And discourse with you is like listening to a recording.
I've already read your statements that PATRIOT Act is in effect. I've read your statements that it was enacted by Congress and signed by the sitting President. I've heard all that. Several times. Yet you feel that if you just say it enough, I and others will realize that it makes everything OK, and PATRIOT is my friend, and if my congressmen voted for it it must be OK...
It doesn't make the bill a good bill. It doesn't make it constitutional. What makes a bill constitutional is for the bill to be compliant with the provisions of the Constitution and its amendments. The way that gets tested is that a Federal court hears a case in which a specific section of the law in question is challenged, and then hands down a decision. This decision can be appealed, by either side, all the way up to the SCOTUS, who can then decide whether or not to hear the appeal. Their decision is final, unless they choose to revisit it. The SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of Constitutionality in the USA, and they have not handed down a SINGLE decision re: PATRIOT Act that I've been able to find.
IOW, krimka, your assertion that PATRIOT has been approved by the SCOTUS will require additional evidence. Repeating the assertion isn't evidence.
Would you like to know why I object to PATRIOT Act? Here's a sample: The Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as conduct that violates state or federal law and is dangerous to human life.
WHAT?
By that definition, you could just as easily say that driving in the rain without your headlights is domestic terrorism. Is that a reasonable interpretation? Of course not. But consider this. The FBI, at the bidding of the MPAA, used the PATRIOT Act to obtain financial records to be used in the prosecution of a website administrator. The charges? That he was distributing old episodes of Stargate SG-1. Now, I don't care HOW much you hate Stargate - that's not terrorism. That's abuse of powers.
Lastly, let's settle this thing about "rude". Every time you question whether someone who opposes PATRIOT Act is truly an American, suggest that they are on the side of the terrorists (whichever terrorists we're pissed about this year), or suggest that their only motivation behind opposition to PATRIOT Act is to garner some sort of "points" in some game, you insult that person most poisonously. Dissenting discourse is about as American as it can get, and the unAmerican way is to try to suppress discourse from the opposition. In the face of that, my telling you NOT to be "stupid" is a fart in a hurricane. I'll retract my suggestion that you have the potential to be stupid the moment you retract your assertion, in every commment you've made attached to this article, that opposition to PATRIOT Act is unAmerican.
Every time you repeat the calumny about "jeopardizing our safety so they can score some political points" and "weak on security", you echo the words of another manipulator of sheep. Since you seem to think that repetition==argument, I'll repeat those words for you again. See if they sound familiar.
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." -Hermann Goering, Nuremburg, 1947
Don't be stupid. Laws have been passed and found unconstitutional before. So have parts of this one, already, and I believe that a challenge to certain other parts would be successful as well. Hell, even Amendments to the Constitution have been repealed when they turned out to be oppressive and wrong. The only way this law would survive a real Supreme Court hearing is if Bush packs the SCOTUS with the ultra-conservative puppets that he so clearly wants to.
Just to set the record straight, that's NOT all you're saying. You're also saying, in so many words, that people who oppose PATRIOT Act are people "who don't think we are in danger from terrorists" and aren't "Normal Americans" and that as a result terrorists have "Americans like you on their side". You are essentially stating that my (and others') opposition to the unconstitutional and oppressive PATRIOT Act makes us unpatriotic, unAmerican, and a danger to America. Just like Goering said.
No, sir, the real danger from America comes from you and your sheep-like ilk. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin. Doesn't get more American than that.
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." -Hermann Goering, Nuremburg, 1947
You've been brainwashed, krimka. Brainwashed. Nobody wants terrorism here. Neither do we want our Constitutionally-mandated civil rights abrogated.
If you could say that PATRIOT Act could and would ONLY be used to investigate terrorists, that would be a different story. But you can't say that: firstly, because we've already seen that it isn't true; secondly, because the more power you give to law enforcement personnel, the more those individual persons will abuse it - it's just too easy to say, "uh, yeah, it's a terrorism investigation, sure"; and thirdly, because you won't know that they're terrorists until AFTER you've violated their constitutional rights.
The fact that a group of assholes have committed horrible crimes against Americans, in the name of Islam or whatever, does not justify the abrogation of the Constitutional rights of Americans, and *I* resent your implicit belittling of the sacrifices of those thousands (millions?) of Americans who have *knowingly* and *willingly* fought and died to protect those rights.
True story: a cousin of mine is involved with in a child custody case. The father is a cop - doesn't want anything to do with her (one night stand), but is fighting for custody of the baby. He has illegally taped her phone conversations, harassed her, attempted to enter her home against her express permission, done god knows what sort of research into non-publically-available files in order to get ammunition for the court case... and it's twice as hard to stop him because he's a cop. She's not a criminal, but she certainly needs to fear the police. And it's not just him - who knows how many of his fellow officers are willing to abuse their powers to "help one of their own"?
Truth is, the more power you give policemen and law enforcement in general, the more that power will get abused. PATRIOT act is a perfect example; it's intended to fight terrorism, but people who have nothing to do with terror are being attacked with it. It may be true that some of them are guilty of other crimes... but that doesn't make the abuse OK. If 20,000 people have their rights violated to catch 10 criminals, then PATRIOT is wrong, wrong, wrong. It violates not only the letter but the spirit of the Constitution of the United States - same one Ashcroft, Bush, etc., have sworn to uphold.
"Laws aren't enough to prevent bad people from doing bad things."
Nope. You got that right. But PATRIOT makes it easier for law enforcement to do bad things.
So, you're saying that the intent will always match the usage? It never will be (and never has been) used for purposes other than combating terrorism? You're new on this world, aren't you?
Ever heard of a guy named J. Edgar Hoover? Richard Nixon? You think if you come home someday and find a bug on your phone you're going to be able to say into it, "Whoa, dude, I'm a musician, not a terrorist!" and they'll immediately come remove the bug?
Only terrorism, huh? How about this? How about this? Or this?
Dude, face facts. It doesn't matter what the people who voted for the PATRIOT act intended, what matters is how it's used - or, in reality, abused. Fact is, it's being used EXACTLY the way Ashcroft and cronies intended - for non-terror-related investigations.
They tested the systems with (as far as I could tell) nothing but 32-bit binaries on a 32-bit OS. Nothing that any of the AMD's did was "64-bit" at all. This wasn't a 64-bit vs. 32-bit comparison. If anything, the AMDs were handicapped by not being able to use their full capabilities.
Besides, even if it was a tilted comparison, SO WHAT? The real take-home message here is that the Intel P4EE isn't 64-bit capable, doesn't run 32-bit software as fast as the Athlons run the same software, and yet the P4EE still costs more money.
Honestly, your assertion that the comparison was unfair makes NO sense to me at all.
I, speaking practically no languages other than English, am not prone to correct errors which are clearly due to a non-native-English-speaker's unfamiliarity with English idiom - especially American idiom. I mostly wondered what you meant with the 8 thing.
An air conditioner, as pointed out by another poster, consumes a certain amount of energy in order to move a certain amount of energy. In order to move (e.g.) 100W of heat from your home to the outside, the air conditioner will require (e.g.) 30W of power for its operation. That means that 100W of heat leave your home, 30W of electricity enter your A/C, and 130W of heat leave your A/C. Most of the heat that is given off is, in fact, the heat being removed from your fine home. This would be described in terms of the COP (coefficient of performance) as being about COP=3.3, which is nice.
Peltiers, OTOH, are much less efficient than (e.g.) freon-based heat pumps. The COP is usually less than one, meaning that to move 100W of heat, you would need to input more than 100W of electricity, and 200W or more of heat would be dissipated.
The reason that one might use a Peltier for CPU cooling isn't efficiency, it's efficacy. The rate of heat transfer from a warm medium to a cooler medium is related to the temperature difference. So to get 70W of heat out of the CPU into the heatsink and thus into the air, the heatsink (and consequently the CPU) has to be (HAS to be) much warmer than ambient, or else be REALLY large. Using a Peltier, you can cool a CPU much closer to, or even (as you point out) lower than ambient, despite the heatsink being much hotter than ambient. And that's the advantage - the CPU can be cool, working at its best, while the heatsink is hot, working at its best.
It is possible to achieve COP greater than one, wherein less power is consumed than is moved, through careful device design. I'm not well-versed in Peltier device design, though, so I can't tell you how that's done. At that point, the heat dissipated would still be greater than the heat removed from the CPU.
The real advantage of a Peltier isn't getting the CPU cooler than ambient, it's getting it cooler than the heatsink. And it does it without moving parts, chemicals, etc. Whether the electricity cost is worth it or not depends on the application.
What I find interesting...is why doesn't anyone massively manufacture faster CPUs basing their underlying design on the ZX Spectrum...
Oh, I know this one! It's because they're all stupid, right?
I'm certain that the engineers and scientists at Intel, AMD, VIA, Transmeta, Motorola, IBM, SGI, etc. (many of whom with EARNED Ph.D's) are all sitting around reading Slashdot so that they can harvest your pearls of wisdom, and learn from the master how to build faster microprocessors. If they would just clock a Z80 at 2 GHz, they could run BASIC programs REALLY fast!
No, wait - that's not it. They're not building the fastest, most efficient architectures they can BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO. Same reason Microsoft won't release the secure version of Windows XP, and Linus won't allow a user-friendly version of Linux. They're deliberately denying YOU your god-given right to run small, efficient code at high speeds so that they can maintain control over your brainwaves... no?
Oh, yeah. Maybe it's because IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE, and pretending to have a Ph.D. doesn't actually confer any knowledge or intelligence. Hmm?
And AAC. At least unprotected. I'll never use the iTunes Music Store."
Yes, SIR! We'll get right on it. Firewire, OGG support, and AAC support. No copy protection, and no need for iTunes - we'll simply put all of your favorite music on it from the factory.
Oh, and for YOU - it will be free, of course. And a blowjob, with our compliments.
...or C) Apple has realized that there is a large segment of the population that wants to carry around mp3s, etc., of music that they've ALREADY BOUGHT and have THEMSELVES RIPPED so that they can listen to all of their OWN music wherever they go.
That's still legal here in the US.
When *I* rip songs, they average about 8 MB each. That's about 7500 songs, or (calculated by compression ratio) about 7.5 full discs per gig. Call it 10 discs to account for stuff that's not 72 minutes. Hmm, 600 CDs. I don't have that many, no - but I've got more than 200. And having more than 400 is not that hard to imagine.
Maybe Apple aren't out to contribute to music piracy. Maybe they really want to help people to listen to THEIR music the way THEY want to....or maybe D) each song averages 110k each, and Apple thinks that people want to carry around enough music to occupy the rest of their lives, and in fact are planning a subcutaneous model for 2006?
Myself, I'm betting on A) or C). Don't forget that the iPod can be used as storage, too...
Wait a minute - how the hell did you expect to get ANYTHING done using one eye per monitor? Perhaps if you'd tried to look at one monitor at the time, with BOTH eyes, you could have gotten something done.
I call bullshit. I refuse to believe that you really used a different monitor for each eye. I think IHBT.
Funny you should mention E.E. - I had been going to talk about him, but decided not to. Everything you mention negatively about Snow Crash - character development, plot holes, etc., can be found in spades in the Skylark series, the various short series' (Subspace Explorers, Subspace Encounter, The Galaxy Primes, etc) - but I still love reading them. I just eBay'd for Subspace Explorers (and National Lampoon's Doon, Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, and a couple others). I think it's a shame that Doc Smith's work isn't available on the shelf anymore.
But Doc Smith's work is fundamentally even more flawed than anything I've read from Stephenson. His science is appallingly bad, the never-ending geometric escalation of personal power, material strength, energy availability, etc. are all totally ridiculous. His characters are so thoroughly wooden and caricatured that you can't even talk about them being painted with a broad brush, he just dumps out a gallon of semi-gloss latex and runs. Yet, they're fun to read. Kinda like Stephenson.
I mean, can you really do a serious literary dissection of a novel whose main character is named Hiro Protagonist? I suspect we've got something more like Heinlein's Number of the Beast, which is more about how to (or how NOT to) write SF than it is about the actual plot lines. Maybe I'm giving N.S. more credit than he deserves, but you can tell that even he isn't taking Snow Crash all that seriously.
End of the day, though, I still enjoyed reading Snow Crash much more than, say, the hard and accurate SF of Robert L. Forward.
Oh, please. There's not enough difference in the resolution of PAL and of NTSC to really matter at all. PAL has a lower framerate, too, so nyah!
HDTV has significantly more resolution than either PAL or NTSC. It's simply a matter of technology marching forward, and new standards improving upon old ones. It has nothing to do with N. Americans being jealous of European video standards.
Perhaps it's a matter of differing tastes? I, as an example, have been reading sci-fi for close to 30 years - I can hardly be referred to as "just discovering" the genre - yet I enjoyed "Snow Crash" very much. I also enjoyed Cryptonomicon most thoroughly. My stepfather, OTOH, has been known to not only start but completely finish MORE THAN ONE John Brunner novel, which I've never been able to do even once.
I don't see why being fun to read is such a crime with some people.
Could you explain this a little better? Keep in mind that speed!=velocity. Explain to me how two objects with small relative velocities can make a large impact.
Actually, Greg, two objects traveling at 27,300 kph and impacting each other might not damage each other at all. Like, say, if they're travelling in the same direction? The key, here, is the relative velocity between the two objects. If you dump it out the airlock with no serious acceleration, it's just going to stay in orbit with you. When it hits you again, it won't hit very hard. Problem is, neither will it leave orbit and fall down. THAT's why you can't just dump stuff out the airlock.
Slashdot Mirror
And discourse with you is like listening to a recording.
I've already read your statements that PATRIOT Act is in effect. I've read your statements that it was enacted by Congress and signed by the sitting President. I've heard all that. Several times. Yet you feel that if you just say it enough, I and others will realize that it makes everything OK, and PATRIOT is my friend, and if my congressmen voted for it it must be OK...
It doesn't make the bill a good bill. It doesn't make it constitutional. What makes a bill constitutional is for the bill to be compliant with the provisions of the Constitution and its amendments. The way that gets tested is that a Federal court hears a case in which a specific section of the law in question is challenged, and then hands down a decision. This decision can be appealed, by either side, all the way up to the SCOTUS, who can then decide whether or not to hear the appeal. Their decision is final, unless they choose to revisit it. The SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of Constitutionality in the USA, and they have not handed down a SINGLE decision re: PATRIOT Act that I've been able to find.
IOW, krimka, your assertion that PATRIOT has been approved by the SCOTUS will require additional evidence. Repeating the assertion isn't evidence.
Would you like to know why I object to PATRIOT Act? Here's a sample: The Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as conduct that violates state or federal law and is dangerous to human life.
WHAT?
By that definition, you could just as easily say that driving in the rain without your headlights is domestic terrorism. Is that a reasonable interpretation? Of course not. But consider this. The FBI, at the bidding of the MPAA, used the PATRIOT Act to obtain financial records to be used in the prosecution of a website administrator. The charges? That he was distributing old episodes of Stargate SG-1. Now, I don't care HOW much you hate Stargate - that's not terrorism. That's abuse of powers.
Lastly, let's settle this thing about "rude". Every time you question whether someone who opposes PATRIOT Act is truly an American, suggest that they are on the side of the terrorists (whichever terrorists we're pissed about this year), or suggest that their only motivation behind opposition to PATRIOT Act is to garner some sort of "points" in some game, you insult that person most poisonously. Dissenting discourse is about as American as it can get, and the unAmerican way is to try to suppress discourse from the opposition. In the face of that, my telling you NOT to be "stupid" is a fart in a hurricane. I'll retract my suggestion that you have the potential to be stupid the moment you retract your assertion, in every commment you've made attached to this article, that opposition to PATRIOT Act is unAmerican.
Every time you repeat the calumny about "jeopardizing our safety so they can score some political points" and "weak on security", you echo the words of another manipulator of sheep. Since you seem to think that repetition==argument, I'll repeat those words for you again. See if they sound familiar.
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." -Hermann Goering, Nuremburg, 1947
"You are the one who, in the face of all that, is still shouting about it being unconstitutional."
Well, me and U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins.
Don't be stupid. Laws have been passed and found unconstitutional before. So have parts of this one, already, and I believe that a challenge to certain other parts would be successful as well. Hell, even Amendments to the Constitution have been repealed when they turned out to be oppressive and wrong. The only way this law would survive a real Supreme Court hearing is if Bush packs the SCOTUS with the ultra-conservative puppets that he so clearly wants to.
Just to set the record straight, that's NOT all you're saying. You're also saying, in so many words, that people who oppose PATRIOT Act are people "who don't think we are in danger from terrorists" and aren't "Normal Americans" and that as a result terrorists have "Americans like you on their side". You are essentially stating that my (and others') opposition to the unconstitutional and oppressive PATRIOT Act makes us unpatriotic, unAmerican, and a danger to America. Just like Goering said.
No, sir, the real danger from America comes from you and your sheep-like ilk. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin. Doesn't get more American than that.
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any
country." -Hermann Goering, Nuremburg, 1947
You've been brainwashed, krimka. Brainwashed. Nobody wants terrorism here. Neither do we want our Constitutionally-mandated civil rights abrogated.
FACT: PATRIOT Act has been abused. More than once. More than twice.
If you could say that PATRIOT Act could and would ONLY be used to investigate terrorists, that would be a different story. But you can't say that: firstly, because we've already seen that it isn't true; secondly, because the more power you give to law enforcement personnel, the more those individual persons will abuse it - it's just too easy to say, "uh, yeah, it's a terrorism investigation, sure"; and thirdly, because you won't know that they're terrorists until AFTER you've violated their constitutional rights.
The fact that a group of assholes have committed horrible crimes against Americans, in the name of Islam or whatever, does not justify the abrogation of the Constitutional rights of Americans, and *I* resent your implicit belittling of the sacrifices of those thousands (millions?) of Americans who have *knowingly* and *willingly* fought and died to protect those rights.
If I had mod points today...
So, only criminals fear the cops?
True story: a cousin of mine is involved with in a child custody case. The father is a cop - doesn't want anything to do with her (one night stand), but is fighting for custody of the baby. He has illegally taped her phone conversations, harassed her, attempted to enter her home against her express permission, done god knows what sort of research into non-publically-available files in order to get ammunition for the court case... and it's twice as hard to stop him because he's a cop. She's not a criminal, but she certainly needs to fear the police. And it's not just him - who knows how many of his fellow officers are willing to abuse their powers to "help one of their own"?
Truth is, the more power you give policemen and law enforcement in general, the more that power will get abused. PATRIOT act is a perfect example; it's intended to fight terrorism, but people who have nothing to do with terror are being attacked with it. It may be true that some of them are guilty of other crimes... but that doesn't make the abuse OK. If 20,000 people have their rights violated to catch 10 criminals, then PATRIOT is wrong, wrong, wrong. It violates not only the letter but the spirit of the Constitution of the United States - same one Ashcroft, Bush, etc., have sworn to uphold.
"Laws aren't enough to prevent bad people from doing bad things."
Nope. You got that right. But PATRIOT makes it easier for law enforcement to do bad things.
So, you're saying that the intent will always match the usage? It never will be (and never has been) used for purposes other than combating terrorism? You're new on this world, aren't you?
Ever heard of a guy named J. Edgar Hoover? Richard Nixon? You think if you come home someday and find a bug on your phone you're going to be able to say into it, "Whoa, dude, I'm a musician, not a terrorist!" and they'll immediately come remove the bug?
Only terrorism, huh? How about this? How about this? Or this?
Dude, face facts. It doesn't matter what the people who voted for the PATRIOT act intended, what matters is how it's used - or, in reality, abused. Fact is, it's being used EXACTLY the way Ashcroft and cronies intended - for non-terror-related investigations.
Huh?
They tested the systems with (as far as I could tell) nothing but 32-bit binaries on a 32-bit OS. Nothing that any of the AMD's did was "64-bit" at all. This wasn't a 64-bit vs. 32-bit comparison. If anything, the AMDs were handicapped by not being able to use their full capabilities.
Besides, even if it was a tilted comparison, SO WHAT? The real take-home message here is that the Intel P4EE isn't 64-bit capable, doesn't run 32-bit software as fast as the Athlons run the same software, and yet the P4EE still costs more money.
Honestly, your assertion that the comparison was unfair makes NO sense to me at all.
Dude, update your site. I've got a 13b vert, and I'm dying to hear how your 20b comes out.
Seriously. I mean, -1:Troll? How about a wouldn't know funny if it slept with him metamod? I swear, kids these days...
"Poo-poo" is American adolescent idiom meaning excrement, as in "I went poo-poo in my diapers again!"
In this usage, it means she's full of shit.
Aha! Grandparent! I am illuminated!
I, speaking practically no languages other than English, am not prone to correct errors which are clearly due to a non-native-English-speaker's unfamiliarity with English idiom - especially American idiom. I mostly wondered what you meant with the 8 thing.
Nah.
You can put your nuts in the microwave, as far as I'm concerned. They're not MY nuts.
Could you be more specific re: Exhibit C? I ask because the only usage I saw was "than", and it was used correctly.
What is an 8-form?
Yes and no.
An air conditioner, as pointed out by another poster, consumes a certain amount of energy in order to move a certain amount of energy. In order to move (e.g.) 100W of heat from your home to the outside, the air conditioner will require (e.g.) 30W of power for its operation. That means that 100W of heat leave your home, 30W of electricity enter your A/C, and 130W of heat leave your A/C. Most of the heat that is given off is, in fact, the heat being removed from your fine home. This would be described in terms of the COP (coefficient of performance) as being about COP=3.3, which is nice.
Peltiers, OTOH, are much less efficient than (e.g.) freon-based heat pumps. The COP is usually less than one, meaning that to move 100W of heat, you would need to input more than 100W of electricity, and 200W or more of heat would be dissipated.
The reason that one might use a Peltier for CPU cooling isn't efficiency, it's efficacy. The rate of heat transfer from a warm medium to a cooler medium is related to the temperature difference. So to get 70W of heat out of the CPU into the heatsink and thus into the air, the heatsink (and consequently the CPU) has to be (HAS to be) much warmer than ambient, or else be REALLY large.
Using a Peltier, you can cool a CPU much closer to, or even (as you point out) lower than ambient, despite the heatsink being much hotter than ambient. And that's the advantage - the CPU can be cool, working at its best, while the heatsink is hot, working at its best.
It is possible to achieve COP greater than one, wherein less power is consumed than is moved, through careful device design. I'm not well-versed in Peltier device design, though, so I can't tell you how that's done. At that point, the heat dissipated would still be greater than the heat removed from the CPU.
The real advantage of a Peltier isn't getting the CPU cooler than ambient, it's getting it cooler than the heatsink. And it does it without moving parts, chemicals, etc. Whether the electricity cost is worth it or not depends on the application.
What I find interesting...is why doesn't anyone massively manufacture faster CPUs basing their underlying design on the ZX Spectrum...
Oh, I know this one! It's because they're all stupid, right?
I'm certain that the engineers and scientists at Intel, AMD, VIA, Transmeta, Motorola, IBM, SGI, etc. (many of whom with EARNED Ph.D's) are all sitting around reading Slashdot so that they can harvest your pearls of wisdom, and learn from the master how to build faster microprocessors. If they would just clock a Z80 at 2 GHz, they could run BASIC programs REALLY fast!
No, wait - that's not it. They're not building the fastest, most efficient architectures they can BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO. Same reason Microsoft won't release the secure version of Windows XP, and Linus won't allow a user-friendly version of Linux. They're deliberately denying YOU your god-given right to run small, efficient code at high speeds so that they can maintain control over your brainwaves... no?
Oh, yeah. Maybe it's because IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE, and pretending to have a Ph.D. doesn't actually confer any knowledge or intelligence. Hmm?
Your post(s) smell of Amsterdam Vallon.
No, they aren't made of silicon. They're usually made of compound semiconductors, such as gallium arsenide, etc.
"No FireWire, no sale.
And someone has to provide Mac support.
And AAC. At least unprotected. I'll never use the iTunes Music Store."
Yes, SIR! We'll get right on it. Firewire, OGG support, and AAC support. No copy protection, and no need for iTunes - we'll simply put all of your favorite music on it from the factory.
Oh, and for YOU - it will be free, of course. And a blowjob, with our compliments.
...or C) Apple has realized that there is a large segment of the population that wants to carry around mp3s, etc., of music that they've ALREADY BOUGHT and have THEMSELVES RIPPED so that they can listen to all of their OWN music wherever they go.
...or maybe D) each song averages 110k each, and Apple thinks that people want to carry around enough music to occupy the rest of their lives, and in fact are planning a subcutaneous model for 2006?
That's still legal here in the US.
When *I* rip songs, they average about 8 MB each. That's about 7500 songs, or (calculated by compression ratio) about 7.5 full discs per gig. Call it 10 discs to account for stuff that's not 72 minutes. Hmm, 600 CDs. I don't have that many, no - but I've got more than 200. And having more than 400 is not that hard to imagine.
Maybe Apple aren't out to contribute to music piracy. Maybe they really want to help people to listen to THEIR music the way THEY want to.
Myself, I'm betting on A) or C). Don't forget that the iPod can be used as storage, too...
Wait a minute - how the hell did you expect to get ANYTHING done using one eye per monitor? Perhaps if you'd tried to look at one monitor at the time, with BOTH eyes, you could have gotten something done.
I call bullshit. I refuse to believe that you really used a different monitor for each eye. I think IHBT.
Funny you should mention E.E. - I had been going to talk about him, but decided not to. Everything you mention negatively about Snow Crash - character development, plot holes, etc., can be found in spades in the Skylark series, the various short series' (Subspace Explorers, Subspace Encounter, The Galaxy Primes, etc) - but I still love reading them. I just eBay'd for Subspace Explorers (and National Lampoon's Doon, Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, and a couple others). I think it's a shame that Doc Smith's work isn't available on the shelf anymore.
But Doc Smith's work is fundamentally even more flawed than anything I've read from Stephenson. His science is appallingly bad, the never-ending geometric escalation of personal power, material strength, energy availability, etc. are all totally ridiculous. His characters are so thoroughly wooden and caricatured that you can't even talk about them being painted with a broad brush, he just dumps out a gallon of semi-gloss latex and runs. Yet, they're fun to read. Kinda like Stephenson.
I mean, can you really do a serious literary dissection of a novel whose main character is named Hiro Protagonist? I suspect we've got something more like Heinlein's Number of the Beast, which is more about how to (or how NOT to) write SF than it is about the actual plot lines. Maybe I'm giving N.S. more credit than he deserves, but you can tell that even he isn't taking Snow Crash all that seriously.
End of the day, though, I still enjoyed reading Snow Crash much more than, say, the hard and accurate SF of Robert L. Forward.
Oh, please. There's not enough difference in the resolution of PAL and of NTSC to really matter at all. PAL has a lower framerate, too, so nyah!
HDTV has significantly more resolution than either PAL or NTSC. It's simply a matter of technology marching forward, and new standards improving upon old ones. It has nothing to do with N. Americans being jealous of European video standards.
Perhaps it's a matter of differing tastes? I, as an example, have been reading sci-fi for close to 30 years - I can hardly be referred to as "just discovering" the genre - yet I enjoyed "Snow Crash" very much. I also enjoyed Cryptonomicon most thoroughly. My stepfather, OTOH, has been known to not only start but completely finish MORE THAN ONE John Brunner novel, which I've never been able to do even once.
I don't see why being fun to read is such a crime with some people.
So, then, at that point they would have high velocities relative to each other, right?
Could you explain this a little better? Keep in mind that speed!=velocity. Explain to me how two objects with small relative velocities can make a large impact.
Actually, Greg, two objects traveling at 27,300 kph and impacting each other might not damage each other at all. Like, say, if they're travelling in the same direction? The key, here, is the relative velocity between the two objects. If you dump it out the airlock with no serious acceleration, it's just going to stay in orbit with you. When it hits you again, it won't hit very hard. Problem is, neither will it leave orbit and fall down. THAT's why you can't just dump stuff out the airlock.