She [Rowling] probably didn't want to deal with all of the paperwork of subcontracting each individual entity for these things (a company to make toys, &c) and it may have been a mandatory, and not terribly offensive part of the deal for her.
I think Rowling chose AOL Time Warner because the Time-Warner side of AOLTW has a famous legacy of intellectual property licensing and protection, thanks to the former Licensing Corporation of America, a division inside then-Warner Communications. This former division helped a lot in protecting the intellectual property rights of DC Comics characters and also (very likely) guided MAD magazine to avoid libel/slander suits; the legacy of this former group ensures that Rowling's creations get proper intellectual property protection worldwide and also ensure proper product licensing.
I am so glad that Windows NT 4.0 is being phased out.
The lack of modern DirectX support and the lack of Plug and Play support makes Windows NT 4.0 Workstation a very finicky OS to work with, especially if you're doing hardware upgrades. With Windows 2000 Professional, not only do you get full ACPI Plug and Play support (this means you can easily connect hot-docked devices through the USB and IEEE-1394 ports), but also because it does work with DirectX 9.0a you can install the majority of the latest games out there. I wouldn't be surprised that many serious gamers actually prefer Windows 2000 Professional, because Win2K Pro in some ways has less OS overhead than Windows XP.
Unfortunately, the cost of converting over to Linux will not be as inexpensive as you think.
Between the costs of qualifying an approved Linux distribution and retraining a huge number of people to use and maintain the OS on the client and server side, the cost could run into many billions of US dollars. The US government has so much invested in Microsoft products that any conversion to Linux would be exorbitantly expensive, even with the fact Linux has no per-server or per-seat licenses.
I think the concept of an online comic--especially an online comic strip--is still not completely viable just yet.
Sure, you can do long, long story arcs and be a bit more adult in material presentation, but I still wonder are long-time online comic strips like Kevin and Kell, User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance and Megatokyo actually profitable for their creators. I wonder how much money are the creators of these online strips make from online ads and book reprints of the comic. Also, production deadline issues can be a problem; this has plagued Sluggy and Megatokyo every now and then.
Yep. In fact, a top-secret report done by the Zeppelin company in late 1937 actually verified that problem, noting that the doping material on the canvas covering burned extremely rapidly and was easily ignited. That was why when the short-lived Graf Zeppelin II was built the airship used a different the doping compound and also put in better resistance to static electricity discharges.
Had the report by the Zeppelin company been made public in 1938 it would have been possible to have resumed airship service because the Graf Zeppelin II's improved safety systems would have drastically reduced the chance of the fire that destroyed Hindenberg.
Indeed, hydrogen gas--even if it burns--is actually much safer than natural gas and gasoline. This is because hydrogen burns only one way--straight up; a natural gas explosion tends to spread the flame in all directions. This is why transport ships carrying liquified natural gas have a lot of safety systems and also the ship must have considerable spacing away from other ships while operating.
It appears that the RIAA has been judo chopped by the "invisible hand" of economics.
I mean between the fact that the RIAA is acting like an economic cartel and the fact they've set the price point somewhere in the stratosphere (e.g., US$18 or more per album-length audio Compact Disc), no wonder why sales are nose-diving. Anyone's who's taken a beginning course in economics in college knows that if a cartel sets its price too high, there is WAY too much economic incentive for consumer to thwart that cartel, hence the rise of file-sharing sites like the late Napster.com. If the RIAA had set its price at US$11 per album-length CD, the economic incentive to pirate music drops dramatically to the point that music piracy would not be worth the effort.
It is the MPAA allowing new-release DVD movies to be priced at US$20-US$24 that has actually discouraged movie piracy here in the USA, along with the fact that broadband Internet access is still not common and also that the file size of DiVX files of a movie are still very daunting to download even with cable modem connections.
The biggest technical hurdle with high resolution digital movie cameras is moving all that data from the CCD to the disks.
Sounds like a job for computers with PCI Express connections and Fibre Channel interface to hard drives! =) Maybe this high bandwidth requirement is the reason why PCI Express is being rolled out?
While the Maxivision format Roger Ebert touts is in theory a great idea, it still has some major downsides:
1. You need 50 percent more film for a two hour movie. That means shipping costs for one print of a movie will be quite a bit higher even if the film distribution company gets rate breaks from UPS and FedEx.
2. You still haven't solved the problem of film breakage and scratching.
3. Because projectors have to run at 48 fps all day, that means projectors will have to be built with tighter mechanical tolerances. And that means much more stringent training for projectionists to operate and fix these units.
Besides, with the rapid advancements in optical storage in the last 24 months, by 2010 we could easily stamp out 300 mm diameter optical discs that could store over ten terabytes on a single double-sided 300 mm disc. With MPEG-4 compression, a high-quality 2,000-line resolution movie running at 48 fps for two hours could easily fit on a 10 TB optical disc, plus lots of space left for dialogue soundtracks in multiple languages and subtitles in multiple languages.
I agree with your assessments about the cost of film.
Normally, each 20-minute reel of 35 mm movie film weighs 35 pounds; a two hour movie print will weigh around 210 pounds per print. Small wonder why even on blockbuster films they usually roll the movie out in one region first due to the time and cost need to produce and ship thousands of prints of a movie for worldwide distribution.
With the rapid developments in optical disc storage technology, we will within a few years put on ONE 300 mm wide optical disc weighing at a little over 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) a two-hour movie with 2,000 lines resolution that no only has the English-language soundtrack, but dialogue soundtracks in as many as 8-9 other languages and subtitles in another 10 or more languages! Or by reducing the number of languages available, we could even make the same disc play 48 frames per second playback (the same as the much-touted Maxivision format) for sharp and very smooth motion playback. And given the maturity of the technology making optical discs now, we could stamp out several thousand copies of a movie in high-resolution digital format in a matter of hours, not to mention saving many millions in shipping costs!
I foresee by 2010 a digital projector that will actually be smaller than today's film projectors, with the biggest part of the projector being the projector lamp itself.
According to Microsoft's position, they will officially support Windows 2000 Professional/Server right through the end of 2005.
This means they will still have the signed driver program and WHQL certification program in place for the next 30 months. I expect Microsoft to offer at least up to Service Pack 6 for Win2K before the official support program ends at the end of 2005.
Besides, Windows 2000 Professional is a very nice OS, with very good stability and decent security if you apply all the proper security patches (something that should be done on all operating systems on a regular basis).
From pictures I've seen, the Soyuz spacecraft was definitely much roomier than the Apollo spacecraft, given there are two pressurized sections of the spacecraft. It was fortunate the the Russians were able to overcome the early chequered history of the spacecraft, given the Soyuz 1 crash and the unfortunate air leak that killed the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts. The newest Soyuz T-4 variant owes almost nothing to the original Soyuz design with its interior design.
The Russians had a couple of close calls with their Soyuz program during the 1980's. I remember that one time during a launch the second stage shut down prematurely, forcing an emergency landing that nearly had the Soyuz capsule end up in China. In 1983, the rocket carrying a Soyuz spacecraft literally caught fire on the launch pad, and it was decided to have the astronauts escape using the escape rocket tower, which was a right decision because 20 seconds after the escape rocket tower fired carrying the Soyuz spacecraft away the rocket literally collapsed on the launch pad in a big ball of fire.
However, Boeing has yet to fully commit to production of 767-based tankers and the new AWACS/JSTARS plane based on the 767-400ER.
I can see Boeing producing 70-80 767 tankers to the USAF, then production switches over to a 7E7-based tanker for as many as 200-250 planes. The current KC-135 fleet is aging rapidly, even with the re-engining of much of the KC-135 fleet to F108 (CFM56) engines in the KC-135R configuration.
The combo AWACS/JSTARS based on the 767-400ER is still in the study phase, so there is still time for Boeing to design a 7E7 variant that can fill this role down the road. A more intriguing possibility is a 7E7-based plane for ELINT/SIGINT operations like those performed by the RC-135's in the Cobra Ball configuration; the new plane will offer more overall space for sensors and data-processing equipment to analyze hostile RF emissions just for starters, not to mention more comfortable acccommodations for the 25 or so crew members the plane will likely carry.
Yes, propfan engines can be very fuel-efficient, but first they have to correct the noise problem that plagued early propfans like GE's UDF. I think that can be done by switching from eight to ten blades per spinner and very careful design of the fan blade itself. If it works, the result could be as much as 20% fuel savings over today's A320 or 737-800 jets, something that a LOT of airlines are interested in given that fuel costs are a large fraction of the overhead costs of running an airline.
I think Boeing's next airplane project after the 7E7 will be developing a replacement for the 737-600/700/800/900 series.
It will probably be a revival of the 7J7 project from the late 1980's, but instead of a propfan engine (though I think modern technology could make a propfan viable again) the new plane could use uprated CFM56 or V2500 engines. The plane will likely seat about 120 to 170 passengers, sport a wider fuselage, will likely use the same composite-heavy structural design being planned for the 7E7.
I think one possibility is that Boeing may be pushing for sales of airplanes based on the 7E7 design to the USAF.
This means air-refuelling tankers, 2-3 VIP transports, a combination AWACS/JSTARS airborne radar platform and Electronic Intelligence/Signals Intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) planes to replace the aging RC-135W/X fleet.
I think Boeing has identified the following rationales for the 7E7 design:
1. A lot of older widebody twin-engine airliners are going to have to be replaced before 2010. The older Airbus A300B2/B4 models are starting to be phased out from airline fleets, as are the older production 767's dating from the early to mid 1980's.
2. The plane's very modern use of aerospace materials will mean relatively low weight of the plane carrying 200-250 passengers, lowering the fuel burn on a seat-mile basis. This means lower fuel costs on routes anywhere between 2,000 to 7,500 nautical miles.
3. Because the 7E7 will use contemporary aerodynamic research, the plane could actually fly faster than the 747-400, if the right engine design can be found. This means the possibility of Mach 0.89 to 0.90 cruise speed, which offers most of the benefits of the Sonic Cruiser with far technical risk in terms of new technology needed.
4. The plane will offer Boeing's Connexion broadband Internet access system as standard on the longer-range models. Imagine being able to access the Internet at minimum one megabits per second download speed in flight.
I think you'll be surprised how many airlines actually DO want a more efficient medium to long range 200-250 seat airliner with reasonably high cruise speeds. While the Airbus A330-200 has been a sale success, the plane is still too heavy and big for many airlines and its cruise speed still can't keep up with the Boeing 777-200ER's and 747-400's that dominate longer range flying today.
Actually, it wouldn't take much to enable a Sidebar function in IE 6.01 SP1.
Right now, if you "press" on the Search, Favorites or History buttons on the IE 6.0x toolbar, it automatically opens a window on the left side that looks almost exactly like a Sidebar; it wouldn't take much of a Service Pack to turn that into a full Sidebar functionality.
I think in many ways the US Government--particularly the CIA--actually encouraged reports of UFO's to keep secret a number of CIA spyplane programs.
Both the Lockheed-built U-2 and the A-12/SR-71 were developed under CIA auspices, and the so-called UFO reports were designed to throw off the trail of Soviet espionage agents so any sightings of the U-2 or A-12 in test flights would be dismissed as UFO sightings. Such reports would have been useful to deflect attention from Lockheed's Have Blue stealth research airplane during the late 1970's, Northrup's Tacit Blue stealth reconnaissance research airplane during the 1980's and the Boeing Bird of Prey stealth research airplane during the 1990's.
I think while the core of Internet Explorer 6.01 SP1 for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP won't be updated, you may still see a number of Service Packs being released that may increase the functionality of the browser. I forsee Service Packs down the pipe that will do the following:
1. Provide better web page standards support, including better rendering of.PNG graphics files.
2. Introduction of the Sidebar, something that was in early betas of IE 6.0 but was left out of the final edition. It will be highly customizable, much more so than what you see in Netscape 7.02 or the latest Mozilla builds.
3. Possible introduction of tabbed browsing for easier handling of multiple web pages.
I think the anti-nuclear crowd have NO understanding of nuclear power, to say the least.
Let's take a look at Chernobyl, the anti-nuke crowd's favorite example of nuclear hazards. There were two major things about that disaster: 1) there was NO containment structure to keep the radioactive particle release to a reasonable level if something did go wrong, and 2) the reactor's design was an inherently unsafe design to start with. That ill-advised test caused the fissile material to overheat, and when they tried to moderate it with graphite rods the result was a major explosion of radioactive materials into the air.
The latest in nuclear reactor designs (the pebble-bed reactor) is vastly more safer than previous nuclear reactors, since by design it is nearly impossible to melt down the fissile material in the reactor itself. Also, unlike older reactor designs the pebble-bed reactor doesn't need massive cooling structures, which adds a lot to the cost of construction. Because of its inherent safety, that's why the Prometheus reactors for space use will be pebble-bed units, which don't need to be large-sized units like the old NERVA engines tested during the 1960's.
And they certainly don't understand nuclear waste storage, either. Today, nuclear waste can be made much less dangerous by mixing the waste with glass (which right there cuts the radioactive output significantly) and then stored in disused salt mines and/or salt domes above spent oil fields. Given that salt is an excellent absorber of radiation, that cuts the radioactive risk even further. In many cases, the higher-level radioactive waste could be re-processed into new nuclear fuel or create nuclear materials for radiotherapy cancer treatments.
New you know why I detest the anti-nuclear crowd in many ways. (getting off soapbox)
Actually, once IBM spent US$1 billion to port Linux over to their AS/400 and mainframe hardware, the writing was on the wall for Sun: IBM will not take Sun's threat sitting down.
I personally believe much of Linux's rapid acceptance for large-scale computing needs is due to the very fact IBM big iron hardware can run Linux easily today.
What galls Sun quite a lot is the fact IBM's own development tools for Java are vastly preferred over Sun's own development tools. I think IBM should just buy out Java from Sun and save developers a lot of grief. =)
I personally prefer AOL Instant Messenger not only because it's easier to use than ICQ, but most of the people I know that use instant messaging are on AOL IM. Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger users are a much small group compared to AOL IM users.
Good thing I have Windows 2000 Professional running with the Japanese and Traditional Chinese (Big5) character sets installed and could see what you're doing. =)
But it's still a somewhat awkward method of creating Chinese and Japanese characters on-screen. The Japanese could do this somewhat better because their hiregana and katakana characters can be used to "build up" kanji characters. That's why in manga anthologies intended for younger readers (e.g., Shounen Jump for boys, Nakayoshi for girls), you see small furi characters right next to the kanji characters in the word balloons; these are the hiregana characters that act as pronounciation and "meaning" guides for the kanji characters.
I believe in Japan, the Ministry of Education requires that in order to graduate out of high school you have the know the hiregana and katakana characters, plus 1,980 kanji characters. This is the reference standard for newspapers, periodicals and adult-oriented manga.
Yes, you can go over 3,000 kanji characters being used in Japanese, but it's only older books that are printed this way (though it can be generated by modern Japanese word processing programs). Mind you, Japanese has changed a lot since the introduction of kanji writing by Chinese Bhuddist monks.
There is a form of theater in Japan called Noh that uses a very old form of Japanese--so old that today's Japanese audience have to bring a libretto book that translates this old form of the language into the modern language. It would be the equivalent of today's English-speaking peoples using a libretto book to follow along a play written in Old English.
Slashdot Mirror
She [Rowling] probably didn't want to deal with all of the paperwork of subcontracting each individual entity for these things (a company to make toys, &c) and it may have been a mandatory, and not terribly offensive part of the deal for her.
I think Rowling chose AOL Time Warner because the Time-Warner side of AOLTW has a famous legacy of intellectual property licensing and protection, thanks to the former Licensing Corporation of America, a division inside then-Warner Communications. This former division helped a lot in protecting the intellectual property rights of DC Comics characters and also (very likely) guided MAD magazine to avoid libel/slander suits; the legacy of this former group ensures that Rowling's creations get proper intellectual property protection worldwide and also ensure proper product licensing.
I am so glad that Windows NT 4.0 is being phased out.
The lack of modern DirectX support and the lack of Plug and Play support makes Windows NT 4.0 Workstation a very finicky OS to work with, especially if you're doing hardware upgrades. With Windows 2000 Professional, not only do you get full ACPI Plug and Play support (this means you can easily connect hot-docked devices through the USB and IEEE-1394 ports), but also because it does work with DirectX 9.0a you can install the majority of the latest games out there. I wouldn't be surprised that many serious gamers actually prefer Windows 2000 Professional, because Win2K Pro in some ways has less OS overhead than Windows XP.
Unfortunately, the cost of converting over to Linux will not be as inexpensive as you think.
Between the costs of qualifying an approved Linux distribution and retraining a huge number of people to use and maintain the OS on the client and server side, the cost could run into many billions of US dollars. The US government has so much invested in Microsoft products that any conversion to Linux would be exorbitantly expensive, even with the fact Linux has no per-server or per-seat licenses.
I think the concept of an online comic--especially an online comic strip--is still not completely viable just yet.
Sure, you can do long, long story arcs and be a bit more adult in material presentation, but I still wonder are long-time online comic strips like Kevin and Kell, User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance and Megatokyo actually profitable for their creators. I wonder how much money are the creators of these online strips make from online ads and book reprints of the comic. Also, production deadline issues can be a problem; this has plagued Sluggy and Megatokyo every now and then.
Yep. In fact, a top-secret report done by the Zeppelin company in late 1937 actually verified that problem, noting that the doping material on the canvas covering burned extremely rapidly and was easily ignited. That was why when the short-lived Graf Zeppelin II was built the airship used a different the doping compound and also put in better resistance to static electricity discharges.
Had the report by the Zeppelin company been made public in 1938 it would have been possible to have resumed airship service because the Graf Zeppelin II's improved safety systems would have drastically reduced the chance of the fire that destroyed Hindenberg.
Indeed, hydrogen gas--even if it burns--is actually much safer than natural gas and gasoline. This is because hydrogen burns only one way--straight up; a natural gas explosion tends to spread the flame in all directions. This is why transport ships carrying liquified natural gas have a lot of safety systems and also the ship must have considerable spacing away from other ships while operating.
It appears that the RIAA has been judo chopped by the "invisible hand" of economics.
I mean between the fact that the RIAA is acting like an economic cartel and the fact they've set the price point somewhere in the stratosphere (e.g., US$18 or more per album-length audio Compact Disc), no wonder why sales are nose-diving. Anyone's who's taken a beginning course in economics in college knows that if a cartel sets its price too high, there is WAY too much economic incentive for consumer to thwart that cartel, hence the rise of file-sharing sites like the late Napster.com. If the RIAA had set its price at US$11 per album-length CD, the economic incentive to pirate music drops dramatically to the point that music piracy would not be worth the effort.
It is the MPAA allowing new-release DVD movies to be priced at US$20-US$24 that has actually discouraged movie piracy here in the USA, along with the fact that broadband Internet access is still not common and also that the file size of DiVX files of a movie are still very daunting to download even with cable modem connections.
The biggest technical hurdle with high resolution digital movie cameras is moving all that data from the CCD to the disks.
Sounds like a job for computers with PCI Express connections and Fibre Channel interface to hard drives! =) Maybe this high bandwidth requirement is the reason why PCI Express is being rolled out?
While the Maxivision format Roger Ebert touts is in theory a great idea, it still has some major downsides:
1. You need 50 percent more film for a two hour movie. That means shipping costs for one print of a movie will be quite a bit higher even if the film distribution company gets rate breaks from UPS and FedEx.
2. You still haven't solved the problem of film breakage and scratching.
3. Because projectors have to run at 48 fps all day, that means projectors will have to be built with tighter mechanical tolerances. And that means much more stringent training for projectionists to operate and fix these units.
Besides, with the rapid advancements in optical storage in the last 24 months, by 2010 we could easily stamp out 300 mm diameter optical discs that could store over ten terabytes on a single double-sided 300 mm disc. With MPEG-4 compression, a high-quality 2,000-line resolution movie running at 48 fps for two hours could easily fit on a 10 TB optical disc, plus lots of space left for dialogue soundtracks in multiple languages and subtitles in multiple languages.
I agree with your assessments about the cost of film.
Normally, each 20-minute reel of 35 mm movie film weighs 35 pounds; a two hour movie print will weigh around 210 pounds per print. Small wonder why even on blockbuster films they usually roll the movie out in one region first due to the time and cost need to produce and ship thousands of prints of a movie for worldwide distribution.
With the rapid developments in optical disc storage technology, we will within a few years put on ONE 300 mm wide optical disc weighing at a little over 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) a two-hour movie with 2,000 lines resolution that no only has the English-language soundtrack, but dialogue soundtracks in as many as 8-9 other languages and subtitles in another 10 or more languages! Or by reducing the number of languages available, we could even make the same disc play 48 frames per second playback (the same as the much-touted Maxivision format) for sharp and very smooth motion playback. And given the maturity of the technology making optical discs now, we could stamp out several thousand copies of a movie in high-resolution digital format in a matter of hours, not to mention saving many millions in shipping costs!
I foresee by 2010 a digital projector that will actually be smaller than today's film projectors, with the biggest part of the projector being the projector lamp itself.
According to Microsoft's position, they will officially support Windows 2000 Professional/Server right through the end of 2005.
This means they will still have the signed driver program and WHQL certification program in place for the next 30 months. I expect Microsoft to offer at least up to Service Pack 6 for Win2K before the official support program ends at the end of 2005.
Besides, Windows 2000 Professional is a very nice OS, with very good stability and decent security if you apply all the proper security patches (something that should be done on all operating systems on a regular basis).
From pictures I've seen, the Soyuz spacecraft was definitely much roomier than the Apollo spacecraft, given there are two pressurized sections of the spacecraft. It was fortunate the the Russians were able to overcome the early chequered history of the spacecraft, given the Soyuz 1 crash and the unfortunate air leak that killed the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts. The newest Soyuz T-4 variant owes almost nothing to the original Soyuz design with its interior design.
The Russians had a couple of close calls with their Soyuz program during the 1980's. I remember that one time during a launch the second stage shut down prematurely, forcing an emergency landing that nearly had the Soyuz capsule end up in China. In 1983, the rocket carrying a Soyuz spacecraft literally caught fire on the launch pad, and it was decided to have the astronauts escape using the escape rocket tower, which was a right decision because 20 seconds after the escape rocket tower fired carrying the Soyuz spacecraft away the rocket literally collapsed on the launch pad in a big ball of fire.
However, Boeing has yet to fully commit to production of 767-based tankers and the new AWACS/JSTARS plane based on the 767-400ER.
I can see Boeing producing 70-80 767 tankers to the USAF, then production switches over to a 7E7-based tanker for as many as 200-250 planes. The current KC-135 fleet is aging rapidly, even with the re-engining of much of the KC-135 fleet to F108 (CFM56) engines in the KC-135R configuration.
The combo AWACS/JSTARS based on the 767-400ER is still in the study phase, so there is still time for Boeing to design a 7E7 variant that can fill this role down the road. A more intriguing possibility is a 7E7-based plane for ELINT/SIGINT operations like those performed by the RC-135's in the Cobra Ball configuration; the new plane will offer more overall space for sensors and data-processing equipment to analyze hostile RF emissions just for starters, not to mention more comfortable acccommodations for the 25 or so crew members the plane will likely carry.
Yes, propfan engines can be very fuel-efficient, but first they have to correct the noise problem that plagued early propfans like GE's UDF. I think that can be done by switching from eight to ten blades per spinner and very careful design of the fan blade itself. If it works, the result could be as much as 20% fuel savings over today's A320 or 737-800 jets, something that a LOT of airlines are interested in given that fuel costs are a large fraction of the overhead costs of running an airline.
I think Boeing's next airplane project after the 7E7 will be developing a replacement for the 737-600/700/800/900 series.
It will probably be a revival of the 7J7 project from the late 1980's, but instead of a propfan engine (though I think modern technology could make a propfan viable again) the new plane could use uprated CFM56 or V2500 engines. The plane will likely seat about 120 to 170 passengers, sport a wider fuselage, will likely use the same composite-heavy structural design being planned for the 7E7.
I think one possibility is that Boeing may be pushing for sales of airplanes based on the 7E7 design to the USAF.
This means air-refuelling tankers, 2-3 VIP transports, a combination AWACS/JSTARS airborne radar platform and Electronic Intelligence/Signals Intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) planes to replace the aging RC-135W/X fleet.
I think Boeing has identified the following rationales for the 7E7 design:
1. A lot of older widebody twin-engine airliners are going to have to be replaced before 2010. The older Airbus A300B2/B4 models are starting to be phased out from airline fleets, as are the older production 767's dating from the early to mid 1980's.
2. The plane's very modern use of aerospace materials will mean relatively low weight of the plane carrying 200-250 passengers, lowering the fuel burn on a seat-mile basis. This means lower fuel costs on routes anywhere between 2,000 to 7,500 nautical miles.
3. Because the 7E7 will use contemporary aerodynamic research, the plane could actually fly faster than the 747-400, if the right engine design can be found. This means the possibility of Mach 0.89 to 0.90 cruise speed, which offers most of the benefits of the Sonic Cruiser with far technical risk in terms of new technology needed.
4. The plane will offer Boeing's Connexion broadband Internet access system as standard on the longer-range models. Imagine being able to access the Internet at minimum one megabits per second download speed in flight.
I think you'll be surprised how many airlines actually DO want a more efficient medium to long range 200-250 seat airliner with reasonably high cruise speeds. While the Airbus A330-200 has been a sale success, the plane is still too heavy and big for many airlines and its cruise speed still can't keep up with the Boeing 777-200ER's and 747-400's that dominate longer range flying today.
Actually, it wouldn't take much to enable a Sidebar function in IE 6.01 SP1.
Right now, if you "press" on the Search, Favorites or History buttons on the IE 6.0x toolbar, it automatically opens a window on the left side that looks almost exactly like a Sidebar; it wouldn't take much of a Service Pack to turn that into a full Sidebar functionality.
I think in many ways the US Government--particularly the CIA--actually encouraged reports of UFO's to keep secret a number of CIA spyplane programs.
Both the Lockheed-built U-2 and the A-12/SR-71 were developed under CIA auspices, and the so-called UFO reports were designed to throw off the trail of Soviet espionage agents so any sightings of the U-2 or A-12 in test flights would be dismissed as UFO sightings. Such reports would have been useful to deflect attention from Lockheed's Have Blue stealth research airplane during the late 1970's, Northrup's Tacit Blue stealth reconnaissance research airplane during the 1980's and the Boeing Bird of Prey stealth research airplane during the 1990's.
I think while the core of Internet Explorer 6.01 SP1 for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP won't be updated, you may still see a number of Service Packs being released that may increase the functionality of the browser. I forsee Service Packs down the pipe that will do the following:
.PNG graphics files.
1. Provide better web page standards support, including better rendering of
2. Introduction of the Sidebar, something that was in early betas of IE 6.0 but was left out of the final edition. It will be highly customizable, much more so than what you see in Netscape 7.02 or the latest Mozilla builds.
3. Possible introduction of tabbed browsing for easier handling of multiple web pages.
I think the anti-nuclear crowd have NO understanding of nuclear power, to say the least.
Let's take a look at Chernobyl, the anti-nuke crowd's favorite example of nuclear hazards. There were two major things about that disaster: 1) there was NO containment structure to keep the radioactive particle release to a reasonable level if something did go wrong, and 2) the reactor's design was an inherently unsafe design to start with. That ill-advised test caused the fissile material to overheat, and when they tried to moderate it with graphite rods the result was a major explosion of radioactive materials into the air.
The latest in nuclear reactor designs (the pebble-bed reactor) is vastly more safer than previous nuclear reactors, since by design it is nearly impossible to melt down the fissile material in the reactor itself. Also, unlike older reactor designs the pebble-bed reactor doesn't need massive cooling structures, which adds a lot to the cost of construction. Because of its inherent safety, that's why the Prometheus reactors for space use will be pebble-bed units, which don't need to be large-sized units like the old NERVA engines tested during the 1960's.
And they certainly don't understand nuclear waste storage, either. Today, nuclear waste can be made much less dangerous by mixing the waste with glass (which right there cuts the radioactive output significantly) and then stored in disused salt mines and/or salt domes above spent oil fields. Given that salt is an excellent absorber of radiation, that cuts the radioactive risk even further. In many cases, the higher-level radioactive waste could be re-processed into new nuclear fuel or create nuclear materials for radiotherapy cancer treatments.
New you know why I detest the anti-nuclear crowd in many ways. (getting off soapbox)
Actually, once IBM spent US$1 billion to port Linux over to their AS/400 and mainframe hardware, the writing was on the wall for Sun: IBM will not take Sun's threat sitting down.
I personally believe much of Linux's rapid acceptance for large-scale computing needs is due to the very fact IBM big iron hardware can run Linux easily today.
What galls Sun quite a lot is the fact IBM's own development tools for Java are vastly preferred over Sun's own development tools. I think IBM should just buy out Java from Sun and save developers a lot of grief. =)
I personally prefer AOL Instant Messenger not only because it's easier to use than ICQ, but most of the people I know that use instant messaging are on AOL IM. Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger users are a much small group compared to AOL IM users.
Good thing I have Windows 2000 Professional running with the Japanese and Traditional Chinese (Big5) character sets installed and could see what you're doing. =)
But it's still a somewhat awkward method of creating Chinese and Japanese characters on-screen. The Japanese could do this somewhat better because their hiregana and katakana characters can be used to "build up" kanji characters. That's why in manga anthologies intended for younger readers (e.g., Shounen Jump for boys, Nakayoshi for girls), you see small furi characters right next to the kanji characters in the word balloons; these are the hiregana characters that act as pronounciation and "meaning" guides for the kanji characters.
I believe in Japan, the Ministry of Education requires that in order to graduate out of high school you have the know the hiregana and katakana characters, plus 1,980 kanji characters. This is the reference standard for newspapers, periodicals and adult-oriented manga.
Yes, you can go over 3,000 kanji characters being used in Japanese, but it's only older books that are printed this way (though it can be generated by modern Japanese word processing programs). Mind you, Japanese has changed a lot since the introduction of kanji writing by Chinese Bhuddist monks.
There is a form of theater in Japan called Noh that uses a very old form of Japanese--so old that today's Japanese audience have to bring a libretto book that translates this old form of the language into the modern language. It would be the equivalent of today's English-speaking peoples using a libretto book to follow along a play written in Old English.