek, as I work for Intel.]
On a [slightly] more serious note: What does this say for Intel that the K7... er... Athlon, is supposedly (can't wait for real world benchmarks) faster than an equal megahertz Pentium 3, that it's available in higher megahertz, and it's cheaper (at higher megahertz) than the Pentium 3? Hmmm... Maybe I should change employers to AMD?
Of course, Microsoft DOES own a part of Apple, so it would at least be wise for them to make SOME effort in keeping it alive. (Especially since it's the only reason MS hasn't been dismantled by the FTC.)
Well, the only one I know of (that's not a professional card) is the SB Live, full edition. With it's digital I/O card and the extra optical digital card, you can input digital, process the signal digitally, and output digital. It can even mix digital audio, internal digital CD, digital MIDI, one analog source, digital SP/DIF, and optical digital all at the same time. I use my computer as a piece of my stereo system, with the internal digital CD, two digital in's (MiniDisc and an external digital out CD player,) and MP3; all being processed for better sound (if you're running [god forbid] Windows, try using the "Concert Hall" environment for classical music.)
And, of course, it's 48Khz digital SP/DIF out is great for recording to MD or DAT. (Or going to a high-end reciever)
Yup. The media is too powerful, and the use of "hacker" to mean "someone who does bad things with computers" is far too well entrenched in the main stream media. Unless the cracker community (yes, there really is one) decides to call themselves something else, the media will continue to refer to them as hackers.
Personally, I say we (the real hackers) try to convince the cracker community to accept a term that sounds better than cracker. I personally think "Cyber-jacker" sounds both "kewl" and trendy enough for the media to pick it up when referring to security breaches. Unfortunately, most crackers refer to themselves as hackers. Especially in the media.
Whenever Emmanuel Goldstein (founder of 2600 magazine) does an interview, he calls both the cracker community, and himself, hackers. There was an article on CNN (sorry, I'm not going to dig up the URL) that was a dual interview with EG and IBM's head of security. Both of them should know better than to refer to crackers, script kiddies, etc, as hackers, but throughout the interview, that was the only term either used. IBM's head of security even said that all hackers engage in illegal activity and should be arrested and prosecuted. (Don't have the precise quote, but it was to that effect.)
That shows that even someone who is a hacker (in the true sense) has been "corrupted" by the media.
Yes, there are at least two:
Honda made a pair of bipedal robots, the P2 and P3, that ar capable of walking, including up and down stairs, and pushing a cart around. The Robot page is in Japanese, so I can't tell too much more about it. (Sorry, my Japanese is REALLY bad.) Watching it walk is kind of eerie, it looks just like a human walking, just slightly hunched over. They both can walk 2 km/h (about 1.25 mph.)
The P2 is 1820mm tall (5'11.6") and weighs 210 kg (463 lbs), and the P3 is 1600mm tall (5'3") and weighs 130 kg (286.5 lbs.)
The P2 has a large, boxy head and a huge, boxy "backpack", whereas the P3 has a round head and a much smaller "backpack".
There is a page with a bunch of video clips (2 RealVideo, 5 embedded QuickTimes.) Warning, it's a BIG page for modem users. (Hooray for ADSL!)
Also see this page for information on it from a researcher at Cal Tech.
Oops... After writing all that, I noticed an English version of the robot info page... Sorry, I'm too lazy to go back and edit all those URLS.
That's why the mission to Saturn raised such a stink. It was the first nuclear-powered mission since 1979. Pretty much any missions that are staying inside the orbit of Jupiter will be solar powered.
See this link and look toward the bottom for "...surface mounted solar cells..."
Or this one for more info on the vehicle. Or, finally, the FAQ, which says: