If you ask me, every connection to a server should be given a number, and 30 minutes of time downloading from the server. If any files are downloaded, the next time that computer connects to that server, it returns the number. The files the computer is sharing are checked, and if 75% or more are present, the client is rewarded with 50 minutes of download time from said server. If 35% or more of the downloaded files are being shared, the client gets 35 minutes of time on the server. If 10% of the files are being shared, the client still gets 30 minutes of time. If none of the files are being shared, the server returns a 'No connections availiable' error.
To accomodate this system, downloads would have to be resumable, or course. They could be listed from searches along with a SHA-1 fingerprint, so you could resume from any of a number of servers with identical files.
The system would, of course, offer more than 50 minutes of download time for users who consistently make availiable more than 75% of what they download, that is if you download 30 minutes of files and keep 75% of them, then the next day you download 50 minutes of files and make all of them availiable also, you micht get 70 minutes of download time.
They could also use a 'Speed limit' system, i.e. people who don't make availiable many of teh files they download might be limited to 1.8kbps download bandwidth, but as you get a good reputation, you get more and more server time.
The good thing about this system is, since there would be no communication of information between servers, if you got a bad reputation on one, you could easily move on to another to get more minutes on the same day, thus spreading out usage more between servers.
You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.
I agree with you on that, but you have to ask yourself: Why would you want to one-click shop for computers?
As far as I know, the idea behind one-click shopping is you go to a site and order something. They keep your details - CC#, address, e-mail, telephone - in a big-assed database and give you a cookie. Next time you come to the site, they get the cookie back and say 'Hey, you must be John Andrews, CC# 1234 5678 9101 1121 exp. 01/01!'.
Now, this could be good if you were ordering, say, books, because you can get through a lot of books and the price is quite low.
Computers, however, are another matter. Most people only want a new computer every one or two years, if that often. I don't know about you, but I'd rather type out my credit card number once every two years than have if floating around in some online database that may or may not be secure.
Just my $0.02
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Good hackers are good. Bad hackers are bad.
on
2 Views of Hackers
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· Score: 1
Hey,
Here's my view on hackers (crackers):
There are two types of hackers (crackers), those that post to Bugtraq and those that read bugtraq.
The posters are good hackers/crackers. They find problems and announce them, making products better.
Readers are bad. They check thier Bugtraq letters and then they rush out and portscan a whole subnet to see if there's a system out there that hasn't applied the patch yet, and tries to crack it. These are 5cr1p7 k1dd1es, idiot lamers who think that putting number5 and letaz instead of the right characters and chatting in #hacking and DDoSing Kuro5hin are 1337, amazing ski11z. These acne-faced teenagers attaract the media's attention, making computer experts look like lusers. They should be shot, or at least violently beaten, if they try to break into a site.
Because it uses the innovative security precaution of making the output irrelevent to the input data, there is absolutely no risk of decryption, even if nobody intercepts the message in transit, and the recipient has the passphrase. Here is an example:
And what kind of moron expects everyone to take such a product seriously?
Whilst I'll admit that, had I written the product, I wouldn't use the smiley, People will take the product seriously because it whips teh ass of every other codec I've ever seen.
Take a look at 405: The Movie for an example of what you can do with this codec; 7.8MB for a supprisingly good (if rather short) movie. It scales up to my 1024x768 17-inch screen amazingly for such a small file.
If I wanted to compress a movie, this is the codec I would use.
I've had a look at the program. You have to to through several dialogues to send this e-mail. Sure, it does advertise Microsoft's service, but what do you expect? A lot of services do, this is no 'innovation'.
The way I see it, the problem is not Microsoft's actions but the ignorant, lazy, apathetic attitude of users. When I change my e-mail address (practically never), I write personal e-mails. If you can't be bothered with making the effort, the result isn't going to be as nice.
(Score: -2 (Disagreeing with collective slashdot view) )
this also lends plotline cues for remakes of such classic cinema as Goldeneye, Diehard II and Airplane.
Ah yes, but when I map all the planes in my locale onto my car's GPS system, it'll make 405 the movie and That Scene(TM) at the start of Terminal Verlocity even less believable. (Note: If you havn't seen 405 the movie yet, follow that link!)
AFAIK, the reason for the inaccuracy is the last few digits of GPS data used to be encrypted, for military use only. This was to stop people using the data from GPS satelites to guide in missiles etc. I heard a few months ago that they had decided to decrypt said last digits, giving accuracy to ~10m. Don't know what becanme of it...
You'll need a few things (if you wanna have something that's cool: A reasonably accurate GPS to give you a longitude/latitude.
Onve you start getting your GPS and your computer and your software and everything, the price would be getting pretty high... You could just get yourself a Garmin GPS III Plus with it's own built-in maps and screen, or something similar. It'll probably be cheaper and easier all round.
Oh Good. Another MP3 player is availiable. With a skinning system. Now I can make sure that my MP3 player definately doesn't colour-coordinate with any of my other apps, all of which are done in Gray. Hopefully I'll be able to make the entire program display shadows-only on top of a background photograph of my choice, allowing me to stare at a photo all the time my MP3 player is the top window on my screen, me not being busy doing anything else.
I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!
What makes carrots orange is a pigment called beta-carotene, and this is a precursor to Vitamin A. The scientific name for Vitamin A is retinol because it has a specific function in the retina of the eye. Simply stated, Vitamin A allows the rods and cones in the retina to adjust to light changes, produce visual excitation and send images to the visual centers of the brain.
Carrots are indeed an excellent source of Vitamin A via the beta-carotene precursors, but so are all darkly colored vegetables. Dark green vegetables have lots of beta-carotene but the green of the chlorophyll overwhelms the yellow and orange tones. Some sources of Vitamin A, in descending order, are liver, carrots, sweet potato, spinach, apricots, winter squash, cantaloupe, broccoli, crab, peaches.
Extremely high doses of Vitamin A are known to cause fetal damage. This was discovered through the marketing and use of the popular acne drug, Retin-A, which is a synthetic version of Vitamin A delivered in very high doses. Just eat some dark leafy green every day and you'll be fine.
The british SAS are rumoured to take vitamin A supplements for a week before running planned special operations, to enhance eyesight.
The other type of user, the "cutting edge power user" for lack of a better term, to them money is no object, buying a new computer every year is no object, buying new software every year is no object, and just plain being a victim of marketing hype is a way of life.
I find you have trouble affording a new computer every year, unless you have a well-paid job. You have to be clever to get high-paid jobs.
This is the kind of person who buys a fancy race car or a translucent computer without thinking about functionality and practicality.
I don't find this. I find they tend to be the sorts of people who'se home machines have 4 10,000Rpm 72GB SCSI hard disks, without thinking about how noisy they'll be.
This is the kind of person who will run out and buy Mac OS X for the same of running Mac OS X without knowing anything about it or knowing why they're buying it.
Personally, I'd like to see what Mac afficinados (sp?) are on about without spending money on a Mac that might suck. Lots of graphics people use macs; I want to know why.
And I have come to the conclusion that we really do not wish to market to this type of brainless individual.
Excuse me for being interested in your product. Looks like I'll have to get myself an entire mac then.
The Mithral Client Server Software Development Kit allows developers to quickly and easily write large scale client-server applications including "distributed computing" and peer-to-peer types. Examples of what this will allow you to build with this technology are distributed.net, SETI@Home, Napster, Gnutella, and hundreds of other applications. The example code is an instance of an application that hands out work for the clients to do, then collects the results.
So will there now be [Number of Projects] * [Number of SETI@home users] users availiable now to run these programs, or will there be [Number of users] / [Number of projects] users, thus giving each project a fraction or the number or distributed computing users?
Or all programmers going to have to build thier own cluster of computers to run thier programs on?
Oh, that reminds me: Imagine a beowulf cluster of these (Or a beowulf cluster of clusters of these)!
Perhaps the geeks of the world need to create some more news
Nah, ww don't want people murdering another member of the royal family just to generate news people care about. That's what normally happens when news gets slow...
I don't see what the problem here is. Microsoft has brought a company, needing (as they do) some real games-programming talent. They want the company that they have brought to run Microsoft software on thier internet gaming servers.
What's the problem here?
Sure, we hate NT, and all things Microsoft. I think it's fair to say most of us won't be buying X-Boxes. Worst-case scenario, the servers all topple under the load and a bunch of people will not be able to play online games for a short time, until the problem is fixed. Some adminastrators will have to do some quite hard work getting the servers back up.
The solution isn't to try to blow it up, because those pieces are all still moving in the same direction
The moon is being hit by asteroids quite a lot, hence the craters. There aren't many big craters on the earth. But there aren't. This is because the earth has an atmosphere, and friction with the atmosphere burns up smaller rocks.
If I had to come up with a plan to save the world, it would work in several main stages. First, I'd launch one third of all availiable tactical nuclear missiles, aiming them anywhere on the asteroid. I would set them to detonate at a on impact, target time 0200 hours. Shortly after detonation, I would launch all remaining tactical nuclear missiles into any chasms/craters/gulleys both preexisting and newly created on the asteroid, set to simeltaniously detonate at a certain time, let's say 0500 hours. Once they had all landed, I would fire our entire arsnel of Strategic nuclear missiles on a C-shaped trajectory, so they all strike one side of the asteroid. I would aim for half of the missiles to land on the asteroid before detonation and half to detonate in mid-air. Anyway, the strategic nuclear missiles all hit one side of the asteroid and all detonate at 0500 hours, at the same time as the embedded tactical nuclear missiles already scattered liberally over the asteroid. Hopefully, the massive explosion of all the strategic nuclear missiles would alter the course enough for it to bypass earth, and if not the tactical nuclear missiles would reduce it to many smaller objects which would have a much larger surface area to mass ratio, so any that come towards the earth would be burned up by the earth's atmospere.
AYMBATGIANAGABISAFMIGABAPAIRABOAO (As you may be able to guess, I am not a government advisor, but I've seen a few movies, I know bit about physics and I read a book on asteroids once).
([Speed in Mhz]/(([Highest speed in contention]+[lowest speed in contention])/2)) - ([Price]/(([Highest price in contention]+[lowest price in contention])/2)) + ([Power in Watts]/(([Highest wattage in contention]+[Lowest wattage in contention])/2)))
Basically, each property is reduced to an integer denoting it's performance relitave to the average of all the processors under consideration, then the numbers are added and subtracted, depending on wheather each number should be high or low. The processor with the highest number would be the best.
To find the best value for money, a far easier formula to use would be:
[Price]/[Speed]
That would give you the pounds-per megahertz value for each chip. Personally, I'd sooner judge it with:
[Price]/[Speed in FLOPs/s (Floating point operations per second)]
Because FLOPs/s is a better judge of speed that Mhz, in my experience.
If you ask me, the reason WAP hasn't really taken off is because the screen is too small to look at Pr0n on. I mean, it's like an inch wide, nowhere near big enough for proper 'browsing'...
Has anyone noticed how Men and Women are different? Women, for instance have breasts. Men don't. If you ask me, it's more than possible that there are differences in mental abilities too.
From what I've seen of life, Men tend to be better at visual and shape and space tasks, whilst women tend to be better at textual and linguistics tasks. There are some surveys that support this, but I don't have the attention span to search for them.
I don't know about you, but I have a very visual idea of my computer. This is how I remember my computer; I have a layout in my mind about where everything is. The directory tree is on the middle Left, with the shell layered on top of it, the boot loader and log-in are on the far left (Boot loader at the top, loading just beneath, log-in at the bottom). X is on the right, the 4 desktops arrayed like the buttons are. Using this map, I can quickly and easily remember commands and controls and layouts and architectures and everything.
Anyway, here's my point: If (As evidence suggests) Women are not as good at visualisation tasks as Men, this would make operating and understanding computers more difficult. It would also make other tasks - like teaching, for instance - easier and more attaractive.
The way I see it, if I'm a Universal customer, I must have lost money - We all know piracy raises prices to end customers! If anyone from Universal is listening, $10,000 should be enough. Send it off to me at:
1) Price. Looking Here, Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Windows® Learning Edition is $109.00. Thier cheapest, lowest-power version of this programming language is over A HUNDRED DOLLARS. That's out of reach for a lot of home users.
2) Functionality. I have Visual Studio Professional installed on my computer. I find Visual Basic is too annoyingly object based for my needs. For example, I want to write a program to send a signal to the COM port and then listen for a reply. In this program, I need a pause for the device on the com port to reply. Only, say, 50ms. It would have been dead easy to implement if I could just enter 'Wait 50' in my program. But no. I have to cann an ActiveX 'Timer' control, set it for 50ms (Timer1.Time = 50), make a call to start it (Timer1.Running = True) and then go to a totally different subroutime to tell it what to do when the timer had timed for 50ms. I could accept the difficulty in a low-level language like C, but it's not like VB is producing high-quality executables. They're messy, oversized and have to be distributed with a sh*tload of big-assed DLLs full of functions I don't want. I say 'screw this'. I'd rather learn C++.
3) Intelligence. Don't overestimate the inteligence of the general population. If you think everyone could learn to program, next time there is professional wrestling on TV, take a look at the crowd shots and ask yourself: Could these people program a computer? The answer is most likely no. Half the population has an IQ of less that 100.
4) Efficency. I want to word-process a letter. At most I want a page of size 10 text printed on one sheet of paper, maybe with some 3D-rendered text at the side. I do not know how to program assembly language to do this for me, but I do know how to do it in Word 97 (I am blindly refusing to upgrade to Office 2000). Sure, I'm not utilizing the whole power of the computer, but that's why I'm running Distributed.net - My tasks don't need to utilise the entire power of a 600Mhz processor and 84Gb of HDD storage. I'd be worried if they did, to be honest.
Anyway, here's my point: Different tools are good for different tasks. A range of modifiers such as speed, ease of use and price efect many software buying and using decisions. People need varying levels of complexity from thier computers, and programs should be able to adapt to that. Word 2000, for instance, should have a switch in the options to turn off the shortening menus. In a good program, as users' ability increases, it should be possible to raise the complexity of programs to suit, with scripting and customisation. If the user want's simple, that should be availiable too.
I'm getting the rights to Solitaire. Then I'll bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby the US government to place a 100% tax on playing cards, in case they are used to play Solitaire, which I have the rights to. I will also demand Microsoft pay my 100% of the profits they made from Windows 95 sales - card games are all it's good for.
I'm not going to talk about the ethical arguments and/or benefits of not publiching subversively, just give you my ideas:
1) Usenet - Post anonymously, using a chain of remailers. Some info Here.
2) E-mail - Sign up for an account that won't be logged or tracked, like Hushmail 3) Access - Floppy disk and public-access PC, like in a library.
4) More - You could try Crowds.
5) More - Take a look at The EFGA Anonymity page
I think RTBH services should be optional at all ISPs. There should be some sort of web-based interface where you can turn the block on or off, and a menu to deselect services you don't want blocked. You should also be able to block certain titles and content, i.e. "Degrees based on your current life experience" and things like that. That way, ISPs cold simply say they are providing the block as an option for users, and a highly precise, configurable one at that.
I'd like it if my ISP did that. But I wouldn't like my ISP erasing e-mails based on other peoples' opinions on what is spam.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ask me, every connection to a server should be given a number, and 30 minutes of time downloading from the server. If any files are downloaded, the next time that computer connects to that server, it returns the number. The files the computer is sharing are checked, and if 75% or more are present, the client is rewarded with 50 minutes of download time from said server. If 35% or more of the downloaded files are being shared, the client gets 35 minutes of time on the server. If 10% of the files are being shared, the client still gets 30 minutes of time. If none of the files are being shared, the server returns a 'No connections availiable' error.
To accomodate this system, downloads would have to be resumable, or course. They could be listed from searches along with a SHA-1 fingerprint, so you could resume from any of a number of servers with identical files.
The system would, of course, offer more than 50 minutes of download time for users who consistently make availiable more than 75% of what they download, that is if you download 30 minutes of files and keep 75% of them, then the next day you download 50 minutes of files and make all of them availiable also, you micht get 70 minutes of download time.
They could also use a 'Speed limit' system, i.e. people who don't make availiable many of teh files they download might be limited to 1.8kbps download bandwidth, but as you get a good reputation, you get more and more server time.
The good thing about this system is, since there would be no communication of information between servers, if you got a bad reputation on one, you could easily move on to another to get more minutes on the same day, thus spreading out usage more between servers.
It's just an idea. I don't grogram Gnutella.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.
I agree with you on that, but you have to ask yourself: Why would you want to one-click shop for computers?
As far as I know, the idea behind one-click shopping is you go to a site and order something. They keep your details - CC#, address, e-mail, telephone - in a big-assed database and give you a cookie. Next time you come to the site, they get the cookie back and say 'Hey, you must be John Andrews, CC# 1234 5678 9101 1121 exp. 01/01!'.
Now, this could be good if you were ordering, say, books, because you can get through a lot of books and the price is quite low.
Computers, however, are another matter. Most people only want a new computer every one or two years, if that often. I don't know about you, but I'd rather type out my credit card number once every two years than have if floating around in some online database that may or may not be secure.
Just my $0.02
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Here's my view on hackers (crackers):
There are two types of hackers (crackers), those that post to Bugtraq and those that read bugtraq.
The posters are good hackers/crackers. They find problems and announce them, making products better.
Readers are bad. They check thier Bugtraq letters and then they rush out and portscan a whole subnet to see if there's a system out there that hasn't applied the patch yet, and tries to crack it. These are 5cr1p7 k1dd1es, idiot lamers who think that putting number5 and letaz instead of the right characters and chatting in #hacking and DDoSing Kuro5hin are 1337, amazing ski11z. These acne-faced teenagers attaract the media's attention, making computer experts look like lusers. They should be shot, or at least violently beaten, if they try to break into a site.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
They forgot one encryption stansard: Slashdot trolls!
It is an exciting new algorithm that automatically selects a random number from 1 to 5 then maps a phrase to it from memory:
1 - Natalie Portman
2 - Hot grits
3 - Beowulf cluster
4 - Penis bird
5 - F1rst P057!
Because it uses the innovative security precaution of making the output irrelevent to the input data, there is absolutely no risk of decryption, even if nobody intercepts the message in transit, and the recipient has the passphrase. Here is an example:
INPUT: AES algorithm coming soon!
OUTPUT: F1rst P057!
INPUT: Alpha system with 256GB Ram!
OUTPUT: But how meny Penis birds does it support?
etc, etc...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
And what kind of moron expects everyone to take such a product seriously?
Whilst I'll admit that, had I written the product, I wouldn't use the smiley, People will take the product seriously because it whips teh ass of every other codec I've ever seen.
Take a look at 405: The Movie for an example of what you can do with this codec; 7.8MB for a supprisingly good (if rather short) movie. It scales up to my 1024x768 17-inch screen amazingly for such a small file.
If I wanted to compress a movie, this is the codec I would use.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I've had a look at the program. You have to to through several dialogues to send this e-mail. Sure, it does advertise Microsoft's service, but what do you expect? A lot of services do, this is no 'innovation'.
The way I see it, the problem is not Microsoft's actions but the ignorant, lazy, apathetic attitude of users. When I change my e-mail address (practically never), I write personal e-mails. If you can't be bothered with making the effort, the result isn't going to be as nice.
(Score: -2 (Disagreeing with collective slashdot view) )
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
this also lends plotline cues for remakes of such classic cinema as Goldeneye, Diehard II and Airplane.
Ah yes, but when I map all the planes in my locale onto my car's GPS system, it'll make 405 the movie and That Scene(TM) at the start of Terminal Verlocity even less believable. (Note: If you havn't seen 405 the movie yet, follow that link!)
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
You'll need a few things (if you wanna have something that's cool: A reasonably accurate GPS to give you a longitude/latitude.
Onve you start getting your GPS and your computer and your software and everything, the price would be getting pretty high... You could just get yourself a Garmin GPS III Plus with it's own built-in maps and screen, or something similar. It'll probably be cheaper and easier all round.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
the skinning system will make you "WET YOURSELF."
Oh Good. Another MP3 player is availiable. With a skinning system. Now I can make sure that my MP3 player definately doesn't colour-coordinate with any of my other apps, all of which are done in Gray. Hopefully I'll be able to make the entire program display shadows-only on top of a background photograph of my choice, allowing me to stare at a photo all the time my MP3 player is the top window on my screen, me not being busy doing anything else.
Hurrah!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!
What makes carrots orange is a pigment called beta-carotene, and this is a precursor to Vitamin A. The scientific name for Vitamin A is retinol because it has a specific function in the retina of the eye. Simply stated, Vitamin A allows the rods and cones in the retina to adjust to light changes, produce visual excitation and send images to the visual centers of the brain.
Carrots are indeed an excellent source of Vitamin A via the beta-carotene precursors, but so are all darkly colored vegetables. Dark green vegetables have lots of beta-carotene but the green of the chlorophyll overwhelms the yellow and orange tones. Some sources of Vitamin A, in descending order, are liver, carrots, sweet potato, spinach, apricots, winter squash, cantaloupe, broccoli, crab, peaches.
Extremely high doses of Vitamin A are known to cause fetal damage. This was discovered through the marketing and use of the popular acne drug, Retin-A, which is a synthetic version of Vitamin A delivered in very high doses. Just eat some dark leafy green every day and you'll be fine.
The british SAS are rumoured to take vitamin A supplements for a week before running planned special operations, to enhance eyesight.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
The other type of user, the "cutting edge power user" for lack of a better term, to them money is no object, buying a new computer every year is no object, buying new software every year is no object, and just plain being a victim of marketing hype is a way of life.
I find you have trouble affording a new computer every year, unless you have a well-paid job. You have to be clever to get high-paid jobs.
This is the kind of person who buys a fancy race car or a translucent computer without thinking about functionality and practicality.
I don't find this. I find they tend to be the sorts of people who'se home machines have 4 10,000Rpm 72GB SCSI hard disks, without thinking about how noisy they'll be.
This is the kind of person who will run out and buy Mac OS X for the same of running Mac OS X without knowing anything about it or knowing why they're buying it.
Personally, I'd like to see what Mac afficinados (sp?) are on about without spending money on a Mac that might suck. Lots of graphics people use macs; I want to know why.
And I have come to the conclusion that we really do not wish to market to this type of brainless individual.
Excuse me for being interested in your product. Looks like I'll have to get myself an entire mac then.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
The Mithral Client Server Software Development Kit allows developers to quickly and easily write large scale client-server applications including "distributed computing" and peer-to-peer types. Examples of what this will allow you to build with this technology are distributed.net, SETI@Home, Napster, Gnutella, and hundreds of other applications. The example code is an instance of an application that hands out work for the clients to do, then collects the results.
So will there now be [Number of Projects] * [Number of SETI@home users] users availiable now to run these programs, or will there be [Number of users] / [Number of projects] users, thus giving each project a fraction or the number or distributed computing users?
Or all programmers going to have to build thier own cluster of computers to run thier programs on?
Oh, that reminds me: Imagine a beowulf cluster of these (Or a beowulf cluster of clusters of these)!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Perhaps the geeks of the world need to create some more news
Nah, ww don't want people murdering another member of the royal family just to generate news people care about. That's what normally happens when news gets slow...
(That was a joke)
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I don't see what the problem here is. Microsoft has brought a company, needing (as they do) some real games-programming talent. They want the company that they have brought to run Microsoft software on thier internet gaming servers.
What's the problem here?
Sure, we hate NT, and all things Microsoft. I think it's fair to say most of us won't be buying X-Boxes. Worst-case scenario, the servers all topple under the load and a bunch of people will not be able to play online games for a short time, until the problem is fixed. Some adminastrators will have to do some quite hard work getting the servers back up.
Boo hoo. Boo bloody hoo.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
The solution isn't to try to blow it up, because those pieces are all still moving in the same direction
The moon is being hit by asteroids quite a lot, hence the craters. There aren't many big craters on the earth. But there aren't. This is because the earth has an atmosphere, and friction with the atmosphere burns up smaller rocks.
If I had to come up with a plan to save the world, it would work in several main stages. First, I'd launch one third of all availiable tactical nuclear missiles, aiming them anywhere on the asteroid. I would set them to detonate at a on impact, target time 0200 hours. Shortly after detonation, I would launch all remaining tactical nuclear missiles into any chasms/craters/gulleys both preexisting and newly created on the asteroid, set to simeltaniously detonate at a certain time, let's say 0500 hours. Once they had all landed, I would fire our entire arsnel of Strategic nuclear missiles on a C-shaped trajectory, so they all strike one side of the asteroid. I would aim for half of the missiles to land on the asteroid before detonation and half to detonate in mid-air. Anyway, the strategic nuclear missiles all hit one side of the asteroid and all detonate at 0500 hours, at the same time as the embedded tactical nuclear missiles already scattered liberally over the asteroid. Hopefully, the massive explosion of all the strategic nuclear missiles would alter the course enough for it to bypass earth, and if not the tactical nuclear missiles would reduce it to many smaller objects which would have a much larger surface area to mass ratio, so any that come towards the earth would be burned up by the earth's atmospere.
AYMBATGIANAGABISAFMIGABAPAIRABOAO (As you may be able to guess, I am not a government advisor, but I've seen a few movies, I know bit about physics and I read a book on asteroids once).
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
How about:
([Speed in Mhz]/(([Highest speed in contention]+[lowest speed in contention])/2)) - ([Price]/(([Highest price in contention]+[lowest price in contention])/2)) + ([Power in Watts]/(([Highest wattage in contention]+[Lowest wattage in contention])/2)))
Basically, each property is reduced to an integer denoting it's performance relitave to the average of all the processors under consideration, then the numbers are added and subtracted, depending on wheather each number should be high or low. The processor with the highest number would be the best.
To find the best value for money, a far easier formula to use would be:
[Price]/[Speed]
That would give you the pounds-per megahertz value for each chip. Personally, I'd sooner judge it with:
[Price]/[Speed in FLOPs/s (Floating point operations per second)]
Because FLOPs/s is a better judge of speed that Mhz, in my experience.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
If you ask me, the reason WAP hasn't really taken off is because the screen is too small to look at Pr0n on. I mean, it's like an inch wide, nowhere near big enough for proper 'browsing'...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
Has anyone noticed how Men and Women are different? Women, for instance have breasts. Men don't. If you ask me, it's more than possible that there are differences in mental abilities too.
From what I've seen of life, Men tend to be better at visual and shape and space tasks, whilst women tend to be better at textual and linguistics tasks. There are some surveys that support this, but I don't have the attention span to search for them.
I don't know about you, but I have a very visual idea of my computer. This is how I remember my computer; I have a layout in my mind about where everything is. The directory tree is on the middle Left, with the shell layered on top of it, the boot loader and log-in are on the far left (Boot loader at the top, loading just beneath, log-in at the bottom). X is on the right, the 4 desktops arrayed like the buttons are. Using this map, I can quickly and easily remember commands and controls and layouts and architectures and everything.
Anyway, here's my point: If (As evidence suggests) Women are not as good at visualisation tasks as Men, this would make operating and understanding computers more difficult. It would also make other tasks - like teaching, for instance - easier and more attaractive.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
The way I see it, if I'm a Universal customer, I must have lost money - We all know piracy raises prices to end customers! If anyone from Universal is listening, $10,000 should be enough. Send it off to me at:
Michael Tandy
South Wales
United Kingdom
Thanks,
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
At my college, "D is for Done"...
At MY college, D is for 'Drink' or 'Drunk', as are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and all other letters.
I'm going to get a beer. Ciao!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I don't see most users playing around with VB.
The way I see it, there are two reasons for this:
1) Price. Looking Here, Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Windows® Learning Edition is $109.00. Thier cheapest, lowest-power version of this programming language is over A HUNDRED DOLLARS. That's out of reach for a lot of home users.
2) Functionality. I have Visual Studio Professional installed on my computer. I find Visual Basic is too annoyingly object based for my needs. For example, I want to write a program to send a signal to the COM port and then listen for a reply. In this program, I need a pause for the device on the com port to reply. Only, say, 50ms. It would have been dead easy to implement if I could just enter 'Wait 50' in my program. But no. I have to cann an ActiveX 'Timer' control, set it for 50ms (Timer1.Time = 50), make a call to start it (Timer1.Running = True) and then go to a totally different subroutime to tell it what to do when the timer had timed for 50ms. I could accept the difficulty in a low-level language like C, but it's not like VB is producing high-quality executables. They're messy, oversized and have to be distributed with a sh*tload of big-assed DLLs full of functions I don't want. I say 'screw this'. I'd rather learn C++.
3) Intelligence. Don't overestimate the inteligence of the general population. If you think everyone could learn to program, next time there is professional wrestling on TV, take a look at the crowd shots and ask yourself: Could these people program a computer? The answer is most likely no. Half the population has an IQ of less that 100.
4) Efficency. I want to word-process a letter. At most I want a page of size 10 text printed on one sheet of paper, maybe with some 3D-rendered text at the side. I do not know how to program assembly language to do this for me, but I do know how to do it in Word 97 (I am blindly refusing to upgrade to Office 2000). Sure, I'm not utilizing the whole power of the computer, but that's why I'm running Distributed.net - My tasks don't need to utilise the entire power of a 600Mhz processor and 84Gb of HDD storage. I'd be worried if they did, to be honest.
Anyway, here's my point: Different tools are good for different tasks. A range of modifiers such as speed, ease of use and price efect many software buying and using decisions. People need varying levels of complexity from thier computers, and programs should be able to adapt to that. Word 2000, for instance, should have a switch in the options to turn off the shortening menus. In a good program, as users' ability increases, it should be possible to raise the complexity of programs to suit, with scripting and customisation. If the user want's simple, that should be availiable too.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I'm getting the rights to Solitaire. Then I'll bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby the US government to place a 100% tax on playing cards, in case they are used to play Solitaire, which I have the rights to. I will also demand Microsoft pay my 100% of the profits they made from Windows 95 sales - card games are all it's good for.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I'm not going to talk about the ethical arguments and/or benefits of not publiching subversively, just give you my ideas:
1) Usenet - Post anonymously, using a chain of remailers. Some info Here.
2) E-mail - Sign up for an account that won't be logged or tracked, like Hushmail
3) Access - Floppy disk and public-access PC, like in a library.
4) More - You could try Crowds.
5) More - Take a look at The EFGA Anonymity page
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
I think RTBH services should be optional at all ISPs. There should be some sort of web-based interface where you can turn the block on or off, and a menu to deselect services you don't want blocked. You should also be able to block certain titles and content, i.e. "Degrees based on your current life experience" and things like that. That way, ISPs cold simply say they are providing the block as an option for users, and a highly precise, configurable one at that.
I'd like it if my ISP did that. But I wouldn't like my ISP erasing e-mails based on other peoples' opinions on what is spam.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.