What some people are forgetting is that no laws have been passed restricting the research - all that has been done is that FEDERAL funds have been restricted to a subset of the research. Private organizations are welcome to fund any type of research they want.
AMEN!!:-)
Look, there are a good number of very rich people out there that are more than happy to fund stem-cell research so scientists do not have to get money from the Federal dole.
Remember, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on US$17 billion in available funds and Bill Gates has expressed lots of interest in medical advances; Gates could easily have the Foundation make US$2 billion available for more extensive stem-cell research.
1. Because it is self-published, it is not subject to potential censorship by editors at the distribution syndicate. Let's face it--many of the storylines in Sluggy Freelance would never pass muster with syndicate censors.
2. The comic has done several extremely long story arcs that distribution syndicates often frown upon. Remember in 1999 with the time machine that went haywire, which built up to the famous Stormbreaker Saga?
Sure, Sluggy Freelance may not be perfect all the time, but it's still vastly superior than most syndicated comics you read in the newspaper comics sections nowadays.
While Sluggy Freelance is just about the best online comic strip out there, don't forget one that came even earlier, Bill Holbrook's Kevin & Kell. Kevin & Kell first got wide distribution on a CompuServe forum, and now is distributed on two web sites, www.herdthinners.com and www.kevinandkell.com.
Unfortunately I don't.
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
I've tried the new Netscape 6.1.
It definitely renders WAY faster than Netscape 6.0x and also renders pages much better.
However, the interface of NS 6.1 still sucks like a vacuum cleaner. -_- Ctrl-Shft-L just to open an address window? How unintuitive. And on some pages on http://www.airliners.net it starts spitting out weird messages about downloading HTML files to your local hard drive. (???)
I still think IE 5.5 SP2 and the upcoming IE 6.0 is way better, especially the Outlook Express module for email and Usenet newsgroup access.
I think much of the/. regulars are totally clueless on why Napster in its original form was shut down: the small minority (about 20% at most) that used the service to essentially get copyrighted music for FREE and no longer wanted to buy records because the music was available freely.
No compensation for the artistic creators in any form is a major no-no even by Berne Convention standards.
Ultimate test: the ESPN home page
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
My concern in regards to Netscape 6.1 using the Mozilla 0.9.2 code is this: will it render the ESPN home page (http://espn.go.com) correctly? Netscape 6.0 and 6.01 could NOT render that page correctly (unlike IE 4.01 to 6.0 Preview Release 2 and Netscape 4.7x versions), which was the reason why I never used Netscape 6.0x versions for long.:-(
If you're doing mostly business applications and Internet surfing, even a Celeron A 400 MHz machine works well with Windows XP Home Edition, provided you have a fast enough hard drive (7200 RPM 20-30 GB hard drives are dirt-cheap nowadays) and at least 256 MB of RAM (top quality PC-133 DIMM's are going for US$45-$50 per 256 MB).
You do want a faster system if you're playing the latest games and also doing a lot of multimedia work, though. Mind you, Celeron 700+ MHz and Duron 800+ MHz CPU's plus motherboard are so cheap nowadays....
I think people are forgetting that there will be quite a lot of changes in Windows XP compared to Windows ME/2000 Pro.
I think by the time Windows XP reaches the market you will see new versions of RealPlayer, Apple's QuickTime player, ZoneAlarm, BlackICE Defender, AOL Instant Messenger, etc. specifically written for Windows XP. People should remember that Microsoft substantially tightened its requirements for Windows XP compatibility, so programs that run under Windows 95/98/ME currently will have to be rewritten specifically to support Windows XP.
I'm surprised nobody has thought of the most obvious solution to this whole mess: make the operating system a separate cost item.
That way, when you buy your computer you will know right up front how much it will cost to install each OS into your system. Something like that could convince some large IT organizations to install a commercial Linux distribution on a one-time low-cost site license instead of a much more expensive site license for Windows XP/XP Pro.
I think the Linux community needs a small group of people who espouse the OS in a positive manner without having to resorting to too-fashionable Microsoft bashing.
People like Richard Stallman are unfortunately viewed as too vociferous and radical and ends up turning off way too many IT managers along the way. That IMHO is why some folks in the anti-Microsoft crowd (namely Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy) are not viewed in a positive light at times.
I was very fortunate to have been able to listen to Poul Anderson talk at least once a year at the BayCon science fiction convention over Memorial Day. He was always a gracious and quite interesting man, and wrote a long line of excellent novels (I recommend Genesis, one of his last works and recent recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of 2000).
One novel he wrote early his career, The Broken Sword, drew inspiration from the Norse sagas and eddas and is an excellent book. Too bad it is quite underrated due to the fact it only had one initial print run in the early 1950's and sadly got overshadowed by the work of one John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, IMHO.
However, one thing about the Xbox's video output that the PlayStation 2 lacks is support for 480p progressive video, something that a lot of high-end monitors and projection TV's now support. Imagine playing videogames or playing back movies with no horizontal scan lines on any 480p-compatible monitor.
However, there should still be a baseline for the ISP's you can choose. That's why for the USA edition of Windows XP I would include AOL, CompuServe, MSN and EarthLink, the only ISP's I know of that have true national coverage.
I think I'm a bit not clear about my suggestion.:-/
What I suggested would likely be on the USA release of Windows XP; the available national ISP selection would be different for each country where Windows XP is sold. For example, since you're from Finland, my suggestion of a pop-up windows to set up the ISP you want may include MSN but would likely include the national ISP's of your country instead of AOL or EarthLink here in the USA.
I think the best solution is this: put a folder marked Online Services onto the initial desktop for Windows XP, or at least have a pop-up window to select your ISP when you first start up your computer. From this you have you choice of the following national online services:
1. MSN
2. America Online
3. CompuServe
4. EarthLink
There will also be a setup icon to enter the configuration settings of the ISP you're already using.
By the way, if you install the Full or OEM editions of Windows 95, 98, or ME, the MSN icon is on the desktop itself, so that's old news for Microsoft to put the MSN setup icon on the main desktop of Windows XP.
Judging from reading the Anandtech review of the new 1,200 MHz Pentium III CPU, I think the problem is that the CPU--while it is very fast indeed--still sports the older-style FPU unit. The result is that the new CPU compares poorly to the Athlon CPU, which processes three FPU instructions per CPU cycle compared one instruction per CPU cycle on PIII's.
The poor FPU performance is why I don't think there will be much interest in the new CPU, especially since the 1,200 MHz Athlon CPU will substantially out-perform the new PIII CPU with any application that is FPU-intensive such as CAD and illustration programs.
Re:The V-1 buzz bomb from WW2 used a pulse jet eng
on
Pulse Jet Go-kart
·
· Score: 1
Actually, the Japanese had serious studies about building a pulsejet-powered plane for kamikaze missions late in World War II.
It's a very good thing that machine was never produced. Imagine a kamikaze plane flying at over 420 mph at only 200 feet off the ground--it would have been just about impossible to intercept given the speeds of carrier-based fighters and the quality of AA systems on US Navy ships in 1945. We're talking much lower altitudes than the V-1 buzz bombs used for their cruise altitudes; this would have resulted in the kamikaze plane being lost in the low-altitude clutter that plagued early radars.
I should remind you that the Levine/Scholastic (USA) edition of the first Harry Potter novel is named Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. That will be the name used in the first Harry Potter movie opening on November 16, 2001 here in the USA.
Yes, but will the movie you mentioned pull in a very large box office on its opening weekend and continue to do strong box office for several weeks on end? I have my doubts.
Interestingly enough, only one movie has qualified for blockbuster status this summer, and that is Shrek, mostly because it had the great timing to be successful well before Memorial Day, and the movie was good enough to ensure repeat business.:)
I think moviegoers are eagerly awaiting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and the first Lord of the Rings movie due late this year. 2001 will be a case that the biggest blockbusters come out at the end of the year, something that is extremely unusual in terms of movie releases in general (usually the end of the year is reserved mostly for smaller movies with serious Oscar aspirations).
Except for Shrek, most other summer movies don't really have the legs to do long-term repeat business.
It appears that the only movies that will likely do long-term repeat business on a blockbuster scale won't come out until late this year: Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (gawd, I loved the trailer!!), Warner Brothers' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the first Lord of the Rings movie. Their positive financial impact will be mostly in the first quarter of 2002, though.
Remember the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies? The one where the villain is Elliot Carver, the owner of the fictional Carver Media Group?
Remember what some people said on/. in January 2000 when the AOL/Time-Warner merger was announced: the fictional Carver Media Group with its chilling media power has suddenly become frightening reality. And at the rate things are going, that day is now upon us, especially if AOL Time Warner can buy out AT&T Broadband. (boogle)
I think what may happen is that we may see a counteroffer from Comcast in conjunction with another major media company (e.g., Disney's name has been bandied about) to match the AOL Time Warner offer for AT&T Broadband.
The big question is how fast can the DoJ slap an injunction to stop the distribution of Windows XP Home and Professional Editions? Given the fact that George W. Bush isn't keen on such action, I have my doubts.
I still think a settlement will end up where all the multimedia "addons" to Windows XP will be loaded on a second CD-ROM disc, with the main OS loaded on the first CD-ROM disc. That plus the expansion of the Windows Update page for Windows XP so you have a very large choice of third party multimedia software you can load.
If IBM's news flat-CRT design can display with the same brightness and sharpness as a top-notch CRT monitor, even that would be a big improvement over current monitors in terms of space usage.
It appears that the new design will use less power, since we don't need a very powerful transformer to power a big electron gun to generate a display, both of which consume lots of power (small wonder why DPMS was developed).
I'm surprised that nobody here has figured out the real reason why Palm considering switching to the ARM processor for future Palm models: a smoother Internet access experience.
I mean, look at the way the Palm does Web surfing and the way the iPaq running PocketPC does Web surfing; note that web pages are actually much more readable on the iPaq. Remember, look at the major compromises Palm had to make in order to do Internet access with the Palm VII series, which required web page providers to produce special versions of their web pages tailored for the Palm VII display.
Slashdot Mirror
What some people are forgetting is that no laws have been passed restricting the research - all that has been done is that FEDERAL funds have been restricted to a subset of the research. Private organizations are welcome to fund any type of research they want.
:-)
AMEN!!
Look, there are a good number of very rich people out there that are more than happy to fund stem-cell research so scientists do not have to get money from the Federal dole.
Remember, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on US$17 billion in available funds and Bill Gates has expressed lots of interest in medical advances; Gates could easily have the Foundation make US$2 billion available for more extensive stem-cell research.
I like Sluggy Freelance for two reasons:
1. Because it is self-published, it is not subject to potential censorship by editors at the distribution syndicate. Let's face it--many of the storylines in Sluggy Freelance would never pass muster with syndicate censors.
2. The comic has done several extremely long story arcs that distribution syndicates often frown upon. Remember in 1999 with the time machine that went haywire, which built up to the famous Stormbreaker Saga?
Sure, Sluggy Freelance may not be perfect all the time, but it's still vastly superior than most syndicated comics you read in the newspaper comics sections nowadays.
While Sluggy Freelance is just about the best online comic strip out there, don't forget one that came even earlier, Bill Holbrook's Kevin & Kell. Kevin & Kell first got wide distribution on a CompuServe forum, and now is distributed on two web sites, www.herdthinners.com and www.kevinandkell.com.
I've tried the new Netscape 6.1.
It definitely renders WAY faster than Netscape 6.0x and also renders pages much better.
However, the interface of NS 6.1 still sucks like a vacuum cleaner. -_- Ctrl-Shft-L just to open an address window? How unintuitive. And on some pages on http://www.airliners.net it starts spitting out weird messages about downloading HTML files to your local hard drive. (???)
I still think IE 5.5 SP2 and the upcoming IE 6.0 is way better, especially the Outlook Express module for email and Usenet newsgroup access.
I think much of the /. regulars are totally clueless on why Napster in its original form was shut down: the small minority (about 20% at most) that used the service to essentially get copyrighted music for FREE and no longer wanted to buy records because the music was available freely.
No compensation for the artistic creators in any form is a major no-no even by Berne Convention standards.
My concern in regards to Netscape 6.1 using the Mozilla 0.9.2 code is this: will it render the ESPN home page (http://espn.go.com) correctly? Netscape 6.0 and 6.01 could NOT render that page correctly (unlike IE 4.01 to 6.0 Preview Release 2 and Netscape 4.7x versions), which was the reason why I never used Netscape 6.0x versions for long. :-(
You are absolutely correct.
If you're doing mostly business applications and Internet surfing, even a Celeron A 400 MHz machine works well with Windows XP Home Edition, provided you have a fast enough hard drive (7200 RPM 20-30 GB hard drives are dirt-cheap nowadays) and at least 256 MB of RAM (top quality PC-133 DIMM's are going for US$45-$50 per 256 MB).
You do want a faster system if you're playing the latest games and also doing a lot of multimedia work, though. Mind you, Celeron 700+ MHz and Duron 800+ MHz CPU's plus motherboard are so cheap nowadays....
I think people are forgetting that there will be quite a lot of changes in Windows XP compared to Windows ME/2000 Pro.
I think by the time Windows XP reaches the market you will see new versions of RealPlayer, Apple's QuickTime player, ZoneAlarm, BlackICE Defender, AOL Instant Messenger, etc. specifically written for Windows XP. People should remember that Microsoft substantially tightened its requirements for Windows XP compatibility, so programs that run under Windows 95/98/ME currently will have to be rewritten specifically to support Windows XP.
I'm surprised nobody has thought of the most obvious solution to this whole mess: make the operating system a separate cost item.
That way, when you buy your computer you will know right up front how much it will cost to install each OS into your system. Something like that could convince some large IT organizations to install a commercial Linux distribution on a one-time low-cost site license instead of a much more expensive site license for Windows XP/XP Pro.
I think the Linux community needs a small group of people who espouse the OS in a positive manner without having to resorting to too-fashionable Microsoft bashing.
People like Richard Stallman are unfortunately viewed as too vociferous and radical and ends up turning off way too many IT managers along the way. That IMHO is why some folks in the anti-Microsoft crowd (namely Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy) are not viewed in a positive light at times.
I was very fortunate to have been able to listen to Poul Anderson talk at least once a year at the BayCon science fiction convention over Memorial Day. He was always a gracious and quite interesting man, and wrote a long line of excellent novels (I recommend Genesis, one of his last works and recent recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of 2000).
One novel he wrote early his career, The Broken Sword, drew inspiration from the Norse sagas and eddas and is an excellent book. Too bad it is quite underrated due to the fact it only had one initial print run in the early 1950's and sadly got overshadowed by the work of one John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, IMHO.
However, one thing about the Xbox's video output that the PlayStation 2 lacks is support for 480p progressive video, something that a lot of high-end monitors and projection TV's now support. Imagine playing videogames or playing back movies with no horizontal scan lines on any 480p-compatible monitor.
I think the big unknown factor in all this is the effect of one particular third party called Sega will have on the sales of all three consoles.
Remember, Sega has said they will write games for all three consoles, and Sega's own programmers are definitely no slouches, either.
The system that gets the majority of the best and latest Sega games will become the dominant market leader, IMHO.
However, there should still be a baseline for the ISP's you can choose. That's why for the USA edition of Windows XP I would include AOL, CompuServe, MSN and EarthLink, the only ISP's I know of that have true national coverage.
I think I'm a bit not clear about my suggestion. :-/
What I suggested would likely be on the USA release of Windows XP; the available national ISP selection would be different for each country where Windows XP is sold. For example, since you're from Finland, my suggestion of a pop-up windows to set up the ISP you want may include MSN but would likely include the national ISP's of your country instead of AOL or EarthLink here in the USA.
I think the best solution is this: put a folder marked Online Services onto the initial desktop for Windows XP, or at least have a pop-up window to select your ISP when you first start up your computer. From this you have you choice of the following national online services:
1. MSN
2. America Online
3. CompuServe
4. EarthLink
There will also be a setup icon to enter the configuration settings of the ISP you're already using.
By the way, if you install the Full or OEM editions of Windows 95, 98, or ME, the MSN icon is on the desktop itself, so that's old news for Microsoft to put the MSN setup icon on the main desktop of Windows XP.
Judging from reading the Anandtech review of the new 1,200 MHz Pentium III CPU, I think the problem is that the CPU--while it is very fast indeed--still sports the older-style FPU unit. The result is that the new CPU compares poorly to the Athlon CPU, which processes three FPU instructions per CPU cycle compared one instruction per CPU cycle on PIII's.
The poor FPU performance is why I don't think there will be much interest in the new CPU, especially since the 1,200 MHz Athlon CPU will substantially out-perform the new PIII CPU with any application that is FPU-intensive such as CAD and illustration programs.
Actually, the Japanese had serious studies about building a pulsejet-powered plane for kamikaze missions late in World War II.
It's a very good thing that machine was never produced. Imagine a kamikaze plane flying at over 420 mph at only 200 feet off the ground--it would have been just about impossible to intercept given the speeds of carrier-based fighters and the quality of AA systems on US Navy ships in 1945. We're talking much lower altitudes than the V-1 buzz bombs used for their cruise altitudes; this would have resulted in the kamikaze plane being lost in the low-altitude clutter that plagued early radars.
I should remind you that the Levine/Scholastic (USA) edition of the first Harry Potter novel is named Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. That will be the name used in the first Harry Potter movie opening on November 16, 2001 here in the USA.
Yes, but will the movie you mentioned pull in a very large box office on its opening weekend and continue to do strong box office for several weeks on end? I have my doubts.
:)
Interestingly enough, only one movie has qualified for blockbuster status this summer, and that is Shrek, mostly because it had the great timing to be successful well before Memorial Day, and the movie was good enough to ensure repeat business.
I think moviegoers are eagerly awaiting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and the first Lord of the Rings movie due late this year. 2001 will be a case that the biggest blockbusters come out at the end of the year, something that is extremely unusual in terms of movie releases in general (usually the end of the year is reserved mostly for smaller movies with serious Oscar aspirations).
Sad to say, not really. :-(
Except for Shrek, most other summer movies don't really have the legs to do long-term repeat business.
It appears that the only movies that will likely do long-term repeat business on a blockbuster scale won't come out until late this year: Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (gawd, I loved the trailer!!), Warner Brothers' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the first Lord of the Rings movie. Their positive financial impact will be mostly in the first quarter of 2002, though.
Remember the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies? The one where the villain is Elliot Carver, the owner of the fictional Carver Media Group?
/. in January 2000 when the AOL/Time-Warner merger was announced: the fictional Carver Media Group with its chilling media power has suddenly become frightening reality. And at the rate things are going, that day is now upon us, especially if AOL Time Warner can buy out AT&T Broadband. (boogle)
Remember what some people said on
I think what may happen is that we may see a counteroffer from Comcast in conjunction with another major media company (e.g., Disney's name has been bandied about) to match the AOL Time Warner offer for AT&T Broadband.
Folks,
The big question is how fast can the DoJ slap an injunction to stop the distribution of Windows XP Home and Professional Editions? Given the fact that George W. Bush isn't keen on such action, I have my doubts.
I still think a settlement will end up where all the multimedia "addons" to Windows XP will be loaded on a second CD-ROM disc, with the main OS loaded on the first CD-ROM disc. That plus the expansion of the Windows Update page for Windows XP so you have a very large choice of third party multimedia software you can load.
If IBM's news flat-CRT design can display with the same brightness and sharpness as a top-notch CRT monitor, even that would be a big improvement over current monitors in terms of space usage.
It appears that the new design will use less power, since we don't need a very powerful transformer to power a big electron gun to generate a display, both of which consume lots of power (small wonder why DPMS was developed).
I'm surprised that nobody here has figured out the real reason why Palm considering switching to the ARM processor for future Palm models: a smoother Internet access experience.
I mean, look at the way the Palm does Web surfing and the way the iPaq running PocketPC does Web surfing; note that web pages are actually much more readable on the iPaq. Remember, look at the major compromises Palm had to make in order to do Internet access with the Palm VII series, which required web page providers to produce special versions of their web pages tailored for the Palm VII display.