Re:Airport Security... Is that enough?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
An excellent point.
However, it would be much more difficult for terrorists to hijack a FedEx or UPS plane than a passenger flight for one simple reason. The only people allowed onboard those planes are the flight crew. When was the last time you heard of terrorists getting onto the plane by posing as part of the crew? You haven't, because it's too difficult and too prone to slipups/mishaps/blown covers.
Plus, said terrorists would have to be well trained enough to actually prep the plane for takeoff and then actually takeoff. While takeoff is not as tricky as landing, it's still a difficult manuver. It's much easier to smuggle some kind of weapon onto a passenger flight and takeover once the plane is in the air. IMO, anyone who has spent a few hours in front of MS Flight Sim has enough familiarity with the instrument panel of a 7x7 to pilot it into the side of a building. Sad, but likely true.
PVR's are Personal Video Recorders. a la TiVO and other such devices that record video onto an internal hard drive. The video equivalent to mp3 players.
What you fail to note is the benefit a publisher is to the consumer.
*gasp*
What? The publishers aren't all big bad evil people, dedicated to screwing over authors/songwriters etc. Mind you, I'm no fan of the RIAA, but the book publishing world is a totally different animal.
What benefit, you ask? It's simple, really. Remeber Sturgeon's Law? (90% of Everything is crap.) Now, wouldn't it be nice if someone rooted through the 90% that is crap in the book world and found the 10% that is good and made it available to you and me directly (for a small extra fee, of course)? Hmmm, isn't that what publishers do now?
I guess my point is this: There will always be a place for publishers/copyhouses/etc. just because John Q. Consumer doesn't want to wade through all the crap to get to the Creamy Nougat Center(TM).
I don't think this is strictly a zero-sum game, and it's a little esoteric for children, but the point to Go is less about capturing territory than it is about exploring you and your opponent's philosophies and strategies.
That depends less on who is listening than on *WHAT* is being encoded. Most top 40, pop/rock/rap/etc. type songs will sound no different at 128 compared to 192. Anything with subtle musicalities in it (classical, jazz, most instrumental, theatrical and those types) definitely sounds better at 192. 256 is even better. Granted, I have a musically trained ear so I may be abnormally sensitive, but even non-musically apt friends of mine have commented on the difference when listening to a clip from Beethoven or Holsinger. Metallica also sounds noticably better at 192. It makes sense, the more subtle and complex a piece of music is, the more data it takes to properly reproduce it.
This is news, because at the ISP I do tech. support for, 95% of the users use MS based OS's and MS based browsers. Most of them have no idea how to change their home page, which means that if they've updated their browser any time in the last 2 years their home page is now msn.com or some variant thereof. Thus, when said user turned on his or her system this morning and tried to visit marthastewart.com or whatever, the first he or she was greeted with was a nice "DNS error" page.
Now, most of my users don't know a DNS from a CYA or a TLA,all they know is "their Internet isn't working". So they call me, screaming and yelling about how our service sucks and we're always down (total yearly downtime for our system is less than 12 hours, even with the power problems in CA right now), yada yada yada....
All this to say, YES! THIS IS NEWS! This affects me directly a whole lot more than a lot of other stories posted here, therefore it is quite important to me.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you here. Proper marketing is *critical* to a successful product, especially in the gaming market.
Note that I said "proper". not "more", not "agressive".
For example, that giant we all love to hate, Microsoft, released a ground-breaking and altogether impressive game this past year titled "Allegiance". Technically sound and relatively bug-free, it offered what could have been as revolutionary as Quake and Command&Conquer combined (in fact, that's what the game is described as). However, if you log on to Allegiance servers today, you'll find maybe 100 people playing at peak times. Why? A lot of reasons, but one of the major ones was a total lack of marketing on the part of MS. No one who wasn't in the beta had even heard of this game and as a result, it never sold well and didn't receive much attention from developers after the release.
You have a point, of course. You could theoretically make all the layers somewhat transparent and each layer would reflect light which had only certain characteristics. (don't ask me how to do that)
Funny you should mention that. There was a story a few months back about an optical data storage technology that used florescent (sp?) methods instead of reflective (like current CD/DVD/etc.) ones. IIRC, they use 2 laser beams that intersect at a certain point within the media and it either floresces or it doesn't. or something like that...
At approx. 7 miles from the UK coast, Sealand *was* in international waters when it was settled in 1967.
Upon becoming a recognized nation in 1968, its claim on its own territorial waters.
GB *extended* its borders in 1987, from 3 nautical miles to 12 mautical miles. This places Sealand within GB's borders, but it continues to be recognized as an indepentdent state, with its own territorial waters.
Ever heard of Sealand? It's a defunct Anti-air base formerly of Britain's that's actually in International Waters.
Apparently, some guy moved in a few years back, declared it a separate country and proceded to set up secure data stoarage as the country's biggest (and only) industry.
Can I get a link to back me up on this? I don't have one handy
In my county (Stanislaus, CA) we voted using the punch card method. At each polling place were several machines that you slip the ballot into, line up the mechanical hole punch with the appropriate candidate or answer and press the handle to clearly mark your vote. The mechanical hole puch ratchets into each place so there is no way to mark in between candidates or anything. Then you take your ballot (all two pieces of paper of it) put them back in the incuded sleeve and hand it to the attendant who tears off the top 2 inches (leaving the rest in the sleeve) gives you the tags and drops the sleeve with the ballot inside into the ballot box. It is your responsibility as the voter to make sure that your ballot is properly marked (no chad, as they called it on the news last night). If you make a mistake, you tear up the ballot and get another. Simple, elegant and clear. More technology is not the answer to everything...
56K might not, but 33.6 will, as long as you don't try to comm with more than 3 or 4 people. For some reason, the extra stability v.42 offers over v.90 allows enough bandwidth to do small-scale voice chats without a significant hit in network performance. I know I used to run Roger Wilco with 3 or 4 others over my old 33.6 USR modem while playing Tribes and I never noticed a performance hit.
I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for any kind of voice communication package. It's really a great deal, too. For ~$50US you get a very nice headphone/mic combo (retail US$19.95 or more), a great voice recognition program for games (retail ~$35US), and a great peer-to-peer voice chat program based on the popular Battlefield Commander program (free). Oh, and there's a handy little switch on the side of the control puck to let you switch between speakers and headphones without having to reach around behind your case! (truthfully, that was the deciding issue for me. The rest of it was nice but that switch sold me on it)
The only downsides to the GV are the lack of a Push-to-Talk button (you have to hit the mute switch on the control puck) and the lack of a stand-alone server. Oh, and since it's USB, it's also Windows-only.
I know I'm sounding like a M$ advocate/drone here, but these two products really are solid investments for serious gamers. I could see the SC replacing my throttle for many flight games (not true flight sims, but the more arcade-like ones). These are two must-have items on the serious gamer's wish list.
It not only has the programmable buttons (like the CLAW), but it has a limited range of twist motion to allow your left hand to control things like map view or movement. That's one thing the CLAW didn't have.
I don't have one, but a friend of mine does. He claims it's very nice for RTS gaming (TA, Starcraft, Myth, etc.), and it's even better for 3D space-flight sims (Independence War, Descent). It looks like it might make for a nice alternative to a throttle for the left hand.
IDSL uses totally different signaling equipment as well as requiring that a specialized phone line be provisioned, that's why it's more expensive. It's really offered as a less expensive alternative to ISDN, as opposed to an extended-reach xDSL option.
My rebuttal follows:
Nobody has ever knocked on my door and offered to teach me about "Not believing in God".
No, they just inject it directly into school curriculums...
I've never heard an athiest tell someone they deserved to rot in torture for eternity because they believed in god.
True, but belief in a Creator does not equate to sending non-believers to a hell-equivalent.
Athiests don't seem to have to band together once a week to re-affirm their lack of faith.
I think you mean "re-affirm their faith" since nobody wants to re-affirm their lack of faith....
Athieism never told you how to have sex, what to wear, what to eat, what movies to watch, what books to read, how to act, how much to drink, how much to beat your kids, how to think about other people, how many ox your dead servant is worth...
You say that like it's a bad thing....:) Actually, Atheism often tries to tell me what movies to see, what to wear, what books to read, how to raise my children, what to think about others, etc. It simply uses a different standard than the one I choose.
Finally, zeal is merely a synonyn for passion, likewise zealous and passionate can often be used interchagably. Zeal sometimes has a religious connotation, but not always. My point is that *anybody* can be zealous about acheiving their goals, not just God-beleivers. One more thought, how is your Atheism any less a faith-based belief than my "Theism"? (I think that's the word) Do you have any proof the the universe came about by random chance? As I see it, we both look at the same set of data and draw two separate, but equally valid conclusions.
Do we have a first, here? A Slashdot discussion about religion that's actually civil? I hope so, and I hope you take my statements in that same spirit I took yours.
Could the towers in to the magnetosphere that you referred to be combined into the tether described in the "Space Elevator" concepts? At the least, the tether cable would help provide power for the elevator car as it travels. Also, a previous story mentioned a satellite that used the energy in the magnetosphere to provide propulsion, perhaps the inverse could be applied with the "Space Elevator"....
Nice sig, but isn't being called bastard and stepchild kinda like double jeopardy? I mean, really, one is bad enough without bringing the other into play. And I won't even comment on the evils of redheads in America....ok I will. After all, redheads are resposible for every major societal ill. All social problems can be traced back to redheads...and lefties...damn those lefties!!
Averye0 -- is left-handed, redheaded, and a stepchild, but not a bastard (at least, not technically)
Does this mean I can now major in Underwater Kernel Hacking? Sign me up for the class in Underwater Perl Weaving! Averye0
Re:Electrons and wave functions
on
Electron Fission
·
· Score: 1
Ummm......no....I think.
One of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics is that given any instant point in time you can know either the position of a particle of particle OR its energy. Measuring the one alters the other. What the wave function of a particle does is attempt to predict both. Splitting the wave function does not actually split the particle, this is merely a 3-dimensional model of the interference pattern described in other comments. In other words, instead of knowing that the particle is somewhere in space A, and not elsewhere; you know that the particle is either in space A, or space B, and not elsewhere.
IADJNATP (I Am a Doctor, Jim, Not a Theoretical Physicist) Averye0
Slashdot Mirror
An excellent point.
However, it would be much more difficult for terrorists to hijack a FedEx or UPS plane than a passenger flight for one simple reason. The only people allowed onboard those planes are the flight crew. When was the last time you heard of terrorists getting onto the plane by posing as part of the crew? You haven't, because it's too difficult and too prone to slipups/mishaps/blown covers.
Plus, said terrorists would have to be well trained enough to actually prep the plane for takeoff and then actually takeoff. While takeoff is not as tricky as landing, it's still a difficult manuver. It's much easier to smuggle some kind of weapon onto a passenger flight and takeover once the plane is in the air. IMO, anyone who has spent a few hours in front of MS Flight Sim has enough familiarity with the instrument panel of a 7x7 to pilot it into the side of a building. Sad, but likely true.
Averye0 out.
PVR's are Personal Video Recorders. a la TiVO and other such devices that record video onto an internal hard drive. The video equivalent to mp3 players.
What you fail to note is the benefit a publisher is to the consumer.
*gasp*
What? The publishers aren't all big bad evil people, dedicated to screwing over authors/songwriters etc. Mind you, I'm no fan of the RIAA, but the book publishing world is a totally different animal.
What benefit, you ask? It's simple, really. Remeber Sturgeon's Law? (90% of Everything is crap.) Now, wouldn't it be nice if someone rooted through the 90% that is crap in the book world and found the 10% that is good and made it available to you and me directly (for a small extra fee, of course)? Hmmm, isn't that what publishers do now?
I guess my point is this: There will always be a place for publishers/copyhouses/etc. just because John Q. Consumer doesn't want to wade through all the crap to get to the Creamy Nougat Center(TM).
My $0.02
Averye0
The story states that the "police" (campus or otherwise) legally obtained a warrant before searching the dorm room.
Averye0
I don't think this is strictly a zero-sum game, and it's a little esoteric for children, but the point to Go is less about capturing territory than it is about exploring you and your opponent's philosophies and strategies.
my $0.02
Averye0
That depends less on who is listening than on *WHAT* is being encoded. Most top 40, pop/rock/rap/etc. type songs will sound no different at 128 compared to 192. Anything with subtle musicalities in it (classical, jazz, most instrumental, theatrical and those types) definitely sounds better at 192. 256 is even better. Granted, I have a musically trained ear so I may be abnormally sensitive, but even non-musically apt friends of mine have commented on the difference when listening to a clip from Beethoven or Holsinger. Metallica also sounds noticably better at 192. It makes sense, the more subtle and complex a piece of music is, the more data it takes to properly reproduce it.
My $0.02
Averye
This is news, because at the ISP I do tech. support for, 95% of the users use MS based OS's and MS based browsers. Most of them have no idea how to change their home page, which means that if they've updated their browser any time in the last 2 years their home page is now msn.com or some variant thereof. Thus, when said user turned on his or her system this morning and tried to visit marthastewart.com or whatever, the first he or she was greeted with was a nice "DNS error" page.
Now, most of my users don't know a DNS from a CYA or a TLA,all they know is "their Internet isn't working". So they call me, screaming and yelling about how our service sucks and we're always down (total yearly downtime for our system is less than 12 hours, even with the power problems in CA right now), yada yada yada....
All this to say, YES! THIS IS NEWS! This affects me directly a whole lot more than a lot of other stories posted here, therefore it is quite important to me.
my $0.02
Averye0
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you here. Proper marketing is *critical* to a successful product, especially in the gaming market.
Note that I said "proper". not "more", not "agressive".
For example, that giant we all love to hate, Microsoft, released a ground-breaking and altogether impressive game this past year titled "Allegiance". Technically sound and relatively bug-free, it offered what could have been as revolutionary as Quake and Command&Conquer combined (in fact, that's what the game is described as). However, if you log on to Allegiance servers today, you'll find maybe 100 people playing at peak times. Why? A lot of reasons, but one of the major ones was a total lack of marketing on the part of MS. No one who wasn't in the beta had even heard of this game and as a result, it never sold well and didn't receive much attention from developers after the release.
my $0.02
Averye0
Funny you should mention that. There was a story a few months back about an optical data storage technology that used florescent (sp?) methods instead of reflective (like current CD/DVD/etc.) ones. IIRC, they use 2 laser beams that intersect at a certain point within the media and it either floresces or it doesn't. or something like that...
See here for more info.
Averye0
Upon becoming a recognized nation in 1968, its claim on its own territorial waters.
GB *extended* its borders in 1987, from 3 nautical miles to 12 mautical miles. This places Sealand within GB's borders, but it continues to be recognized as an indepentdent state, with its own territorial waters.
Averye0
Ever heard of Sealand? It's a defunct Anti-air base formerly of Britain's that's actually in International Waters.
Apparently, some guy moved in a few years back, declared it a separate country and proceded to set up secure data stoarage as the country's biggest (and only) industry.
Can I get a link to back me up on this? I don't have one handy
Averye0
"Friendly fire isn't"
I can't tell you who said it....but there you go.
Averye0
In my county (Stanislaus, CA) we voted using the punch card method. At each polling place were several machines that you slip the ballot into, line up the mechanical hole punch with the appropriate candidate or answer and press the handle to clearly mark your vote. The mechanical hole puch ratchets into each place so there is no way to mark in between candidates or anything. Then you take your ballot (all two pieces of paper of it) put them back in the incuded sleeve and hand it to the attendant who tears off the top 2 inches (leaving the rest in the sleeve) gives you the tags and drops the sleeve with the ballot inside into the ballot box. It is your responsibility as the voter to make sure that your ballot is properly marked (no chad, as they called it on the news last night). If you make a mistake, you tear up the ballot and get another. Simple, elegant and clear. More technology is not the answer to everything...
Averye0
56K might not, but 33.6 will, as long as you don't try to comm with more than 3 or 4 people. For some reason, the extra stability v.42 offers over v.90 allows enough bandwidth to do small-scale voice chats without a significant hit in network performance. I know I used to run Roger Wilco with 3 or 4 others over my old 33.6 USR modem while playing Tribes and I never noticed a performance hit.
Averye0
I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for any kind of voice communication package. It's really a great deal, too. For ~$50US you get a very nice headphone/mic combo (retail US$19.95 or more), a great voice recognition program for games (retail ~$35US), and a great peer-to-peer voice chat program based on the popular Battlefield Commander program (free). Oh, and there's a handy little switch on the side of the control puck to let you switch between speakers and headphones without having to reach around behind your case! (truthfully, that was the deciding issue for me. The rest of it was nice but that switch sold me on it)
The only downsides to the GV are the lack of a Push-to-Talk button (you have to hit the mute switch on the control puck) and the lack of a stand-alone server. Oh, and since it's USB, it's also Windows-only.
I know I'm sounding like a M$ advocate/drone here, but these two products really are solid investments for serious gamers. I could see the SC replacing my throttle for many flight games (not true flight sims, but the more arcade-like ones). These are two must-have items on the serious gamer's wish list.
Averye0
It not only has the programmable buttons (like the CLAW), but it has a limited range of twist motion to allow your left hand to control things like map view or movement. That's one thing the CLAW didn't have.
I don't have one, but a friend of mine does. He claims it's very nice for RTS gaming (TA, Starcraft, Myth, etc.), and it's even better for 3D space-flight sims (Independence War, Descent). It looks like it might make for a nice alternative to a throttle for the left hand.
Averye0
...let's load up a rocket and get a Mars Mission underway!
Averye0
IDSL uses totally different signaling equipment as well as requiring that a specialized phone line be provisioned, that's why it's more expensive. It's really offered as a less expensive alternative to ISDN, as opposed to an extended-reach xDSL option.
Averye0
No, you just use your other hand....
I assume that you would not handcuff the laptop to your dominant hand, that would not be a good idea.
Averye0
My rebuttal follows: Nobody has ever knocked on my door and offered to teach me about "Not believing in God".
:) Actually, Atheism often tries to tell me what movies to see, what to wear, what books to read, how to raise my children, what to think about others, etc. It simply uses a different standard than the one I choose.
No, they just inject it directly into school curriculums...
I've never heard an athiest tell someone they deserved to rot in torture for eternity because they believed in god.
True, but belief in a Creator does not equate to sending non-believers to a hell-equivalent.
Athiests don't seem to have to band together once a week to re-affirm their lack of faith.
I think you mean "re-affirm their faith" since nobody wants to re-affirm their lack of faith....
Athieism never told you how to have sex, what to wear, what to eat, what movies to watch, what books to read, how to act, how much to drink, how much to beat your kids, how to think about other people, how many ox your dead servant is worth...
You say that like it's a bad thing....
Finally, zeal is merely a synonyn for passion, likewise zealous and passionate can often be used interchagably. Zeal sometimes has a religious connotation, but not always. My point is that *anybody* can be zealous about acheiving their goals, not just God-beleivers. One more thought, how is your Atheism any less a faith-based belief than my "Theism"? (I think that's the word) Do you have any proof the the universe came about by random chance? As I see it, we both look at the same set of data and draw two separate, but equally valid conclusions.
Do we have a first, here? A Slashdot discussion about religion that's actually civil? I hope so, and I hope you take my statements in that same spirit I took yours.
Averye0
I too enjoy that little exchange. Too bad it's based on a faulty premise....proof does not deny faith.
Averye0
Could the towers in to the magnetosphere that you referred to be combined into the tether described in the "Space Elevator" concepts? At the least, the tether cable would help provide power for the elevator car as it travels. Also, a previous story mentioned a satellite that used the energy in the magnetosphere to provide propulsion, perhaps the inverse could be applied with the "Space Elevator"....
Averye0
Nice sig, but isn't being called bastard and stepchild kinda like double jeopardy? I mean, really, one is bad enough without bringing the other into play. And I won't even comment on the evils of redheads in America....ok I will. After all, redheads are resposible for every major societal ill. All social problems can be traced back to redheads...and lefties...damn those lefties!!
Averye0 -- is left-handed, redheaded, and a stepchild, but not a bastard (at least, not technically)
Does this mean I can now major in Underwater Kernel Hacking? Sign me up for the class in Underwater Perl Weaving!
Averye0
Ummm......no....I think.
One of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics is that given any instant point in time you can know either the position of a particle of particle OR its energy. Measuring the one alters the other. What the wave function of a particle does is attempt to predict both.
Splitting the wave function does not actually split the particle, this is merely a 3-dimensional model of the interference pattern described in other comments. In other words, instead of knowing that the particle is somewhere in space A, and not elsewhere; you know that the particle is either in space A, or space B, and not elsewhere.
IADJNATP (I Am a Doctor, Jim, Not a Theoretical Physicist)
Averye0