I've got a plastic space shuttle that was one of my more cherished toys when I was 3 (22 years ago).
That's very interesting, especially since the shuttle didn't start flying until 21 years ago.
The first launch was 20 years ago. But we knew what it was going to look like long before then. The Shuttle Enterprise "flew" (rather, glided) to Earth during its Approach and Landing Tests in 1977. Plenty of time for nice parents to buy a plastic model in 1979. Duh.
Re:[SPOILER] Re:My take...
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Review: A.I.
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· Score: 1
How can people possibly mistake those things for aliens?
Uh, because Earth mechas would have no need to act as archaeolgists? They would already have records of humanity as faithful as David's(*). And their physical form factor is so completely inefficient. They screamed "alien," whether they were supposed to be mecha or not.
(*)Unless they put all those files on Memorex CD-R's, of course.
But no OEM for some odd reason wanted to testify agaisn't them. Hmm I wonder why.
Too bad it's too late now for Acer and Compaq to testify. Heck, Compaq and Dell even managed to "talk" the Texas AG into dropping out of the states' part of the suit.
I do recall mention of an interesting hack on Slasdot. I believe it was running at networld/Interop or perhaps a linux world conference. Basically, it grabbed jpegs and gifs off the ethernet which were floating by as part of other peoples surfing and displayed them on a large display
It's Etherpeg (http://www.etherpeg.org/) (link for the brave) from MackHack 2000.
Re:1st we have data via light.....
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DSLBlaster?
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"Adobe is Apple's bitch, and Photoshop is
written to scream on Macs"
Is our collective memory so short what we've already forgotten the incident of Photoshop being written BY Intel to scream ON Intel?
I couldn't find a currently-live link on the Cringely site, but... From I, Cringely's "Photoshop of Horrors":
For a few specific Photoshop features, that improvement can be significant... but only if the setting for that feature is just so. Set the Unsharp filter for a blur of four pixels and a MMX-enabled Pentium performs 800 percent faster than a standard Pentium. Impressive. But change the blur setting to five pixels or more and the Pentium with MMX is faster by around 10%. Not quite so impressive. The same happens with Gaussian Blur, another Photoshop filter. And that eight to twelve percent increase is simply because the newer chips have a little more memory built into the chip than the older chips did. Nothing to do with MMX at all.
But wait, there's more! One of the reasons that the Pentium with MMX is so much faster at particular settings is that the original Pentium runs many times slower at these same settings than it did with the same settings on the non-MMX version of Photoshop.
Intel not only made the chip faster, they made the application slower, but just for certain processor types. How did they do that? Intel actually did the Photoshop optimization themselves. Adobe handed Intel the code, Intel tweaked it and gave it back.
That a person "might?" Where does "might" come from?
I've had a copy of DeCSS since the day after it was released. I haven't "done" anything with it other than move the ZIP file from drive to drive (some of these were free disk space web sites).
I'm waiting to see if somebody comes after me as a DMCA infringer (and hoping that EFF will take my case).
under the DMCA, if I were to remove the meta tags (used by search engines) and put in a DMCA copyright notice granting NO ONE the right to list my site in a search engine, I could probably sue Google for "circvumventing" my "protection scheme" (weak as it would be) under the DMCA, if they by-passed it by manually listing it, describing the site, etc, instead of using the (not there) meta tags.
Except for the fact that you're ignoring the accepted protocol for excluding search engines. Your proposal is as legally weak as putting a statement like "This site may be indexed by search engines at a fee of $50 per listing." at the bottom of the page. You'd get laughed out of court.
Tolkien said it all, and there's been no one of similar genius to push the field farther.
Once again, to draw a distinct line between fantasy as a generic term, and the kind of "high fantasy" that Tolkien wrote, there definitely was a similar genius who pushed the field much farther than Tolkien did: Jorge Luis Borges. Try wrapping your mind around the fantasy of The Library of Babel for a while. 15 minutes to read, a lifetime to understand.
"In exchange for the priveledge of viewing this entertainment, you also agree to not write or speak about about elements of this entertainment in a public or private forum without prior approval of the proprietors of the establishment providing you with this licensed viewing, and the owners of this Licensed property. This prohibition includes discussion and opinion expressed on TV shows, Radio shows, message forums, and other media online and offline."
There may be some slight legitimacy to this concern. I have been asked by news reporters, not once but twice, if my site, moviepooper.com, has drawn the attention of the studios' legal departments. The good news is that either (1) I'm too small for them to even notice, or (2) they realize that a cease and desist order would violate my Constitutional rights. It's prolly (1).
how long will it be before the glass is distorted enough that they cannot be read?
Debunking time again. Those "flows" in your 100-year-old windows are just flaws you happened to have never noticed before.
Look here for more info.
My favorite quote: "A materials scientist pointed out that, under its own weight, the changed thickness from glass flow would be unmeasurable after 10,000 years."
Let's see: the first topic on the site is the domain owner's sale of his personal hardware. Later down the page, there are Paypal and Kagi links where I can make a $5 donation to "support" the site. This is EXACTLY the kind of site I usually avoid.
And yes, I *did* know abouy "Sawtooth." All True Believers (tm) should have been up on that about 16 months ago.
On the other hand, some song titles are rather unique phrases or original combinations of words, and perhaps should be extended copyright protection - "You know where you went wrong", "Bizarre Love Triangle", "I Trance You", "Leafhound" are all examples of song titles that might qualify to varying degrees.
You get this one figured out, drop Warren Zevon a line. He never saw a penny from the filmmakers who stole his title "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead." They didn't even have the courtesy to use his song, which would at least have paid a few royalty bucks.
I agree, but 128 kbps is what the MP3 industry have us believe is "CD quality." 64 kbps is "Digital Quality." So when you see an ad for the Nomad II with 64 MB of memory, they can claim it "holds over two hours of digital-quality music."
Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?
Uh, easily. I'm not a big audiophile, so I can only use layman's terms for the defects I hear in MP3 recordings. I call it "pre-echo" associated with high frequency sounds (like the brushing of cymbals). The worst example I've found is this alleged "high-quality" (128 kbps) recording at mp3.com. (I found it accidentally while looking for previously-unreleased material by the late, great Bluesman Ted Hawkins).
It's gotten so that the only things I use MP3 for are old AM radio shows and Napster downloads of rare demo stuff that's already sonically degraded prior to the MP3 encoding process.
This crowd is going to have a pretty good bogosity filter for the crypto stuff. Stephenson is an excellent BS artist. As an environmental engineer, I've lost count of how many technically astute folks have asked me why the EPA hasn't instituted a PCB remediation program like the one described in Zodiac.
Stephenson's assertion that
many readers of fiction underestimate just how much of a novel's content is simply made up can't be overemphasized...
I hate having to correct myself. My memory is going. It was 1995, the chat was for the ABA, and Mr. Ellison has posted a transcript here.
You may be happy/shocked to hear that this truly was a case of mistaken identity. Shortly after this little encounter, Mr. Ellison asked Peter David to post a public apology to Usenet (to which I would provide a link if only Deja/Google were up), and he and I have spoken a few times on the phone. I re-expressed my concern for the estates of his deceased contributors, and he assured me that he is working to address those concerns. He sent my son an autographed book.
I haven't spoken with him since 1996, and I am still worried about the income that the families of his contributors are not earning due to his procrastination. Perhaps the KICK effort will help him to remember his own obligations with regard to intellectual property custodianship.
Slashdot Mirror
Some refs:8 4/askmcc/answers/05_15_20_27_48.html
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff1998/hm1.htm
(*)Unless they put all those files on Memorex CD-R's, of course.
Haiku still has rules
Slashdot is not an excuse
to ignore the form
I couldn't find a currently-live link on the Cringely site, but... From I, Cringely's "Photoshop of Horrors":
RTFA. It's funny because the laser is powered at 1% of the OSHA-acceptable level.
Actually, I'm an absolute nobody, and I just got 5 moderator points dumped in my lap. Rather than moderate you, I'll just comment... "is not!"
My favorite quote: "A materials scientist pointed out that, under its own weight, the changed thickness from glass flow would be unmeasurable after 10,000 years."
Let's see: the first topic on the site is the domain owner's sale of his personal hardware. Later down the page, there are Paypal and Kagi links where I can make a $5 donation to "support" the site. This is EXACTLY the kind of site I usually avoid. And yes, I *did* know abouy "Sawtooth." All True Believers (tm) should have been up on that about 16 months ago.
Except Salon did their usual annoying bit of splitting it up over three pages. More banner impressions that way, I guess.
I agree, but 128 kbps is what the MP3 industry have us believe is "CD quality." 64 kbps is "Digital Quality." So when you see an ad for the Nomad II with 64 MB of memory, they can claim it "holds over two hours of digital-quality music."
It's gotten so that the only things I use MP3 for are old AM radio shows and Napster downloads of rare demo stuff that's already sonically degraded prior to the MP3 encoding process.
Stephenson's assertion that many readers of fiction underestimate just how much of a novel's content is simply made up can't be overemphasized...
You may be happy/shocked to hear that this truly was a case of mistaken identity. Shortly after this little encounter, Mr. Ellison asked Peter David to post a public apology to Usenet (to which I would provide a link if only Deja/Google were up), and he and I have spoken a few times on the phone. I re-expressed my concern for the estates of his deceased contributors, and he assured me that he is working to address those concerns. He sent my son an autographed book.
I haven't spoken with him since 1996, and I am still worried about the income that the families of his contributors are not earning due to his procrastination. Perhaps the KICK effort will help him to remember his own obligations with regard to intellectual property custodianship.