Disassembly, cleaning, testing, re-assembly and uncertain lifetimes cost a lot of money. Often more than just making a new one. You can sell a 2nd hand PC to someone who knows what to expect, but to your average Wal-Mart shopper?
Why should the hardware profits be sacrificed to support high software prices?
Perhaps Windows should be cheaper to support high hardware prices. Cheaper software might also reduce piracy since the it would be more affordable.
If we were talking about Apple or Sun then sure, they can do that as they sell both hardware and software. Microsoft aren't going to cut their margins so PC makers can make more money, why would they? If they thought they could make more money overall they might, but I can't see Microsoft giving a shit about hardware manufacturers as long as someone is making boxes to their spec.
The majority of houses in the UK do not have cellars. The majority of those that did pre-1939 have since been bombed flat.
You either live in the East End of London or another country. I live in England and have all my life (throughout the country). In Sheffield, Durham and London I have lived in Victorian terraces, complete with cellars. Bomb damage (today only visible as conspicuously "recent" buildings) was evident in London and Sheffield if you looked for the breaks in the patterns, but it was far from total destruction. To suggest the majority of pre-1939 houses were flattened by bombs is absurd.
I have to disagree that the rotation of the earth is causing this effect. The same amount of mass would cause this distortion regardless of its' movement.
You are of course free to think whatever you like, but unless you come up with a better theory everyone will carry on using the stuff Einstein et al. came up with because, as accurately as we can measure, it's right. Simply saying "I disagree" doesn't get you far in science.
All this is good, but I do have a slight philosophical objection to the rubber sheet explanation of gravity. It seems to me to be a kind of circular argument: It requires a gravity field to make the objects on the sheet model a gravity field.
It's not an explanation of gravity, nor is it the definition of general relativity. It's a way of looking at a simplified mathematical model of general relativity so we can get some intuitive idea of what it's all about. Our heads just don't work with warped 4-dimensional space-time, they haven't evolved to as the effect is not directly observable on Earth-being scales. It is literally beyond our imagination. What the sheet model does is enable us to visualise things like how something can travel in a straight line yet apparently go round a corner at the same time.
Don't take it too literally, think of it more as a graph than a diagram. Don't expect to be able to "see" it in all its multi-dimensional glory in your mind's eye. I tried for a years during and after my physics degree and eventaully gave up and stuck with mental images in fewer dimensions and a whole bunch of maths.
Plus, they say that the drag is about 6 feet or 2 meters? Not quite. I must nitpick.
2 meters is about 6'7", or 6 feet is about 1.82 meters. So which is it?
Both. 6 feet is about 2 metres which is about what they measured.
Then while you have a theory that has not been disproved, Ockhams Razor advises us to use the simplest one that explains all the data, and that's not yours.
Occam's razor also advises us that the spelling "Occam" is preferable to "Ockham", as it has fewer letters:)
This documentary is actually the sequel to Jason Scott's previous 16 hour epic "The history of drying paint", a compilation of 724 of the most historically important paints, uh, drying.
(there is no such thing as a casual cocaine/heroin "user", only "addicts")
Crap. I used to regularly take cocaine (at the weekends, when going out). I never became addicted. A large number of my friends also casually took cocaine. We were (are) all respectable professionals holding down jobs, having normal relationships with other people and funding our casual drug use without resorting to crime.
On the other hand, I've met a few alcoholics who lost their jobs and families through their addiction.
Radar just tells you where something is, where it's heading right now, and sometimes what it is.
Optics and infared can also tell you how many people are there, what they're doing, sometimes what they're bringing with them.
BIG difference.
It's all just em radiation. There's nothing particularly special about optical wavelengths, they just happen to be the peak fo the Sun's output so that's what our in-built em sensors (eyes) have evolved to detect. Provided the wavelength is small enough you can see just as much, if not more, using wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum. This is THz em radiation; that's a 0.3mm wavelength. There is plenty of detail available at that scale. I've never investigated that area of the em spectrum, but I expect there are "colours" (frequency dependant response) in common materials just as there are at other wavelengths.
Q: No seriously. What the hell?
A: Oh. We just write scripts and then use videogames to act them out. It's a new style of animation that some people call machinima. It allows to make weekly pieces of animation with a small group of people.
So instead of a hard to reproduce signature (well mine is) there's an easy to remember 4 digit number that the criminal can watch you type in just before stealing your wallet
Exactly:) I've developed a technique of laying all my figers over the keys so it's harder to tell exactly which ones I pressed. I'd prefer it if the keypad were hidden somehow though.
Perhaps you are, but the UK and I belive much of Europe is moving to chips embedded in the card instead of the magnetic strip. I don't know how many cash machines (ATMs) use them yet, but most shops do.
We will effectively be able to extend our own bodies using robotic technology, perhaps controlling figher aircraft and other complex machinery with our minds.
It may amaze you, but current day fighter aircraft and other complex machines are controlled by people's minds. They use an interface called "the human body".
Well, if the customers are being fucked, they should stop buying MS stuff. And if their business partners are being fucked, then they should stop being partners with Microsoft. And as for competitors, which one, exactly makes a better operating system for x86 machines that normal human beings would want to use? And which one makes (ever made) a better office suite? Who makes a better media player? Answer: Nobody (Well, quicktime runs fairly well on my mac).
You really don't understand that Microsoft is a convicted abusive monopoly or what that means, do you? You make out like it's all an easy choice - that it's trivial to go and buy another OS or office suite. Well it's not. A large part of the reason that it's not easy or sometimes even possible is that Microsoft persistently illegally abuses its monopoly position to crush the competition. You're making out that Microsoft acheived and retained their position of dominance through illegal abuses of their monopoly.
Why no other x86 operating systems? Microsoft abused its monopoly to punish PC makers who tried to sell other operating systems.
Why no better media player? Microsoft abused its monopoly to gain market share and eliminate competition.
Had Microsoft not illegally abused its monopoly I have no doubt we would have more choices about where to get our software and there would be higher quality software from more vendors. This hurts us all (except Microsoft), which is why abusing your monopoly to crush the competition is illegal.
If you really don't want DRM-encumbered music then don't buy it. You can buy un-DRM-ed music on-line from Warp Records. If you're into electronica then check it out (it's not all they do, but it's their sock and trade).
hifting it from drive to neutral will disengage it, and again the rev limiter covers the engine while the brakes stop the car. I'd like to see documentation of any automatic transmission that will refuse to disengage at any given engine or car speed, because that auto company would be wiped off the face of the Earth by lawsuits. I doubt such a transmission exists.
I doubt you can shift straight to neutral with many of the "F1-style" paddle-shift gearboxes. You have no lever to shift to "N" and the box won't shift down if the revs are too high. There simply isn't a control which lets you do anything but shift up and down.
A car going off on its own is one things - you still have steering and brakes. The guy in the story survived, after all. The idea of a malfunction with fly-by-wire steering is truly terrifying.
Loads of Opterons? Who cares if GFX card is teh sux? Cray are a bunch of noobs. I bet it doesn't even have neon fans! You'll never get the chix showing them your 1337 skillz in CS with that heap of junk.
But trusted computing to the OSS world really means that no processes will run on my machines that I didn't specifically authorize.
The whole point of "trusted computing" is that your computer trusts some other entity more than the user or administrator of that machine. If you had the encryption keys to make anything you wanted work then it would be a good thing, but that would defeat the purpose MS et al. have designed it for.
Trusted computing means your computer doesn't trust you. Personally, I'd find it rather hard to trust my computer in such a situation.
At best this will mean owning two computers; one which doesn't trust you (but which Microsoft does trust), and one which you can trust. I just hope the machines we can use to run code we can trust (ie open source) won't become prohibitivley expensive or even illegal (and you can bet the **AA et al. will want *every* machine sold to trust them more than you).
Slashdot Mirror
You develop porn?
Disassembly, cleaning, testing, re-assembly and uncertain lifetimes cost a lot of money. Often more than just making a new one. You can sell a 2nd hand PC to someone who knows what to expect, but to your average Wal-Mart shopper?
If we were talking about Apple or Sun then sure, they can do that as they sell both hardware and software. Microsoft aren't going to cut their margins so PC makers can make more money, why would they? If they thought they could make more money overall they might, but I can't see Microsoft giving a shit about hardware manufacturers as long as someone is making boxes to their spec.
You either live in the East End of London or another country. I live in England and have all my life (throughout the country). In Sheffield, Durham and London I have lived in Victorian terraces, complete with cellars. Bomb damage (today only visible as conspicuously "recent" buildings) was evident in London and Sheffield if you looked for the breaks in the patterns, but it was far from total destruction. To suggest the majority of pre-1939 houses were flattened by bombs is absurd.
You are of course free to think whatever you like, but unless you come up with a better theory everyone will carry on using the stuff Einstein et al. came up with because, as accurately as we can measure, it's right. Simply saying "I disagree" doesn't get you far in science.
It's not an explanation of gravity, nor is it the definition of general relativity. It's a way of looking at a simplified mathematical model of general relativity so we can get some intuitive idea of what it's all about. Our heads just don't work with warped 4-dimensional space-time, they haven't evolved to as the effect is not directly observable on Earth-being scales. It is literally beyond our imagination. What the sheet model does is enable us to visualise things like how something can travel in a straight line yet apparently go round a corner at the same time.
Don't take it too literally, think of it more as a graph than a diagram. Don't expect to be able to "see" it in all its multi-dimensional glory in your mind's eye. I tried for a years during and after my physics degree and eventaully gave up and stuck with mental images in fewer dimensions and a whole bunch of maths.
Both. 6 feet is about 2 metres which is about what they measured.
Occam's razor also advises us that the spelling "Occam" is preferable to "Ockham", as it has fewer letters :)
This documentary is actually the sequel to Jason Scott's previous 16 hour epic "The history of drying paint", a compilation of 724 of the most historically important paints, uh, drying.
Crap. I used to regularly take cocaine (at the weekends, when going out). I never became addicted. A large number of my friends also casually took cocaine. We were (are) all respectable professionals holding down jobs, having normal relationships with other people and funding our casual drug use without resorting to crime.
On the other hand, I've met a few alcoholics who lost their jobs and families through their addiction.
It's all just em radiation. There's nothing particularly special about optical wavelengths, they just happen to be the peak fo the Sun's output so that's what our in-built em sensors (eyes) have evolved to detect. Provided the wavelength is small enough you can see just as much, if not more, using wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum. This is THz em radiation; that's a 0.3mm wavelength. There is plenty of detail available at that scale. I've never investigated that area of the em spectrum, but I expect there are "colours" (frequency dependant response) in common materials just as there are at other wavelengths.
A: Yeah, we know.
Q: No seriously. What the hell?
A: Oh. We just write scripts and then use videogames to act them out. It's a new style of animation that some people call machinima. It allows to make weekly pieces of animation with a small group of people.
Q: That was a long response.
A: Yes it was.
From the RvB FAQ.
Yoda! You're back!
Would you all mind awfully not downloading it for the next 11 minutes till my download finishes?
Thanks
Exactly :) I've developed a technique of laying all my figers over the keys so it's harder to tell exactly which ones I pressed. I'd prefer it if the keypad were hidden somehow though.
Perhaps you are, but the UK and I belive much of Europe is moving to chips embedded in the card instead of the magnetic strip. I don't know how many cash machines (ATMs) use them yet, but most shops do.
It may amaze you, but current day fighter aircraft and other complex machines are controlled by people's minds. They use an interface called "the human body".
You really don't understand that Microsoft is a convicted abusive monopoly or what that means, do you? You make out like it's all an easy choice - that it's trivial to go and buy another OS or office suite. Well it's not. A large part of the reason that it's not easy or sometimes even possible is that Microsoft persistently illegally abuses its monopoly position to crush the competition. You're making out that Microsoft acheived and retained their position of dominance through illegal abuses of their monopoly.
Why no other x86 operating systems? Microsoft abused its monopoly to punish PC makers who tried to sell other operating systems.
Why no better media player? Microsoft abused its monopoly to gain market share and eliminate competition.
Had Microsoft not illegally abused its monopoly I have no doubt we would have more choices about where to get our software and there would be higher quality software from more vendors. This hurts us all (except Microsoft), which is why abusing your monopoly to crush the competition is illegal.
If you really don't want DRM-encumbered music then don't buy it. You can buy un-DRM-ed music on-line from Warp Records. If you're into electronica then check it out (it's not all they do, but it's their sock and trade).
I doubt you can shift straight to neutral with many of the "F1-style" paddle-shift gearboxes. You have no lever to shift to "N" and the box won't shift down if the revs are too high. There simply isn't a control which lets you do anything but shift up and down.
A car going off on its own is one things - you still have steering and brakes. The guy in the story survived, after all. The idea of a malfunction with fly-by-wire steering is truly terrifying.
Loads of Opterons? Who cares if GFX card is teh sux? Cray are a bunch of noobs. I bet it doesn't even have neon fans! You'll never get the chix showing them your 1337 skillz in CS with that heap of junk.
I freaked out well before that. The guy reads /. and has a daughter. That means he must have, you know, had sex. With, like, a real woman. Kudos.
Yeah. The rest got lost over the whacked-out Wi-Fi link.
The whole point of "trusted computing" is that your computer trusts some other entity more than the user or administrator of that machine. If you had the encryption keys to make anything you wanted work then it would be a good thing, but that would defeat the purpose MS et al. have designed it for.
Trusted computing means your computer doesn't trust you. Personally, I'd find it rather hard to trust my computer in such a situation.
At best this will mean owning two computers; one which doesn't trust you (but which Microsoft does trust), and one which you can trust. I just hope the machines we can use to run code we can trust (ie open source) won't become prohibitivley expensive or even illegal (and you can bet the **AA et al. will want *every* machine sold to trust them more than you).
Is it really so hard to try a link before you post?