Yeah, but "a patch demands it" is true like every other week.
I have a WinXP laptop that I mostly hibernate, and I've stayed with the same login session for upwards of a month or so, and it doesn't crash on me very much at all. I keep anywhere from 1-50+ firefox tabs loaded at any given moment, and even Firefox is stable enough for me that this is possible.
Back in the early part of the year, it started getting flakey on me all of a sudden, locking up completely, no BSOD even, just a frozen, unresponsive desktop, and I was eventually able to diagnose the problem (imminent hard drive failure) and got the drive replaced and cloned the old system to the replacement drive before it crashed completely.
Since then, it's been remarkably stable, with uptime (not counting hibernation) interrupted only by necessary reboots after installing some patch or the rare application update that still requires a reboot.
Still, I can't say that my uptime is *good* -- the need for reboots for critical security updates precludes this. But what I can say is that when I do reboot, it's something that I can predict and account for (even when it's forced upon me), not something that I have to do because the system just locked up and I have no other options.
Security's improving, I see. So is the hax0r minimum requisite competency at "clever 8 year old with script" now, up from "trained monkey" back in '04?
I don't remember a strategy guide for Space Invaders
There were books in the 80's that talked about how to get a high score in Space Invaders. I don't recall details so well, but I believe if you counted out your shots you could get extra-high bonuses for shooting the UFO command ship with your Xth shot. Knowing this, you could get a score much higher than a typical clueless shoot-and-dodge player.
when cats said all our base are belong to him, did you want to play zerowing?
Well, no, but it *did* remind me that I needed to move my Zig... well, maybe it wasn't Cats but more the Laziest Men On Mars. Regardless, my Zig got its move-on.
If Stock.PurchasePrice < Stock.GoingRate Then Stock.Sell(Shares); Else If Stock.PurchasePrice = Stock.GoingRate Then Stock.Hold Else If Stock.PurchasePrice > Stock.GoingRate Then If Stock.PurchasePrice <= Stock.PanicThrehshold Stock.Sell(All); Else Stock.Buy(More);
Actually, I've heard that it costs $10-20k (depending on the type of rocket used) per kg (not lb.) to lift a payload to LEO. It should therefore cost at least that much, probably somewhat more, to lift all the way to the moon, which is considerably farther away than LEO.
How much it would cost to *collect* and *return* a mined cargo is a completely different matter from how much it would cost to lift a vehicle up there to retrieve it, and these costs likely dwarf the lift costs of the vehicle outbound from Earth.
First, you have to extract the stuff somehow. That involves mining operations. If you're talking returning unrefined ore, you're going to be returning a LOT of waste material, which is not very efficient. If you're going to refine ore offworld, you're talking about a much larger scope for building a refining facility and finding some way to power it. You're going to need manned facilities, for maintenance crews and equipment operators, so you're also talking about life support, and other attendant costs.
Now, you need to return the refined stuff back to Earth (or somewhere else in the solar system where you want to use it). You're going to be lobbing a relatively massive object back at Earth at rather high velocity. Doing this safely and in a controlled manner will be a challenge. Payloads on the order of what would fit in a space shuttle bay will be far too small for any economy of scale. We'd be looking more realistically at something like landing a supertanker-sized cargo vessel or container. Something this massive impacting Earth in an accident at sufficiently high velocity could result in a Mass Extinction Event.
In short, I don't think that this sort of thing is ever likely to be feasible, unless propulsion systems are made as cheap and safe as they appear to be in science-fiction epics like Star Wars or Star Trek. Neither of those two examples use a means of propulsion that work using known technologies or in the context of trans-atmospheric flight. A space elevator would make things a good bit more feasible, but the space elevator concept itself has a lot of difficult problems that have yet to be addressed for solutions that are Earth-feasible.
Holy crap, Mr. Perens, I can't believe you just invited the internet to/. your cell phone, **while you're in Europe**. Wow, you're dedicated. Also quite possibly insane. Or will be once the ACs are through with your digits:)
This is art as yes-man. Art that modifies itself to agree with your displayed mood might seem pleasing, but what if you want to step outside of yourself? The greatest art that there is doesn't just regurgitate and reflect back at you what you feel, but it also takes you outside of your own perspective, changes your worldview, and might make you a new and better person. What about art that confronts us, challenges us, and forces us to consider new ideas?
Agreed, but Average Joe is not going to want to bother keeping up in the DRM arms race for casual pir^H^H^HFair Use purposes, and will happily pay a smart techie to do this for him, saving himself from (A) having to learn to do it himself and (B) being directly liable for breaking the DMCA.
The article doesn't really explain how we "know" what the moon's orbit was 100 million years ago. Also, we don't really know exactly how the moon formed. The theory that it was formed out of an immense object striking earth and tearing a chunk out of it is perhaps the currently prevailing theory, but it's not something that we know for absolutely certain.
Also, 100 million years ago wasn't really that long ago. The earth's age is estimated at about 4 billion years. I'd expect that the moon formed way earlier than this. Orbits don't just change by themselves, so we need an explanation for what would have changed the orbit.
In short, there's still a lot of unanswered questions.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of these problems can be fixed by firmware patches once the N standard is finally finalized?
Yeah, but "a patch demands it" is true like every other week.
I have a WinXP laptop that I mostly hibernate, and I've stayed with the same login session for upwards of a month or so, and it doesn't crash on me very much at all. I keep anywhere from 1-50+ firefox tabs loaded at any given moment, and even Firefox is stable enough for me that this is possible.
Back in the early part of the year, it started getting flakey on me all of a sudden, locking up completely, no BSOD even, just a frozen, unresponsive desktop, and I was eventually able to diagnose the problem (imminent hard drive failure) and got the drive replaced and cloned the old system to the replacement drive before it crashed completely.
Since then, it's been remarkably stable, with uptime (not counting hibernation) interrupted only by necessary reboots after installing some patch or the rare application update that still requires a reboot.
Still, I can't say that my uptime is *good* -- the need for reboots for critical security updates precludes this. But what I can say is that when I do reboot, it's something that I can predict and account for (even when it's forced upon me), not something that I have to do because the system just locked up and I have no other options.
Yeah, the ancients used it, so it must be safe.
Must be nanotech, too, since the particles are very small.
Hell, cutting people up with obsidian arrowheads and knives must aslo count, since the edge of an obsidian blade is only a few atoms thick.
Hint: Just because something's nano-scale, and is a technology, does not ipso facto make it a nanotechnology.
Mac Mini is essentially the same idea as the G4 Cube, only shrunk down even more, and cheaper. I think Apple learned their lesson too.
Delete the hard drive? It's a Commodore Freakin' 64... teh police will think that the hard drive VAPORIZED.
Security's improving, I see. So is the hax0r minimum requisite competency at "clever 8 year old with script" now, up from "trained monkey" back in '04?
I would have thought Uno would be more appropriate.
Build a 40,000 km cable out of nano-parts that haven't quite been invented yet, and then stand the entire thing straight up.
Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
I don't remember a strategy guide for Space Invaders
There were books in the 80's that talked about how to get a high score in Space Invaders. I don't recall details so well, but I believe if you counted out your shots you could get extra-high bonuses for shooting the UFO command ship with your Xth shot. Knowing this, you could get a score much higher than a typical clueless shoot-and-dodge player.
Did we slashdot them? That's probably not going to go over too well...
I even tried the country code for Iran, .ir, but still no go. Someone let me know when they're back online, OK?
ATI is clearly the leader in this race. Their top of the line card has THREE TIMES the number of X's in its name as the also-ran nVidia flagship card.
when cats said all our base are belong to him, did you want to play zerowing?
Well, no, but it *did* remind me that I needed to move my Zig... well, maybe it wasn't Cats but more the Laziest Men On Mars. Regardless, my Zig got its move-on.
If Stock.PurchasePrice < Stock.GoingRate Then
Stock.Sell(Shares);
Else
If Stock.PurchasePrice = Stock.GoingRate Then
Stock.Hold
Else
If Stock.PurchasePrice > Stock.GoingRate Then
If Stock.PurchasePrice <= Stock.PanicThrehshold
Stock.Sell(All);
Else
Stock.Buy(More);
//Can I retire now?
Actually, I've heard that it costs $10-20k (depending on the type of rocket used) per kg (not lb.) to lift a payload to LEO. It should therefore cost at least that much, probably somewhat more, to lift all the way to the moon, which is considerably farther away than LEO.
How much it would cost to *collect* and *return* a mined cargo is a completely different matter from how much it would cost to lift a vehicle up there to retrieve it, and these costs likely dwarf the lift costs of the vehicle outbound from Earth.
First, you have to extract the stuff somehow. That involves mining operations. If you're talking returning unrefined ore, you're going to be returning a LOT of waste material, which is not very efficient. If you're going to refine ore offworld, you're talking about a much larger scope for building a refining facility and finding some way to power it. You're going to need manned facilities, for maintenance crews and equipment operators, so you're also talking about life support, and other attendant costs.
Now, you need to return the refined stuff back to Earth (or somewhere else in the solar system where you want to use it). You're going to be lobbing a relatively massive object back at Earth at rather high velocity. Doing this safely and in a controlled manner will be a challenge. Payloads on the order of what would fit in a space shuttle bay will be far too small for any economy of scale. We'd be looking more realistically at something like landing a supertanker-sized cargo vessel or container. Something this massive impacting Earth in an accident at sufficiently high velocity could result in a Mass Extinction Event.
In short, I don't think that this sort of thing is ever likely to be feasible, unless propulsion systems are made as cheap and safe as they appear to be in science-fiction epics like Star Wars or Star Trek. Neither of those two examples use a means of propulsion that work using known technologies or in the context of trans-atmospheric flight. A space elevator would make things a good bit more feasible, but the space elevator concept itself has a lot of difficult problems that have yet to be addressed for solutions that are Earth-feasible.
"So what planet are you from?"
"I am from planet Moon."
"What?"
"@#)$*(@#($&*(, I told you LAST TIME What's on second!!!! Graaaah!"
So does this device have the rootkit built in, or do you still need to buy Sony Music separately?
I thought that it's not that the CPU is designed to run Java, but that Java is designed to run on many types of CPUs.
How about, you know, just not carrying a mouse every damn where you go?
Holy crap, Mr. Perens, I can't believe you just invited the internet to /. your cell phone, **while you're in Europe**. Wow, you're dedicated. Also quite possibly insane. Or will be once the ACs are through with your digits:)
Best of luck to you with everything.
...like a high school senior of ill repute.
Who in the hell comes up with this crap?
Developers Developers Developers Developers
Woooo!!
I love this company!
</sweat>
Chair.Throw()
This is art as yes-man. Art that modifies itself to agree with your displayed mood might seem pleasing, but what if you want to step outside of yourself? The greatest art that there is doesn't just regurgitate and reflect back at you what you feel, but it also takes you outside of your own perspective, changes your worldview, and might make you a new and better person. What about art that confronts us, challenges us, and forces us to consider new ideas?
True, but Joe Average doesn't know the difference, and doesn't realize that he should care.
Agreed, but Average Joe is not going to want to bother keeping up in the DRM arms race for casual pir^H^H^HFair Use purposes, and will happily pay a smart techie to do this for him, saving himself from (A) having to learn to do it himself and (B) being directly liable for breaking the DMCA.
The article doesn't really explain how we "know" what the moon's orbit was 100 million years ago. Also, we don't really know exactly how the moon formed. The theory that it was formed out of an immense object striking earth and tearing a chunk out of it is perhaps the currently prevailing theory, but it's not something that we know for absolutely certain.
Also, 100 million years ago wasn't really that long ago. The earth's age is estimated at about 4 billion years. I'd expect that the moon formed way earlier than this. Orbits don't just change by themselves, so we need an explanation for what would have changed the orbit.
In short, there's still a lot of unanswered questions.