Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts.
Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.
So they are fingertip sized, paper thin, and a cubic centimeter? I'm having trouble forming a mental image of this...
But that argument really doesn't stand the test of time. There are plenty of people that own land and property that they have never set foot on. Nothing strange about that.
You're right, they bought it from someone else who did set foot on it. Nobody owns any land on earth that they didn't either a) get there and claim themselves or b) buy from someone who did (or who got it from someone else who did, etc). If you have an example to the contrary, I'd like to hear it.
It might work to impress a dumbass, but that's about it. That piece of paper and other crap that you got is ALL that you got. A worthless piece of paper that doesn't actually give you ownership of anything. It's not recognized as legit by anyone other than the company that sold it. How could they sell you space on the moon if they don't own it themselves? Did they buy it from someone else? Did the fly up there and mark off their territory?
Ignoring it doesn't make it legit or mean they will recognize anyone's claim to own it. The purpose of the treaty is just to stop countries from claiming it, not to set up all rules for ownership.
Bill Gates can't buy the moon, who would he buy it from? Likewise, someone can't lay claim to the moon if they can't go there and mark their territory.
FYI, there is NO official star registry that any individual can claim ownership or even have a star named after them, that is recognized by any government or space agency. All of those "name a star" scams give you is a meaningless piece of paper.
light side of the moon nearly always having unimpeded sunlight
If I don't comment on this, someone else will...
There is no light (or dark) side of the moon. The moon has days and nights just like earth. The Moon always has the same side facing us, but not the sun (hense the phases of the moon, as different parts are illuminated).
It makes perfect sense, because they don't claim that any one mp3 player is perfect. Those are 5 DIFFERENT reasons not to get one, and different alternatives for each reason if that reason is important to you. For example, if battery life is more important, player X is better, if compatible formats are important, player Z is better, etc.
The whole point of the article is that while ipod is the best overall, there are specific cases where it doesn't fit.
An extra 43 minutes is a couple showings per day per theater lost. Since theaters don't charge based on the length of a movie, that is ALOT of lost revenue. That's why they release the 3 hour version in the theater, then have an extended "the way it should have been in the first place" version on dvd, where there is no time constraint.
Everyone bitching about what a waste of time this is, but really, does it look like they spent alot of time on this? It looks like something they threw together in a few minutes, most likely while working on another project in the wind tunnel. People need to lighten up.
Banking to turn actually makes sense, as it will keep the g forces you experience from the turn in the right relative direction. 1G pushing you into your seat is easier to handle than 1G to the side.
Excellent troll, you manage to sound almost convincing while spouting nothing but lies. In fact in most of your points if you swap perl and php they will be much closer to reality.
You're missing the point, it's not about web standards at all, and that's the huge hole in verisign's arguement. The internet is ALOT more than just the web, the web is just an app that runs on the internet. They are implementing sitefinder at a much lower level than the web, and as a result messing with every other app besides the web that uses DNS. The ONLY place something like sitefinder should be implemented is in the browser, as a plugin or a feature or whatever. IE already has this feature built in and enabled by default, and has for a long time, do you hear anyone complain about that? No, because that was done properly and isn't breaking the rest of the internet.
The universe doesn't have a center in the normal 3 dimensions we know of. If it is indeed a finite, closed universe, then the 'center' is off in a direction we can't even travel in. The 2d analogy would be the surface of a balloon that was being inflated. Two points on the surface, that aren't moving relative to the surface, would be spreading farther apart as the space between them expands. The farther apart they are, the faster they separate (this is observed in every distant object we look at, by the redshift caused in the light by expansion). Now, any 2 points on the surface will be moving apart from each other, but there is no center of that surface that they are all moving away from. If we could observe more than 3 dimensions, we might be able to see the center (equiv of looking down into the balloon), but we can't, we are confined to the surface. Maybe it's 14 billion light years to the center, in that direction that we can't see? If the universe is the 3d surface of a 4d balloon, the distance you would have to travel to get all the way around and back to where you started would be 2*pi*r=70billion, that works out to 11 billion light years from the "center" if the universe expands at light speed in that direction.
I'm not saying the system will never go off unnecessarily, but really it will be rare and when it happens you probably won't even notice. How often do you use your laptop while experiencing 1G? I'd guess, for most people, never. Airplanes don't hit 1G in normal manuvering, not even on takeoff and landing. Think about it, if they hit 1G on landing you'd have most of your body weight pressing on the seatbelt, you'd remember something like that. Likewise in any other direction, your full body weight pressing in any direction other than into the seat isn't very comfortable.
The time to park the head is tiny, as is the time to start it back up. Even if the system leaves it parked for a full second before restarting it, what are the odds that you'll even notice it? After all, you just experienced a 1G acceleration yourself, and even if your disk happened to be active at the precise moment, you're going to be distracted for a second anyway. =)
1G is no small amount of acceleration. That's 0-60 in under 3 seconds, no car or train is going to do that unless it's in an accident. A laptop will never reach 1G in normal operation, and if it does the time to park or unpark is only a few ms, you'd probably not even notice. Also, in freefall 0.1 seconds is only enough time to drop 5cm, which means this should provide extra protection for any drop more than 5cm. Less than that the drive is likely to not be damaged at all anyway. I don't see any downside to this, it's just extra protection.
They don't mention the acceleration that is needed to set off this system, but if it's intended to prevent damage from drops it's probably near 1G. Your car doesn't accelerate 1G unless you hit something. 1G is 0-60mph in under 3 seconds.
Assuming a complete release and freefall,.1 seconds is enough time to drop only 5cm. So assuming they use 1G as the acceleration limit to set it off, there's little chance of it still being in the process of parking the head when it hits the ground, unless you only drop it 5cm, in which case it the impact won't likely be enough to do damage anyway. Also, that 0.1 seconds isn't the time it takes the head to park itself, it's the total reaction time. The heads move very fast, and the actual time it takes to park is going to be closer to 5ms. So the odds of the impact with the ground happening exactly during those 5ms are fairly low. All in all, the odds of this system actually causing more damage than would be done without it are very very low.
You're assuming that it will be coming in on a straight path from far out in the solar system, like a comet. Many NEO's are in orbits that will cross the orbit of earth regularly, and if we find one coming for us there's a decent chance it will be one of these, and it can be intercepted several orbits before it hits. Just look at the news reports that come out whenever there's a tiny chance of one hitting (which is usually quickly ruled out). They are always many years away.
Your point is valid though for asteroids and comets with highly eliptical orbits, that may appear to come out of nowhere since there may be many years between orbits. Those are the ones that will be the biggest problem, since we'll have the least warning
Slashdot Mirror
Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts.
Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.
So they are fingertip sized, paper thin, and a cubic centimeter? I'm having trouble forming a mental image of this...
They disproved that large sheets of ice exist right below the surface, they didn't disprove that any ice exists.
But that argument really doesn't stand the test of time. There are plenty of people that own land and property that they have never set foot on. Nothing strange about that.
You're right, they bought it from someone else who did set foot on it. Nobody owns any land on earth that they didn't either a) get there and claim themselves or b) buy from someone who did (or who got it from someone else who did, etc). If you have an example to the contrary, I'd like to hear it.
It might work to impress a dumbass, but that's about it. That piece of paper and other crap that you got is ALL that you got. A worthless piece of paper that doesn't actually give you ownership of anything. It's not recognized as legit by anyone other than the company that sold it. How could they sell you space on the moon if they don't own it themselves? Did they buy it from someone else? Did the fly up there and mark off their territory?
Ignoring it doesn't make it legit or mean they will recognize anyone's claim to own it. The purpose of the treaty is just to stop countries from claiming it, not to set up all rules for ownership.
Bill Gates can't buy the moon, who would he buy it from? Likewise, someone can't lay claim to the moon if they can't go there and mark their territory.
FYI, there is NO official star registry that any individual can claim ownership or even have a star named after them, that is recognized by any government or space agency. All of those "name a star" scams give you is a meaningless piece of paper.
light side of the moon nearly always having unimpeded sunlight
If I don't comment on this, someone else will... There is no light (or dark) side of the moon. The moon has days and nights just like earth. The Moon always has the same side facing us, but not the sun (hense the phases of the moon, as different parts are illuminated).
Sure, as long as you're not behind a firewall/nat, or on a private network not connected to the internet, etc.
It makes perfect sense, because they don't claim that any one mp3 player is perfect. Those are 5 DIFFERENT reasons not to get one, and different alternatives for each reason if that reason is important to you. For example, if battery life is more important, player X is better, if compatible formats are important, player Z is better, etc.
The whole point of the article is that while ipod is the best overall, there are specific cases where it doesn't fit.
An extra 43 minutes is a couple showings per day per theater lost. Since theaters don't charge based on the length of a movie, that is ALOT of lost revenue. That's why they release the 3 hour version in the theater, then have an extended "the way it should have been in the first place" version on dvd, where there is no time constraint.
Everyone bitching about what a waste of time this is, but really, does it look like they spent alot of time on this? It looks like something they threw together in a few minutes, most likely while working on another project in the wind tunnel. People need to lighten up.
Banking to turn actually makes sense, as it will keep the g forces you experience from the turn in the right relative direction. 1G pushing you into your seat is easier to handle than 1G to the side.
I wonder if we could get Great White to play this club?
Excellent troll, you manage to sound almost convincing while spouting nothing but lies. In fact in most of your points if you swap perl and php they will be much closer to reality.
You're missing the point, it's not about web standards at all, and that's the huge hole in verisign's arguement. The internet is ALOT more than just the web, the web is just an app that runs on the internet. They are implementing sitefinder at a much lower level than the web, and as a result messing with every other app besides the web that uses DNS. The ONLY place something like sitefinder should be implemented is in the browser, as a plugin or a feature or whatever. IE already has this feature built in and enabled by default, and has for a long time, do you hear anyone complain about that? No, because that was done properly and isn't breaking the rest of the internet.
If anything, the more cases there are the longer it will take to get into court.
The universe doesn't have a center in the normal 3 dimensions we know of. If it is indeed a finite, closed universe, then the 'center' is off in a direction we can't even travel in. The 2d analogy would be the surface of a balloon that was being inflated. Two points on the surface, that aren't moving relative to the surface, would be spreading farther apart as the space between them expands. The farther apart they are, the faster they separate (this is observed in every distant object we look at, by the redshift caused in the light by expansion). Now, any 2 points on the surface will be moving apart from each other, but there is no center of that surface that they are all moving away from. If we could observe more than 3 dimensions, we might be able to see the center (equiv of looking down into the balloon), but we can't, we are confined to the surface. Maybe it's 14 billion light years to the center, in that direction that we can't see? If the universe is the 3d surface of a 4d balloon, the distance you would have to travel to get all the way around and back to where you started would be 2*pi*r=70billion, that works out to 11 billion light years from the "center" if the universe expands at light speed in that direction.
s/USA/China/ and ask yourself the same question.
Mine's lower :P
I'm not saying the system will never go off unnecessarily, but really it will be rare and when it happens you probably won't even notice. How often do you use your laptop while experiencing 1G? I'd guess, for most people, never. Airplanes don't hit 1G in normal manuvering, not even on takeoff and landing. Think about it, if they hit 1G on landing you'd have most of your body weight pressing on the seatbelt, you'd remember something like that. Likewise in any other direction, your full body weight pressing in any direction other than into the seat isn't very comfortable.
The time to park the head is tiny, as is the time to start it back up. Even if the system leaves it parked for a full second before restarting it, what are the odds that you'll even notice it? After all, you just experienced a 1G acceleration yourself, and even if your disk happened to be active at the precise moment, you're going to be distracted for a second anyway. =)
1G is no small amount of acceleration. That's 0-60 in under 3 seconds, no car or train is going to do that unless it's in an accident. A laptop will never reach 1G in normal operation, and if it does the time to park or unpark is only a few ms, you'd probably not even notice. Also, in freefall 0.1 seconds is only enough time to drop 5cm, which means this should provide extra protection for any drop more than 5cm. Less than that the drive is likely to not be damaged at all anyway. I don't see any downside to this, it's just extra protection.
They don't mention the acceleration that is needed to set off this system, but if it's intended to prevent damage from drops it's probably near 1G. Your car doesn't accelerate 1G unless you hit something. 1G is 0-60mph in under 3 seconds.
Assuming a complete release and freefall, .1 seconds is enough time to drop only 5cm. So assuming they use 1G as the acceleration limit to set it off, there's little chance of it still being in the process of parking the head when it hits the ground, unless you only drop it 5cm, in which case it the impact won't likely be enough to do damage anyway. Also, that 0.1 seconds isn't the time it takes the head to park itself, it's the total reaction time. The heads move very fast, and the actual time it takes to park is going to be closer to 5ms. So the odds of the impact with the ground happening exactly during those 5ms are fairly low. All in all, the odds of this system actually causing more damage than would be done without it are very very low.
I damn near wet myself laughing when I read that their so-called unbreakable copy protection relied on autorun to work.
You're assuming that it will be coming in on a straight path from far out in the solar system, like a comet. Many NEO's are in orbits that will cross the orbit of earth regularly, and if we find one coming for us there's a decent chance it will be one of these, and it can be intercepted several orbits before it hits. Just look at the news reports that come out whenever there's a tiny chance of one hitting (which is usually quickly ruled out). They are always many years away.
Your point is valid though for asteroids and comets with highly eliptical orbits, that may appear to come out of nowhere since there may be many years between orbits. Those are the ones that will be the biggest problem, since we'll have the least warning