Anyone else reminded of the Emperor's New Clothes fairy tale?
<sarcasm>
Everyone ignore the fact that the DVD encryption was cracked. It's uncrackable. And those clothes Emperor MPAA is wearing look spectacular, don't they?
</sarcasm>
Actually, if I remember correctly from my "physics major" days of college (before I wisely switched to computer science), nothing can pass the speed of light. Some physicists think you can have particles whizzing around at twice the speed of light, but they can't slow down to half light speed.
Of course, once you get faster than light speeds the relativity equations get "interesting." For instance, this is the equation translating the mass of an object traveling at near-light speeds into what is viewed by an observer in another frame of reference:
M2 = M1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) , where c = the speed of light.
If we set the speed to be more than the speed of light (say v = 2c) then we get:
As anyone who's somewhat familiar with Math will notice, the square root of -1 is an imaginary number. (Normally represented by the letter 'i'.) What that means as far as the proposed FTL particles are concerned is anyone's guess. (I believe it was even proposed once that this meant the particles were traveling back in time and we viewed them as antimatter. Don't quote me on that one though.;-) )
And of course, there also was that article on scientists pushing light faster than normal. So maybe advanced civilizations just increase the speed of light in some manner.
Just remember, people once thought it impossible to cross the sound barrier.
Used to use it till the company I work for forced us onto the hell that is Lotus Notes. (For those of you that have never seen it, imagine an app that not only threw out all the standard interface elements and keyboard shortcuts, but also didn't bother to build new ones in to make it useable.)
And barnesnnoble.com isn't a book store. Last time I accidentally went there it was a porn site. Found that one out one day when I misstyped the URL for Barnes and Noble while at work. Be warned though. This site will keep opening another browser window if you close the one it's in. (As I found out while panicking that my boss would pick just that moment to check up on me.
RCA's coming out with a MP3-CD player with the first item on your list. Not sure about the rest though. Someone in the MP3.com Forums posted some pics.
I was checking out one of the Gnutella clones, Gnotella ( http://gnotella.nerdherd.net/ ). I've had mixed success with it, but it does have a few interesting features which I'd love to see adopted by other Gnutella clients. You can choose to ignore files from certain IP addresses (say bye-bye to those spammers that return "Your Search.html") and also block searches containing key words (so a search for "kiddie porn" will get dropped instead of being passed on). Plus you can skin it.;-) Might be worth a check. -Jason Levine
I've used VBScript to automate a lot of tasks that would have been very repetitive to do otherwise. What MS needs to do, however, is beef up the security on the Windows Scripting Host (which VBS files run through) so virus-like behavior gets flagged and the user is warned. (Of course, not one to wait for MS to act, I wrote a prog that'll do this... http://www.winmag.com/fixes/watchdog/ if anyone's interested.) Once a buffer is in place, the rate at which VBS-type virus' can spread will diminish a lot. For example, many users might open a PAMELA ANDERSON.MOV.vbs file, ignoring the vbs extension and getting infected. But how many will proceed if opening the "movie" file returns a warning that this will change your registry, overwrite files, etc.
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Anyone else reminded of the Emperor's New Clothes fairy tale?
<sarcasm>
Everyone ignore the fact that the DVD encryption was cracked. It's uncrackable. And those clothes Emperor MPAA is wearing look spectacular, don't they?
</sarcasm>
Actually, if I remember correctly from my "physics major" days of college (before I wisely switched to computer science), nothing can pass the speed of light. Some physicists think you can have particles whizzing around at twice the speed of light, but they can't slow down to half light speed.
;-) )
Of course, once you get faster than light speeds the relativity equations get "interesting." For instance, this is the equation translating the mass of an object traveling at near-light speeds into what is viewed by an observer in another frame of reference:
M2 = M1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) , where c = the speed of light.
If we set the speed to be more than the speed of light (say v = 2c) then we get:
M2 = M1 / sqrt(1 - (2c)^2/c^2) or
M2 = M1 / sqrt(1 - 4) or
M2 = M1 / sqrt(-3)
As anyone who's somewhat familiar with Math will notice, the square root of -1 is an imaginary number. (Normally represented by the letter 'i'.) What that means as far as the proposed FTL particles are concerned is anyone's guess. (I believe it was even proposed once that this meant the particles were traveling back in time and we viewed them as antimatter. Don't quote me on that one though.
And of course, there also was that article on scientists pushing light faster than normal. So maybe advanced civilizations just increase the speed of light in some manner.
Just remember, people once thought it impossible to cross the sound barrier.
Used to use it till the company I work for forced us onto the hell that is Lotus Notes. (For those of you that have never seen it, imagine an app that not only threw out all the standard interface elements and keyboard shortcuts, but also didn't bother to build new ones in to make it useable.)
And barnesnnoble.com isn't a book store. Last time I accidentally went there it was a porn site. Found that one out one day when I misstyped the URL for Barnes and Noble while at work. Be warned though. This site will keep opening another browser window if you close the one it's in. (As I found out while panicking that my boss would pick just that moment to check up on me.
Both Philips and RCA appear to be working on MP3-CD players. I heard Casio is too, but I can't seem to find any info on that.
RCA's coming out with a MP3-CD player with the first item on your list. Not sure about the rest though. Someone in the MP3.com Forums posted some pics.
I'm assuming that they're the same manufactured item being sold by different companies.
The Genica and the MPTrip are both the same player from a company called Dragon State with different logos slapped on.
I was checking out one of the Gnutella clones, Gnotella ( http://gnotella.nerdherd.net/ ). I've had mixed success with it, but it does have a few interesting features which I'd love to see adopted by other Gnutella clients. You can choose to ignore files from certain IP addresses (say bye-bye to those spammers that return "Your Search.html") and also block searches containing key words (so a search for "kiddie porn" will get dropped instead of being passed on). Plus you can skin it. ;-) Might be worth a check. -Jason Levine
Panasonic already makes a camera using SuperDisks. The PalmCam if I remember correctly.
I've used VBScript to automate a lot of tasks that would have been very repetitive to do otherwise. What MS needs to do, however, is beef up the security on the Windows Scripting Host (which VBS files run through) so virus-like behavior gets flagged and the user is warned. (Of course, not one to wait for MS to act, I wrote a prog that'll do this... http://www.winmag.com/fixes/watchdog/ if anyone's interested.) Once a buffer is in place, the rate at which VBS-type virus' can spread will diminish a lot. For example, many users might open a PAMELA ANDERSON.MOV.vbs file, ignoring the vbs extension and getting infected. But how many will proceed if opening the "movie" file returns a warning that this will change your registry, overwrite files, etc.