X-Box isn't about cracking the best graphics or anything like that... its all about X-Box live and the multiplay capability.
Xbox Live is probably the biggest reason why Microsoft was able to build up substantial gamer support for their game system. Because it is a single unified access method for multiplayer online gaming, you use a single account to play sports games, multiplayer FPS games, and even online role-playing games. I really do hope that when PlayStation 3 arrives Sony will offer the equivalent of Xbox Live that will allow a single online user account to play various different multiplayer games.
Re:It'll be a sad state of affairs when this happe
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
According to National Geographic magazine, one of the potential estimates is that if H5N1 mutates into a human-to-human commuicable form the death toll could reach a frightening 360 million. That would be the equivalent of reducing the human population by 16.7%, assuming the current human population of just over 6 billion people.
However, I think people forget that when the Spanish flu swept throughout the world in 1918, there as a World War going on (which of course reduced the quality of sanitation conditions!) and the fact back then we didn't have the wide availability of modern over-counter medicines to reduce the effects of the flu. As such, with today's better sanitation and better medication, I think if H5N1 mutates into human-to-human transmissible form the effect would be more like the 1957 Asian flu, where the sick and death rates would be a bit high but not spectacularly so.
You can't have it both ways, folks. I believe an intelligent person should see through the "big ugly propeller" and find the beauty in it's cleanliness. I certainly do.
Most of use folks who enjoy modern technology do, but many of those folks on Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island who oppose those turbines--even if they're built southeast of these two islands so it doesn't interfere with the boat traffic on Nantucket Sound--are very rich snobs who want to have their own way.
The asthetic issue of wind turbines is a controversial one, even in Europe where "green" power generation is more popular.
They only cater to big power producers. This design is more suited to small producers.
Actually, GE Energy would be the perfect company to do this because 1) they have the production resources to build this wind turbine in various sizes to build many of them and 2) their extensive experience with power generation means they know how to integrate these new turbine designs into any local power grid.
Put them on the corners of a skyscraper and the power is used only feet away from its generation.
Hmmm--this type of wind turbine could be perfect for the space on top of the planned Freedom Tower in New York Ciy that designers plan to install wind turbines inside that space. It would definitely be less threat to birds flying nearby and the noise level will be substantially lower, too.
On a recent visit to Denmark I was very impressed by the size and sheer number of turbines, turning gracefully, slowly and fairly unobtrusively.
This is the big issue (pun intended) that many environmentalists don't like about wind turbines--the sheer size of the newest models cause visual pollution and that is the major reason why the planned wind turbine farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island has been tied up in litigation.
If this new design does fulfill its promises then we could drastically reduce the size of the wind turbine itself, which means far lower visual pollution impact.
I think what Mr. Taylor needs to do is demonstrate this new wind turbine technology and prove its claims to GE Energy.
GE Energy is one of the world's largest producers of wind turbines and if Taylor's design fulfills its claims this could mean GE Energy can build substantially smaller wind turbines that will sport way less visual impact, will far less likely endanger any nearby flying birds and will not generate the enormous noise levels that plague older wind turbine designs.
This could allow substantial expansion of wind turbine generator farms in just about anywhere in the world, including environmentally-sensitive places like Altamont Pass and southeast of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.
I honestly think it's just Teir 1's growing too big for their briches LOL.
I wished it was that funny but alas, it tells us that if a terrorist is really determined they could cause unprecedented havoc if they start to interfere with the Tier 1 ISP backbones.
I remember reading about some hackers at the DefCon convention a few years ago who claim they could come close to completely shutting down the Internet; given what happened last night showed it may not be as far-fetched as people think.:-(
The scary thing is it makes you wonder is some terrorist who has intimate knowledge of how Tier 1 ISP's work doing a trial run in the middle of the night by knocking out Level 3 and Verio backbones so later they could try to knock out ALL the backbones in a co-ordinated terrorist attack. (eek!)
The precedent of how the Roman Catholic Church accepted Galileo's findings will tell us a bit how religious authorities will react to the proof that life could exist on other planets.
But I believe that most religious authorities already believe that life can exist on other planets. After all, the class the stars our Sun belongs to is among the most common type of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy (let alone all the galaxies out there!), and that could imply just within 150 light years of the Solar System we have planets circling nearby stars that could support various forms of life, even if the lifeforms aren't carbon-based.
I'll take the chances of China going to the Moon more seriously when they start building larger launch pads to accommodate large-sized boosters. Given that imagery from commercially-available imaging satellites and our NRO spysats hasn't seen any major construction activity for bigger launch pads at China's major launch facilities lately, I still can't take China's vision of going to the Moon seriously just yet.
If you read NASA's web page on their future manned space program, they are adapting a lot of the launch hardware from the Space Shuttle program--though of course not the Space Shuttle itself--for the future missions.
The reason is simple: China is still many years from building a launch vehicle capable of flying a manned mission to the Moon. While the Americans can adapt Space Shuttle hardware for Moon missions, I don't know of any other nation that have the proven hardware to fly Moon missions.
The Chinese could ask for Russian help, but alas, the Energia launcher program was dismantled a long time ago and it's a major unknown how well can you assemble a spacecraft for a Moon mission with the components launched by the Proton booster, Russia's largest current operational launch vehicle.
1. Note thet Microsoft is going to sell their security products as a separate cost item, not integrated them into the operating system (and that appears true even with Windows Vista). As such, this leaves the customer to choose the best solution for their needs regardless of the vendor (Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft, Trend Micro, Panda, etc.), which means Microsoft will likely not run afoul of any authority around the world.
2. I hate to say this, but hackers/crackers target Microsoft because it's the biggest guy out there in the desktop/small server software industry. What will happen when Linux/FreeBSD becomes very popular in the future? That's right, you know the hacker/cracker crowd will go after Linux and FreeBSD with a vengence.
Actually, automobile engines have become vastly more efficient thanks to things like computerized engine controls, port fuel injection, four-valve per cylinder combustion chambers, better spark plugs, and more recently variable valve timing. And it will get even better with the arrival of direct fuel injection and lean-burn combustion over the next few years.
Here's the big issue (quite literally!) that could hurt Airbus: the A380 superjumbo airliner project.
The A380 is threatening to turn into a white elephant for Airbus, mostly because it will cost many millions of US dollars/Euros to upgrade airports to accommodate the plane and because airlines are increasingly more interested in point-to-point service, which uses smaller planes. Boeing will take advantage of more point-to-point with more 777 and 787 sales, while Airbus is scrambling like mad and trying to line up financing to build the A350 for the same reason.
...They would have the box set of Rome on DVD available as early as January 2006 for Region 1 sales. That way, people who don't have access to HBO can get the complete Season 1 shortly after its first run on the network. Besides, HBO has made a huge amount of money on DVD season sets, mostly because HBO well knows that many people out there don't have access to HBO broadcasts for various reasons but do have access to a DVD player.
what if this were piggybacked on something like their independent wifi service?
It's still a terrible idea. Why suffer from bandwidth hogging and network security issues trying to run this office suite? I'd rather hog the network bandwidth once to download a copy of OpenOffice and free up the network bandwidth for other uses.
And that's the reason why I think this is a terrible idea.
Even with xDSL and cable modem broadband, what Sun and Google proposes will hog too much bandwidth and could slow down Internet access for other purposes. I would rather have a local copy of a full office suite like OpenOffice and store all my data files locally.
That is good reason why I refuse to run large-scale apps that partially run online, even if your Internet connection is via any form of broadband connection faster than 512 kbps download speeds. Is it small wonder why the so-called thin terminals haven't been successful except in very limited applications?
I'd rather run the free OpenOffice locally instead, where I know where the documents generated locally will stay locally stored.
Right now this is something only astronomers are really interested in. It's kind of sneaking under the radar of the public at large. They are going to get a big shock someday. When the first truly Earth-like planet is discovered, with unambiguous signs of a living biosphere (for example, lots of free oxygen in the atmosphere), the psychological impact will be huge.
Actually, there was a recent National Geographic article that talked specifically about looking for Earth-like planets orbiting around nearby stars up to circa 300 light years away. NASA is working with several international space agencies on the Terrestrial Planet Finder space-based telescope system that will actually look for Earth-sized planets orbiting around other nearby stars. If TPF does find these planets and also finds out that these planets have an atmosphere with a lot of oxygen components, it will prove once and for all that life can exist elsewhere in the Universe.
...I think the way to go is people start buying more B-segment automobiles in the Honda Fit/Toyota Yaris/Nissan Tiida (neé Versa) category, especially once we start seeing improved technology gasoline engines from 2006 on.
People forget that unlike the past, today's B-segment vehicles offer a surprising amount of interior space, are small enough on the outside for very easy street parking, are quite safe and offer excellent fuel efficiency without the expense of a hybrid drivetrain. Already, there is much consumer interest here in the USA for the vehicles I mentioned, all over which will arrive in the USA market by Summer 2006; I foresee these cars eventually getting improved gasoline engines with new features like direct fuel injection, lean-burn combustion, better valvetrain designs and better spark plug designs, which will improve fuel efficiency as much as 30 percent over today's gasoline engines without dealing with the problems of cleaning up diesel engine exhaust
I think one thing people totally forget about the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray competition is that TDK recently demonstrated a new optical disk material that is extremely scratch-proof, which makes it possible for Blu-Ray discs to no longer need the protective caddy now needed for Blu-Ray machines now sold in Japan.
As such, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can use improved versions of the same mechanism now used for DVD drives. This opens the door for a company like Plextor to produce a computer optical disk drive that can read and write BOTH formats on the same drive, with the drive connected to the motherboard via either ATA-100 or Serial ATA interfaces. That also means we could see console (and eventually portable) players that can read both formats.
In short, we could end up with a situation akin to the DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW--combo drives that can use both formats.
The first company that can write a program that does a near-perfect conversion of Microsoft Office files to OpenDocument format will make a fortune, that's to be sure.
Slashdot Mirror
X-Box isn't about cracking the best graphics or anything like that... its all about X-Box live and the multiplay capability.
Xbox Live is probably the biggest reason why Microsoft was able to build up substantial gamer support for their game system. Because it is a single unified access method for multiplayer online gaming, you use a single account to play sports games, multiplayer FPS games, and even online role-playing games. I really do hope that when PlayStation 3 arrives Sony will offer the equivalent of Xbox Live that will allow a single online user account to play various different multiplayer games.
According to National Geographic magazine, one of the potential estimates is that if H5N1 mutates into a human-to-human commuicable form the death toll could reach a frightening 360 million. That would be the equivalent of reducing the human population by 16.7%, assuming the current human population of just over 6 billion people.
However, I think people forget that when the Spanish flu swept throughout the world in 1918, there as a World War going on (which of course reduced the quality of sanitation conditions!) and the fact back then we didn't have the wide availability of modern over-counter medicines to reduce the effects of the flu. As such, with today's better sanitation and better medication, I think if H5N1 mutates into human-to-human transmissible form the effect would be more like the 1957 Asian flu, where the sick and death rates would be a bit high but not spectacularly so.
Especially given how Sony so well-embraced Linux with the available Linux development toolkit for the PlayStation 2.
Does anyone know will Sony offer a Linux development toolkit for the upcoming PlayStation 3?
You can't have it both ways, folks. I believe an intelligent person should see through the "big ugly propeller" and find the beauty in it's cleanliness. I certainly do.
Most of use folks who enjoy modern technology do, but many of those folks on Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island who oppose those turbines--even if they're built southeast of these two islands so it doesn't interfere with the boat traffic on Nantucket Sound--are very rich snobs who want to have their own way.
The asthetic issue of wind turbines is a controversial one, even in Europe where "green" power generation is more popular.
They only cater to big power producers. This design is more suited to small producers.
Actually, GE Energy would be the perfect company to do this because 1) they have the production resources to build this wind turbine in various sizes to build many of them and 2) their extensive experience with power generation means they know how to integrate these new turbine designs into any local power grid.
Put them on the corners of a skyscraper and the power is used only feet away from its generation.
Hmmm--this type of wind turbine could be perfect for the space on top of the planned Freedom Tower in New York Ciy that designers plan to install wind turbines inside that space. It would definitely be less threat to birds flying nearby and the noise level will be substantially lower, too.
On a recent visit to Denmark I was very impressed by the size and sheer number of turbines, turning gracefully, slowly and fairly unobtrusively.
This is the big issue (pun intended) that many environmentalists don't like about wind turbines--the sheer size of the newest models cause visual pollution and that is the major reason why the planned wind turbine farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island has been tied up in litigation.
If this new design does fulfill its promises then we could drastically reduce the size of the wind turbine itself, which means far lower visual pollution impact.
I think what Mr. Taylor needs to do is demonstrate this new wind turbine technology and prove its claims to GE Energy.
GE Energy is one of the world's largest producers of wind turbines and if Taylor's design fulfills its claims this could mean GE Energy can build substantially smaller wind turbines that will sport way less visual impact, will far less likely endanger any nearby flying birds and will not generate the enormous noise levels that plague older wind turbine designs.
This could allow substantial expansion of wind turbine generator farms in just about anywhere in the world, including environmentally-sensitive places like Altamont Pass and southeast of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.
I honestly think it's just Teir 1's growing too big for their briches LOL.
:-(
I wished it was that funny but alas, it tells us that if a terrorist is really determined they could cause unprecedented havoc if they start to interfere with the Tier 1 ISP backbones.
I remember reading about some hackers at the DefCon convention a few years ago who claim they could come close to completely shutting down the Internet; given what happened last night showed it may not be as far-fetched as people think.
The scary thing is it makes you wonder is some terrorist who has intimate knowledge of how Tier 1 ISP's work doing a trial run in the middle of the night by knocking out Level 3 and Verio backbones so later they could try to knock out ALL the backbones in a co-ordinated terrorist attack. (eek!)
The precedent of how the Roman Catholic Church accepted Galileo's findings will tell us a bit how religious authorities will react to the proof that life could exist on other planets.
But I believe that most religious authorities already believe that life can exist on other planets. After all, the class the stars our Sun belongs to is among the most common type of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy (let alone all the galaxies out there!), and that could imply just within 150 light years of the Solar System we have planets circling nearby stars that could support various forms of life, even if the lifeforms aren't carbon-based.
I'll take the chances of China going to the Moon more seriously when they start building larger launch pads to accommodate large-sized boosters. Given that imagery from commercially-available imaging satellites and our NRO spysats hasn't seen any major construction activity for bigger launch pads at China's major launch facilities lately, I still can't take China's vision of going to the Moon seriously just yet.
Didn't I just say "adapt Space Shuttle hardware"?
If you read NASA's web page on their future manned space program, they are adapting a lot of the launch hardware from the Space Shuttle program--though of course not the Space Shuttle itself--for the future missions.
I'll give the straight answer: no.
The reason is simple: China is still many years from building a launch vehicle capable of flying a manned mission to the Moon. While the Americans can adapt Space Shuttle hardware for Moon missions, I don't know of any other nation that have the proven hardware to fly Moon missions.
The Chinese could ask for Russian help, but alas, the Energia launcher program was dismantled a long time ago and it's a major unknown how well can you assemble a spacecraft for a Moon mission with the components launched by the Proton booster, Russia's largest current operational launch vehicle.
1. Note thet Microsoft is going to sell their security products as a separate cost item, not integrated them into the operating system (and that appears true even with Windows Vista). As such, this leaves the customer to choose the best solution for their needs regardless of the vendor (Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft, Trend Micro, Panda, etc.), which means Microsoft will likely not run afoul of any authority around the world.
2. I hate to say this, but hackers/crackers target Microsoft because it's the biggest guy out there in the desktop/small server software industry. What will happen when Linux/FreeBSD becomes very popular in the future? That's right, you know the hacker/cracker crowd will go after Linux and FreeBSD with a vengence.
Actually, automobile engines have become vastly more efficient thanks to things like computerized engine controls, port fuel injection, four-valve per cylinder combustion chambers, better spark plugs, and more recently variable valve timing. And it will get even better with the arrival of direct fuel injection and lean-burn combustion over the next few years.
Here's the big issue (quite literally!) that could hurt Airbus: the A380 superjumbo airliner project.
The A380 is threatening to turn into a white elephant for Airbus, mostly because it will cost many millions of US dollars/Euros to upgrade airports to accommodate the plane and because airlines are increasingly more interested in point-to-point service, which uses smaller planes. Boeing will take advantage of more point-to-point with more 777 and 787 sales, while Airbus is scrambling like mad and trying to line up financing to build the A350 for the same reason.
...They would have the box set of Rome on DVD available as early as January 2006 for Region 1 sales. That way, people who don't have access to HBO can get the complete Season 1 shortly after its first run on the network. Besides, HBO has made a huge amount of money on DVD season sets, mostly because HBO well knows that many people out there don't have access to HBO broadcasts for various reasons but do have access to a DVD player.
what if this were piggybacked on something like their independent wifi service?
It's still a terrible idea. Why suffer from bandwidth hogging and network security issues trying to run this office suite? I'd rather hog the network bandwidth once to download a copy of OpenOffice and free up the network bandwidth for other uses.
And that's the reason why I think this is a terrible idea.
Even with xDSL and cable modem broadband, what Sun and Google proposes will hog too much bandwidth and could slow down Internet access for other purposes. I would rather have a local copy of a full office suite like OpenOffice and store all my data files locally.
That is good reason why I refuse to run large-scale apps that partially run online, even if your Internet connection is via any form of broadband connection faster than 512 kbps download speeds. Is it small wonder why the so-called thin terminals haven't been successful except in very limited applications?
I'd rather run the free OpenOffice locally instead, where I know where the documents generated locally will stay locally stored.
Right now this is something only astronomers are really interested in. It's kind of sneaking under the radar of the public at large. They are going to get a big shock someday. When the first truly Earth-like planet is discovered, with unambiguous signs of a living biosphere (for example, lots of free oxygen in the atmosphere), the psychological impact will be huge.
Actually, there was a recent National Geographic article that talked specifically about looking for Earth-like planets orbiting around nearby stars up to circa 300 light years away. NASA is working with several international space agencies on the Terrestrial Planet Finder space-based telescope system that will actually look for Earth-sized planets orbiting around other nearby stars. If TPF does find these planets and also finds out that these planets have an atmosphere with a lot of oxygen components, it will prove once and for all that life can exist elsewhere in the Universe.
...I think the way to go is people start buying more B-segment automobiles in the Honda Fit/Toyota Yaris/Nissan Tiida (neé Versa) category, especially once we start seeing improved technology gasoline engines from 2006 on.
People forget that unlike the past, today's B-segment vehicles offer a surprising amount of interior space, are small enough on the outside for very easy street parking, are quite safe and offer excellent fuel efficiency without the expense of a hybrid drivetrain. Already, there is much consumer interest here in the USA for the vehicles I mentioned, all over which will arrive in the USA market by Summer 2006; I foresee these cars eventually getting improved gasoline engines with new features like direct fuel injection, lean-burn combustion, better valvetrain designs and better spark plug designs, which will improve fuel efficiency as much as 30 percent over today's gasoline engines without dealing with the problems of cleaning up diesel engine exhaust
I think one thing people totally forget about the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray competition is that TDK recently demonstrated a new optical disk material that is extremely scratch-proof, which makes it possible for Blu-Ray discs to no longer need the protective caddy now needed for Blu-Ray machines now sold in Japan.
As such, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can use improved versions of the same mechanism now used for DVD drives. This opens the door for a company like Plextor to produce a computer optical disk drive that can read and write BOTH formats on the same drive, with the drive connected to the motherboard via either ATA-100 or Serial ATA interfaces. That also means we could see console (and eventually portable) players that can read both formats.
In short, we could end up with a situation akin to the DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW--combo drives that can use both formats.
The first company that can write a program that does a near-perfect conversion of Microsoft Office files to OpenDocument format will make a fortune, that's to be sure.